If you love me, you will obey what I command.
— John 14:15
ove for Christ is a love of willing as well as a love of feeling, and it is psychologically impossible to love Him adequately unless we will to obey His words. In seeking to learn whether we truly love our Lord we must be careful to apply His own test. False tests can only lead to false conclusions as false signs on the highway lead to wrong destinations. The Lord made it plain enough, but with our genius for getting mixed up we have lost sight of the markers.
I think if we would turn for a while from finespun theological speculations about grace and faith and humbly read the New Testament with a mind to obey what we see there, we would easily find ourselves and know for certain the answer to the question that troubled our fathers and should trouble us: Do we love the Lord or no?
thought
Love obeys what Christ commands. Less than love does not. Is our love emotional bubbles or uncompromising obedience? Our living will express our love.
prayer
How often my life contradicts my words. Forgive me, Lord. Teach me to love with Your love.
This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome.
— 1 John 5:3
The Christian cannot be certain of the reality and depth of his love until he comes face-to-face with the commandments of Christ and is forced to decide what to do about them. Then he will know. ?He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings? (John 14:24), said our Lord. ?He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me" (John 14:21).
So the final test of love is obedience. Not sweet emotions, not willingness to sacrifice, not zeal, but obedience to the commandments of Christ. Our Lord drew a line plain and tight for everyone to see. On one side He placed those who keep His commandments and said, ?These love Me.? On the other side He put those who keep not His sayings, and said, ?These love Me not.?
thought
The commands of the one who so loved us are not burdensome. If we have experienced His love we can be sure that obedience to His word shows love and also results in our growth as His people.
prayer
O Christ, You gave Yourself for me. What love! I belong to You. May I show my love in obeying You.
And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
— Romans 5:5
If we lived in a spiritual Utopia where every wind blew toward heaven and every man was a friend of God, we Christians could take everything for granted, counting on the new life within us to cause us to do the will of God without effort and more or less unconsciously. Unfortunately we have opposing us the lusts of the flesh, the attractions of the world and the temptations of the devil. These complicate our lives and require us often to make determined moral decisions on the side of Christ and His commandments.
It is the crisis that forces us to take a stand for or against. The patriot may be loyal to his country for half a lifetime without giving much thought to it, but let an unfriendly power solicit him to turn traitor and he will quickly spurn its overtures. His patriotism will be brought out into the open for everyone to see. So it is in the Christian life. When the ?south wind blew softly? (Acts 27:13) the ship that carried Paul sailed smoothly enough and no one on board knew who Paul was or how much strength of character lay hidden behind that rather plain exterior. But when the mighty tempest, Euroclydon, burst upon them Paul?s greatness was soon the talk of everyone on the ship.
The apostle, though himself a prisoner quite literally took command of the vessel, made decisions and issued orders that meant life or death to the people. And I think the crisis brought to a head something in Paul that had not previously been clear even to him. Beautiful theory was quickly crystallized into hard fact when the tempest struck.
thought
Since God's love is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, we can love with God's love in those love crises we experience. There is an enabling power to love far beyond our feeble human resources. Let's use it!
prayer
Grip me, Lord, with Your love. Squeeze Your love through me to You and those around me. For Jesus' sake.
Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him. — John 14:21
Our Lord told His disciples that love and obedience were organically united, that the keeping of His sayings would prove that we loved Him and the failure or refusal to keep them would prove that we did not. This is the true test of love, and we will be wise to face up to it. The commandments of Christ occupy in the New Testament a place of importance that they do not have in current evangelical thought.
The idea that our relation to Christ is revealed by our attitude to His commandments is now considered legalistic by many influential Bible teachers, and the plain words of our Lord are rejected outright or interpreted in a manner to make them conform to theories ostensibly based upon the epistles of Paul. Thus the Word of God is denied as boldly by ethought
The disciples awaited the coming of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. What a difference His indwelling would make in their love and their obedience. The book of Acts records some of that difference.
prayer
O Lord, I want to lovingly obey You. You are my life. May I be sensitive today to Your Spirit's direction.
When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?" "Yes, Lord," he said, "You know that I love you." Jesus said, "Feed my lambs."
— John 21:15
A century ago a hymn was often sung in the churches, the first stanza of which ran like this: ?Tis a point I long to know, Oft it causes anxious thought, Do I love the Lord, or no! Am I His, or am I not? Those who thus confessed their spiritual anxiety were serious-minded, honest men and women who could open their hearts to each other in this manner without self-consciousness or loss of face. It is an evidence of the essential frivolity of the modern religious mind that this hymn is never sung today, and if mentioned from the pulpit at all it is quoted humorously as proof that those who once sang it were not up on the doctrine of grace.
Why ask, ?Do I love the Lord, or no?? when any number of personal workers stand by to quote convenient texts from the New Testament to prove that we do? But we had better not be too cocksure. The gravest question any of us face is whether we do or do not love the Lord. Too much hinges on the answer to pass the matter off lightly. And it is a question that no one can answer for another. Not even the Bible can tell the individual man that he loves the Lord; it can only tell him how he can know whether or not he does. It can and does tell us how to test our hearts for love as a man might test ore for the presence of uranium, but we must do the testing.
thought
Vehemently Peter had declared that though all others fall away he would never disown his Lord even if it meant his death (Mark 14:27-31). In the intervening hours the test came and Peter failed. He recognizes the weakness of his love and the Lord begins
prayer
Easy enough, Lord, to sing hymns and choruses declaring my love for You. But do I love You with agape love? Perfect my love.
"Woe to me!" I cried, "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."
— Isaiah 6:5
It remains only to be said that worship as we have described it here is almost (though, thank God, not quite) a forgotten art in our day. For whatever we can say of modern Bible-believing Christians, it can hardly be denied that we are not remarkable for our spirit of worship. The gospel as preached by good men in our times may save souls, but it does not create worshipers. Our meetings are characterized by cordiality, humor, affability, zeal and high animal spirits; but hardly anywhere do we find gatherings marked by the overshadowing presence of God.
We manage to get along on correct doctrine, fast tunes, pleasing personalities and religious amusements. How few, how pitifully few are the enraptured souls who languish for love of Christ. The sweet ?madness? that visited such men as Bernard and St. Francis and Richard Rolle and Jonathan Edwards and Samuel Rutherford is scarcely known today. The passionate adorations of Teresa and Madame Guyon are a thing of the past. Christianity has fallen into the hands of leaders who knew not Joseph. The very memory of better days is slowly passing from us and a new type of religious person is emerging. How is the gold tarnished and the silver become lead! If Bible Christianity is to survive the present world upheaval, we shall need to recapture the spirit of worship. We shall need to have a fresh revelation of the greatness of God and the beauty of Jesus.
We shall need to put away our phobias and our prejudices against the deeper life and seek again to be filled with the Holy Spirit. He alone can raise our cold hearts to rapture and restore again the art of true worship.
thought
Have we learned to worship? We have worship leaders, worship teams, worship choruses. We have folksy sermons and pleasant humor. Is there worship? Are we ever struck speechless by the awesome presence of God?
prayer
Lord, make me a worshiper of You.
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!" The four living creatures said, ?Amen,? and the elders fell down and worshiped.
— Revelation 5:13-14
The love of Christ both wounds and heals, it fascinates and frightens, it kills and makes alive, it draws and repulses, it sobers and enraptures. There can be nothing more terrible or more wonderful than to be stricken with love for Christ so deeply that the whole being goes out in a pained adoration of His person, an adoration that disturbs and disconcerts while it purges and satisfies and relaxes the deep inner heart. This love as a kind of moral fragrance is ever detected upon the garments of the saints. In the writings of Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, for instance, this fragrance is so strong as to be very nearly intoxicating.
There are passages in his Confessions so passionately sweet as to be unbearable, yet so respectful and self-effacing as to excite pity for the man who thus kneels in adoring wonder, caught between holy love and an equally holy fear. The list of fragrant saints is long. It includes men and women of every shade of theological thought within the bounds of the orthodox Christian faith. It embraces persons of every social level, every degree of education, every race and color. This radiant love for Christ is to my mind the true test of catholicity, the one sure proof of membership in the Church universal.
thought
Prayed Augustine: "You are the life of lives, the life of souls. You are livingness itself, and You will not change, O Light of my soul" (F. J. Sheed translation). The prayer of an adorer!
prayer
O God, I'm but a beginner in the worship of You. Teach me, Lord, in Jesus' name.
Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him.
— Matthew 28:9
Many of our popular songs and choruses in praise of Christ are hollow and unconvincing. Some are even shocking in their amorous endearments, and strike a reverent soul as being a kind of flattery offered to One with whom neither composer nor singer is acquainted. The whole thing is in the mood of the love ditty, the only difference being the substitution of the name of Christ for that of the earthly lover. How different and how utterly wonderful are the emotions aroused by a true and Spirit-incited love for Christ. Such a love may rise to a degree of adoration almost beyond the power of the heart to endure, yet at the same time it will be serious, elevated, chaste and reverent.
Christ can never be known without a sense of awe and fear accompanying the knowledge. He is the fairest among ten thousand, but He is also the Lord high and mighty. He is meek and lowly in heart, but He is also Lord and Christ who will surely come to be the judge of all men. No one who knows Him intimately can ever be flippant in His presence.
thought
Our "worship services" are sometimes more flippant than contemplative, more entertaining than nourishing. Historically the Church has gone through periods when there seemed to be little joy in worship. The problem in evangelical culture today may be the
prayer
O Risen Christ, in heart I would fall at Your feet and worship You!
If we are out of our mind, it is for you. For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.
— 2 Corinthians 5:13-14
Neither the word adoration nor any of its forms is found in our familiar King James Bible, but the idea is there in full bloom. The great Bible saints were, above all, enraptured lovers of God. The psalms celebrate the love which David (and a few others) felt for the person of God. As suggested above, Paul admitted that the love of God was in his breast a kind of madness: ?For whether we be beside ourselves, it is of God: or whether we be sober, it is for your cause. For the love of Christ constraineth us? (2 Cor. 5:13-14). In Weymouth?s translation the passage reads, ?For the love of Christ overmasters us.?
The idea appears to be that Paul?s love for Christ carried him beyond himself and made him do extravagant things which to a mind untouched with the delights of such love might seem quite irrational. Perhaps the most serious charge that can be brought against modern Christians is that we are not sufficiently in love with Christ. The Christ of Fundamentalism is strong but hardly beautiful. It is rarely that we find anyone aglow with personal love for Christ. I trust it is not uncharitable to say that in my opinion a great deal of praise in conservative circles is perfunctory and forced, where it is not downright insincere.
thought
Adoring worship is an expression of compelling love.
prayer
O Father, may I grow as an adorer of You!