New Morning Mercies #118

Your hope is not in your ability to love God, but in his unrelenting and unshakable love for you.

There is nothing that argues more for our desperate need for grace than the two greatest commandments: that we love God and love other people (Matt. 22:34–40). The call to love exposes how dark and depraved our hearts really are. Let’s be honest here. It doesn’t take much for us to be irritated with other people. It doesn’t take much for us to become impatient. Little interruptions, disagreements, and obstacles can cause us to well up with anger. We are easily dismissive of others. It’s too easy for us to be prejudiced and judgmental. It’s far too simple for us to be racist and xenophobic. In a variety of ways, we look down on others, failing to see them with eyes of compassion and hearts of mercy. It’s so easy for us to judge others as foolish, lazy, or otherwise incompetent. I know I’m not the only one who struggles with these things. I think if we were willing to look at our hearts in the mirror of the Word of God, we would be shocked at how unnatural love is for us.

But if horizontal love is hard for us, vertical love is even harder. The connection between the two is cogently made in 1 John 4:20: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” Wow! There it is. If I have such a struggle loving the people around me, how great and deep must be my struggle to love God? It’s one thing to acknowledge God’s existence; it’s one thing to mentally assent to the truths of his Word; and it’s one thing to participate in the formal ministry of his church. But it is an entirely different thing to have every aspect of my life shaped and moved by love for him.

Yes, the power of sin has been broken by the work of Jesus, but the presence of sin still remains and is being progressively eradicated. So there is still sin in our hearts. That means our hearts are still fickle, we still rebel and want our own way, we still forget God and his glory, we still write our own rules, we still love our kingdoms more than we love his, we still demand what we don’t deserve, and we still question God’s goodness when we don’t get our own way. We all fall into doing these things because we just do not love God as we should. We tend to love ourselves and we tend to love the world, but very often the love of the Father simply is not in us.

So your hope in life and death is never to be found in the degree of your love for God. It is only ever found in the magnitude of his love for you. This love is yours as a gift of his grace even on those days where your heart has run after other lovers. That’s just how beautiful and faithful his love for you really is.

For further study and encouragement: 1 John 4:10–21