Jesus, the Most Excellent Object for My Love

Can you find a more excellent object for your love than Jesus? If you search through the whole creation, could you find any like him? Are riches, honors, pleasures, or other relationships comparable to Jesus, whom you ought to love supremely? Should not the highest good be the best object of your love? Can you love lesser things, and not the greatest good? Is not all the goodness in the creature but as a drop to the sea, as a candle to the sun, as a speck of sand to a mountain—when compared to the goodness that is in Jesus? If David were worth ten thousand other men, is not Jesus, David's Lord, better than all the world. . . .
 
What shall I say to advance Jesus in your esteem, that you might love him? Is he not a 'comprehensive' good? Eminently all? There is no goodness in the creature, but it is formally, or virtually, in Jesus. Is there wisdom in the creature? There is more in Jesus. Is there beauty or power in the creature? There is much more in Jesus. "For it pleased the Father, that in him should all fullness dwell" (Col. 5:19). Jesus is "full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). This is the One whom I beg you to love. This is he who is altogether lovely and desirable. Consider now, I plead with you—can you ever imagine a better offer than Jesus? Can you find a better match for your soul? Can you say all this, the one half of this, any one of all these things, concerning the objects you have loved previous to Jesus? Oh then say, 'I never understood the loveliness of Christ before this!' How has sin fooled me! How has the world bewitched me! And how has my foolish wicked heart deceived me, that I have lavished my love upon the creature, and sin, when there was a Christ to love! Such a Christ to love! Such a good as is not to be found in all the world! Now he alone shall have my love, my heart—my all!

Thomas Doolittle, Motives to Love Jesus