For how should we love, except He had first loved us? By loving we became friends: but He loved us as enemies, that we might be made friends. He first loved us, and gave us the gift of loving Him. We did not yet love Him: by loving we are made beautiful. If a man deformed and ill-featured love a beautiful woman, what shall he do? Or what shall a woman do, if, being deformed and ill-featured and black-complexioned, she love a beautiful man? By loving can she become beautiful? Can he by loving become handsome? He loves a beautiful woman, and when he sees himself in a mirror, he is ashamed to lift up his face to her his lovely one of whom he is enamored. What shall he do that he may be beautiful? Does he wait for good looks to come? Nay rather, by waiting old age is added to him, and makes him uglier. There is nothing then to do, there is no way to advise him, but only that he should restrain himself, and not presume to love unequally: or if perchance he does love her, and wishes to take her to wife, in her let him love chastity, not the face of flesh. But our soul, my brethren, is unlovely by reason of iniquity: by loving God it becomes lovely. What a love must that be that makes the lover beautiful! But God is always lovely, never unlovely, never changeable. Who is always lovely first loved us; and what were we when He loved us but foul and unlovely? But not to leave us foul; no, but to change us, and of unlovely make us lovely. How shall we become lovely? By loving Him who is always lovely. As the love increases in you, so the loveliness increases: for love is itself the beauty of the soul. Let us love, because He first loved us. Hear the apostle Paul: But God showed His love in us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us: Romans 5:8-9 the just for the unjust, the beautiful for the foul. How find we Jesus beautiful? You are beauteous in loveliness surpassing the sons of men; grace is poured upon your lips. Why so? Again see why it is that He is fair; Beauteous in loveliness surpassing the sons of men: because In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1 But in that He took flesh, He took upon Him, as it were, your foulness, i.e. your mortality, that He might adapt Himself to you, and become suited to you, and stir you up to the love of the beauteousness within. Where then in Scripture do we find Jesus uncomely and deformed, as we have found Him comely and beauteous in loveliness surpassing the sons of men? where find we Him also deformed? Ask Esaias: And we saw Him, and He had no form nor comeliness. Isaiah 53:2 There now are two flutes which seem to make discordant sounds: howbeit one Spirit breathes into both. By this it is said, Beauteous in loveliness surpassing the sons of men: by that it is said in Esaias, We saw Him, and He had no form nor comeliness. By one Spirit are both flutes filled, they make no dissonance. Turn not away your ears, apply the understanding. Let us ask the apostle Paul, and let him expound to us the unison of the two flutes. Let him sound to us the note, Beauteous in loveliness surpassing the sons of men.— Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. Philippians 2:6-7 Let him sound to us also the note, We saw Him, and He had no form nor comeliness.— He made Himself of no reputation, taking upon Him the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men, and in fashion found as man. He had no form nor comeliness, that He might give you form and comeliness. What form? What comeliness? The love which is in charity: that loving, you may run; Song of Songs 1:4 running, may love. You are fair now: but stay not your regard upon yourself, lest you lose what you have received; let your regards terminate in Him by whom you were made fair. Be fair only to the end He may love you. But do you direct your whole aim to Him, run to Him, seek His embraces, fear to depart from Him; that there may be in you the chaste fear, which endures for ever. Let us love, because He first loved us.
