"My brethren, when God first began to love you, He gave you all that He ever meant to give you in the lump, and eternity of time is that in which He is retailing of it out"
About this Quote
Goodwin takes a doctrine that can feel abstract - divine love - and makes it tactile, even a little unsettling, by turning God into a merchant. The shock of the image is the point: if God "gave you all that He ever meant to give you in the lump", then the Christian life isn’t a negotiation for better terms. It’s an unwrapping. Grace isn’t earned, upgraded, or triggered by spiritual performance; it’s front-loaded, already complete, and your experience of it arrives in installments.
That retail metaphor carries the real subtext: believers live inside a time-delay between what is secured and what is felt. Goodwin is trying to calm an anxious congregation that reads God’s love off their circumstances. Suffering, dryness in prayer, the slow pace of sanctification - none of these mean the supply ran out. They mean the delivery schedule is not the same as the total gift. In an age of plague, political upheaval, and violent religious uncertainty, that’s pastoral triage: don’t interpret delay as abandonment.
There’s also a gentle power move here. By relocating the decisive moment to "when God first began to love you", Goodwin underwrites Puritan emphases on assurance and covenant: the ground of confidence sits in God’s initiating act, not the believer’s fluctuating inward weather. Eternity, then, isn’t just endless time; it’s the scale required to dispense a love too large to be absorbed all at once.
That retail metaphor carries the real subtext: believers live inside a time-delay between what is secured and what is felt. Goodwin is trying to calm an anxious congregation that reads God’s love off their circumstances. Suffering, dryness in prayer, the slow pace of sanctification - none of these mean the supply ran out. They mean the delivery schedule is not the same as the total gift. In an age of plague, political upheaval, and violent religious uncertainty, that’s pastoral triage: don’t interpret delay as abandonment.
There’s also a gentle power move here. By relocating the decisive moment to "when God first began to love you", Goodwin underwrites Puritan emphases on assurance and covenant: the ground of confidence sits in God’s initiating act, not the believer’s fluctuating inward weather. Eternity, then, isn’t just endless time; it’s the scale required to dispense a love too large to be absorbed all at once.
Quote Details
| Topic | God |
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