The Most Important New Year's Resolution, Part 2

“No ancient or modern philosopher - Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Russel - ever taught such far-reaching ideas about love. No political figure, from Julius Caesar to Winston Churchill, has made such demands upon his followers to love. And no religious teacher, whether Buddha, Confucius, or Mohammed, ever commanded his followers to love one another as he loved them and gave his life for them. No other system of theology or philosophy says so much about the divine motivation of love (and holiness), or expresses love to the degree of Christ’s death on the cross, or makes the demands of love like the teaching of Jesus Christ and his apostles.”

This is a paragraph written by Alexander Strauch, in his little book, Love or Die: Christ’s Wake Up Call to the Church. I wonder if you’ve ever considered how unique Christianity’s emphasis on love is. And yet, it’s possible for Christians to drift into lovelessness.

D.A. Carson wrote an article titled, “A Church that Does All the Right Things, But…” and includes this paragraph: “They still proclaim the truth, but no longer passionately love him who is the truth. They still perform good deeds, but no longer out of love, brotherhood, and compassion. They preserve the truth and witness courageously, but forget that love is the great witness to truth. It is not so much that their genuine virtues have squeezed love out, but that no amount of good works, wisdom, discernment in matters of church discipline, patient endurance in hardship, hatred of sin, or disciplined doctrine, can ever make up for lovelessness.”

The first quote demonstrates the absolute centrality of love in the lives of Christians. Love for God, overflowing into love for people. The second quote describes the possibility - and actually a common occurrence - that a church that externally looks so right but is lacking the very thing that makes everything they do meaningful: love.

Last week we were looking at Mark 12:28-34, where Jesus speaks of the greatest commandment in the Bible. The greatest obligation God has set upon man: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.”

We spent some time reflecting on the primacy of love in the life of the Christian. The greatest command God has given humanity is the command to love God, to have fervent, vigorous affections for God, to be inclined toward God, to delight in God, to adore and admire God.

This morning we want to talk about cultivating love for God. And next week, we are going to talk about loving our neighbors. But I want to start by thinking about what love is.

Jonathan Edwards, in his classic The Religious Affections, begins by demonstrating that God has given all human beings two basic faculties: the understanding, which is where we observe, perceive, contemplate, reason, and grasp; and what is often referred to as the heart: the part of a man that not only understands, but is evaluates and assesses as either good or bad, beautiful or ugly. You see, there’s the aspect of the mind and understanding, whereby we come to grasp things; but there is also the aspect of the heart, where we love or hate things, where we are drawn to or repulsed by things, where we are pleased or displeased by things.

Now Edwards says that God doesn’t merely want our minds to observe, perceive, and contemplate God; but our hearts should be inclined to, wooed by, drawn toward, pleased by, him, delighted by, take pleasure in him. In other words, one of the best ways to measure our love for God is by measuring the joy we have in obeying him. The delight we have in service.

Edwards famously said: “God is glorified not only by His glory's being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and by the heart. God made the world that He might communicate, and the creature receive, His glory; and that it might [be] received both by the mind and heart.

To testify with wonderful eloquence how great God is, without affection is nothing, compared to the simple Christian who deep down in his soul delights in the very character of nature of God.

Do you love God? Do you have affection for him? Are you inclined toward him? Do you delight in him? Does the thought of him bring you joy and pleasure?

Your life is not primarily about your duty, not primarily about your output, not primarily about your fruitfulness, but it is primarily about your affections. Do you love God? That is the greatest obligation on your life - above your marriage, above your parenting, above your career - because when love for God is what it should be, you’ll be a better spouse, a better parent, a better worker, a better friend, a better person.

So the question we left ourselves last week was: How do we cultivate love for God in our hearts?

On one level, we might say that there’s nothing we can do. God regenerates the heart. God grants faith and repentance. The Holy Spirit produces love. These things are all true. At the end of the day, God, and God alone, must work in me. I cannot produce love for God anymore than I can climb into heaven.

And yet, Scripture commands that we love God. Jude 21 says, “keep yourselves in the love of God” - an imperative we must not ignore. Psalm 31:23 “Love the Lord, all you saints.” So if it’s a supernatural work that God does in me, and yet I am responsible to love God, what must I do?

First, repent. The beginning of our work to cultivate love in our hearts for God is to repent. If you’ve never loved God, you’re not a Christian and you need to repent before God. And if you’ve loved God imperfectly, as a believer, you need to repent of lovelessness.

Take a look at Mark 12:34. Jesus has just stated that the most important command in the Bible is to love God and neighbor. The scribe agrees, and Jesus’ statement to the scribe is: “You are not from the kingdom of God.”

Think about this with me. Jesus’ answer is, as usual, brilliant. He affirms that the scribe is correct, but at the same time he does not tell him that is in the kingdom, or that he has been saved. Jesus says he’s close to being saved, but not quite there yet. Why is that?

Here’s why: knowing what God commands in his law is not enough to be saved. Having an understanding of what God requires of us is not how we enter the kingdom.

How do we enter the kingdom? Peek back at Mark 1:15 “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” No one gets to heaven by knowing God’s law. No one gets to heaven by obeying God’s law. You see, not a single one of us present in this room, not a single person in any church across the world, not a single person in all of history, except the Lord Jesus himself, has ever loved God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

We have all failed miserably at the greatest commandment! We don’t get saved by knowing God’s commandments. We get saved when we recognize our abject failure to obey God’s law, and we stop trying to reconcile ourselves to God by being good enough, and we confess our guilt, and we cling to God’s mercy.

The gospel is not, “Obey me and you’ll live.” It’s that Jesus came, lived, died, and rose to save people who are incapable of obedience. It’s that you must do nothing except trust him.

You see, the reason why the scribe is close, but not quite in the kingdom of heaven, is because he’s got half the formula right. He’s right that God requires that we love him with all our heart, but here’s the question: does admit his own inability and bank his soul on God’s grace?

If you want to cultivate a heart of love for God, start by seeing how outrageously pitiful your love for him has been, compared to the love he deserves. Confess it to him, and then be amazed at the fountain of mercy that flows freely from his heart.

Don’t start with religious activity. Imagine a person with cancer spreading through his bones skip dealing with the actual cancer and moving straight to the physical therapy. Start with repentance. Start with confession of sin. Start with the admission that you’re guilty, that you’re unable to change without God’s help, and turn to him for mercy and power.

Second, Meditate on the character of God. If you want to cultivate a love for God, you must cultivate a knowledge, a familiarity, a grasp of the revealed character of God. You cannot love a God you do not know. Jeremiah 9:23-24 “Thus says the LORD: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, 24 but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD …”

David wrote Psalm 63 when he was facing the dangers of the wilderness. He writes in verses 5-6 “My soul will be satisfied with fat and rich food, and my mouth with praise you with joyful lips, when I remember you upon my bed; and meditate on you in the watches of the night.”

David’s soul will have a feast, his heart will be moved to love and praise and adoration, when he meditates on God himself.

If you don’t have time to meditate on God’s character, change your schedule today. A life without margin is a life without meditation, and a life without meditation on God will be drab, dull, drudgery. You need to ponder the greatness of God.

J.I. Packer puts it this way: “[The study of God] is the most practical project anyone can engage in….Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.”

In 2022, start a journey through the everlasting hills of God’s character. With every step upward you will encounter scenes and views that will take your breath away. Devote yourself to reading Scripture this year with an eye to the character of God. You could mark in blue everything that helps you to know God.

And spend some time in books that guide you into the vast ranges of God’s revelation. A good book is like a good guide. Some of you should read J.I. Packer’s Knowing God this year. Or you should pick up A.W. Pink’s Attributes of God, which is short but packs a punch.

3rd, Bask in the infinite love of God in Christ for you. Eph 3:18-19 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, & to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Let me give you a way I like to meditate on God’s love. I like to think of a timeline, and start in the past, and then move to the present, and then move to the future, and then move to eternity. And as I walk through the timeline I consider God’s love for me.

God loved me before the foundation of the world. Before anything existed, God knew me, and he chose to create me, and he chose to set his everlasting, perfect love upon me. I had done nothing right or wrong, good or bad, but God chose to redeem me.

Roughly 2,000 years ago, long before I was born, when Jesus went to the cross, he had my name on his heart. And because of his great love he wanted to take my guilt and my shame. And he volunteered to die for me, making complete payment for my sins, and to rise from the dead as evidence of my own eternal life.

And then I was born. And though I was born a sinner; a viper in a diaper as they say, and though I loved my sin, and thoughI was a fool, and though I was selfish, and self-righteous, he still loved me, and all along he drew me. I heard the gospel young. God sent pastors my way, camp speakers I can’t even remember their names, friends, mentors, preachers - drawing this sinner to himself. And he granted me new life, changed me.

And now, every day I can be entirely sure that he loves me. His love for me - and for you, Christian - this very moment, is so enthusiastic and sure and real - just as it was in eternity past. It has never wavered for one second. And in 10 minutes, and in 10 months, and in 10 years, and in 10 centuries, it will not change. His love is unchangeable, unalterable.

And you will come to the end of your life, and you will have lived the exact number of days he determined, and he will take you home, and then, for the first time it will be made clear how much he has loved you.

But that won’t be the end. Evermore he will love you. In the coming infinite ages his fervor in showing you his love will not waver one second.

I wonder how often you bask in the infinite love that God has set upon you, Christian?

How often do you tell yourself, 1) my sins deserve eternal hell as punishment, 2) and God was not obligated to save me, 3) but he sent his Son to accomplish my salvation at great cost to himself, 4) so I can be forgiven of all my sins and adopted into God’s family! Do you preach the gospel to yourself, and allow yourself to simply delight in this free gift? How often do you take a swim into the ocean of God’s grace; how often are you plunging into the depths of the gospel?

Dane Ortlund’s book Gentle and Lowly might help you bask in the infinite love of Christ for you. Or you could work Spurgeon’s short All of Grace, or Piper’s Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ. One of the ways you cultivate a love for God is to grasp deeply how deep is his love for you.

Fourth, Be aware of your almost infinite appetite for distraction. Followers of Jesus are constantly called to think in certain ways and feel certain things. We are called to have certain motives - like love. To train our minds to be set on certain things and to train our hearts to feel certain ways takes time and effort. Mental and spiritual focus.

This is why the Bible so frequently says things like, “Think about such things” or “Set your minds on things above” or “take every thought captive.” Your mind is a battlefield, and winning the battle of your mind is critical for advancing in any area of the Christian life.

2 Corinthians 3:18 says, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”

Listen to the connection. Beholding God’s glory leads to transforming into his image. To behold something is to be transfixed. It is to have an uninterrupted gaze, like one gripped by a view of the Grand Canyon for the first time. When we behold Christ, love for him grows.

This is why fighting distractions is spiritual warfare. Love for God grows in the pure soil of an uncrowded mind, a mind that is gripped by and filled with great thoughts of God and his work.

Think about the way our minds are being raised in this technological, interconnected, social-media-crazed culture. First of all, the amount of smut that is not only available, but is actively seeking out consumers, ought to be enough to make us run for cover. There is a world of slime and filth that wants your attention and knows how to get it. This stuff smothers your ability to think noble and lofty thoughts of God.

Second of all, the vast majority of what you consume on social media is trivial. It does not inspire. And the mind that feeds on the soul-shriveling drivel of social media will soon become so crippled that it loses its capacity to think great thoughts of God.

Many Christians cannot feel the glories of God, the horrors of hell, the wonders of grace because, as one author put it, their souls are “stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.”

One study showed the average American spends 5 hours a day on their phones. If you spent half of that time reading your Bible, 2.5 hours a day, you could read the entire Bible 12 times in a year; once every month. Isn’t that incredible?

Can you honestly say that the reason you don’t read Scripture, meditate on God, or ponder Christ’s love, is that you don’t have time? Or could it be poor use of the time God is giving you?

John Piper: “One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time.” Prayerlessness, mediation, reflection.

Where are the 21st century Christians who lived free lives, undistracted and free? Whose minds can hold a thought, ponder it, without being interrupted by buzz, a like, a beep?

Who among us has the capacity to savor a thought about God the way a kid savors a jolly rancher or a hungry man savors a steak dinner?

We have an almost infinite appetite for distraction! Consider how you might eliminate distractions and replace them with edifying meditations so as to cultivate your love for God!

Fifth, Build Deep Spiritual Friendship within Your Church. Heb 3:12 “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”

According to this passage, one of the ways we stay near to the living God, rather than drifting away from him, is the exhortation of other believers. This is a warning. Then he gives the prescription, that is, the way we heed the warning. “But exhort one another every day…”

We need to be a church that actually lives this way. Where people are known and encouraged and exhorted and challenged and confronted and embraced and loved.

I just finished C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, which is about a man who gets on a bus and gets dropped off the afterlife, and as a ghost, is journeying up to mountains where true heaven is. On his way, he meets several different people who, for various reasons, don’t want heaven.

One is a ghost-woman who is terrified at the fact that she’s a ghost and that she’s see-through. One of the solid people - like an angel - wants to help her get to the mountains. He invites her to come into everlasting joy, where she will become solid and glorious, but she keeps saying, “But they’ll see me.” “What does it matter if they do?” the angel asks, Her reply: “I’d rather die.”

There are some people who come to church and they’re like this woman. Their greatest fear is, “But they’ll see me!” And they are holding themselves back from life's most profound blessings because they’re afraid of being seen.

Make sure you have friends who see you. This is what we do as Christians, we say, “I’m gonna show you who I am, and you’re going to see some things you will not like.” And when people show us some of the filth that lingers still in their hearts, we look them in the eye and say, “You are loved. In Christ, you are cleansed. Who am I to judge you? The ground is level at the cross. We’re both sinners in need of mercy!”

Do you have anyone who knows your struggles? Are there other men who know your weak spots? And let’s be honest - we can blame others, but how many of us have built impenetrable walls that don’t allow anyone in?

If you want to cultivate your love for God this year, prioritize these things: repent, meditation on God’s character, bask in God’s love, be aware of your almost infinite appetite for distraction, and build deep spiritual friendships with people of your church who can encourage you to advanced levels of faithfulness.

And here’s the oil in the machine that makes them all work: number 6: Pray. Ask for God to grow you. Ask that he might increase your love for him. Ask that he might open your eyes to behold more of his glory. Ask, seek, knock - that’s a prayer God loves to answer!

Let’s think of a scenario. A believer this year is fervently following the Lord. He is passionate in his worship. Steadfast in his commitment to biblical relationships. He is open with a small group of men. They know him, pray for him, and bear his burdens. He is pursuing ministry to others, demonstrating hospitality, giving generously, and praying fervently. When missionaries are in town, he wants to host them. When visitors arrive at church, he seeks to meet them. When he senses a brother is struggling, he reaches out for him.

Fast forward ten years. When he comes to church, he’s usually late. People are wondering if something’s up. When they talk to him, he mentions how busy life is, how work has been tough, how the kids' schedules are all over the place. He no longer meets with those men. He’s not quite sure when the missionaries are visiting, but when he was asked if he wanted to host, he passed on the opportunity because he wanted another evening at home. It’s become too hard to keep up with all the new visitors, so he’s increasingly feeling like he’s on the outside at church.

What happened in ten years? Listen - what happened is something quite common. And it’s exactly what is happening to you if you’re not actively cultivating an affection for God.

Consider what Matt Smethurst observed: “The Devil is more likely to dull your affections over a decade than to destroy your soul in a day.”

The greatest commandment is that you love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and then to let that love of God flow outward into love of neighbor. That is our goal this year.