A J. Gordon wrote two hymns which we sometimes sing – “My Jesus I Love Thee,” and “In Tenderness He Sought Me.” Both of those hymns reflect his up-bringing in the doctrines of sovereign grace. “I love Thee because Thou hast first loved me,” and because of that first love, the Lord sought young Mr. Gordon when, like all of us, we were not looking for the Lord.
A.J.’s father was a deacon in a Baptist church. His name reflected the doctrinal upbringing of his father. The man’s name John Calvin Gordon. History records that when doctrinal innovations came into the church of which he was a deacon, J.C. Gordon “went with the hyper-Calvinists.” But that didn’t mean that the man wasn’t evangelical – that he didn’t feel responsible to share the gospel with the lost. Those were the days when Baptists were catching the fire of foreign missions. And when, on this day in 1836, the Lord gave to the Gordon family a son, he was given the name Adoniram Judson – A.J. Gordon – in honor of the great missionary to Burma.
A.J. Gordon was born again in his fifteenth year. He attended Brown University and Newton Theological Seminary. He pastored in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts for a while. When the prestigious Clarendon Street Baptist in Boson sought A.J. as their pastor, his humility kept him from accepting for two full years. Then for the next twenty-five years A.J. Gordon was one of the best-known Baptist pastors in America. He was what used to be called “a Fundamentalist.” He said, “The world’s motto is, ‘In union there is strength.’ My church’s motto is ‘In separation there is strength.’”
“My Jesus I love Thee, I know Thou art mine – for Thee all the follies of sin I resign; My gracious Redeemer, my Saviour art Thou; If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus ‘tis now.”