The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts. Do we currently value his love for us? How do you get it? By reflection. What are you reading the Scriptures for daily? Surely not just like you might follow a course at university or school, a history course – must learn the dates, I must learn the geography, I must learn the place names, I must learn this, I must learn that. Surely when you are reading the Scriptures one of the things you are doing is to appreciate afresh the love of God and the love of Christ. One of the questions you ask in every passage is – what do I see here of the love of Christ for his own?
Then there is gratitude and thanksgiving. When we come to prayer, where do we start? Perhaps with repentance, perhaps with prayer for some great need, or for other people? Well, all that is good. But what about always remembering to thank him for salvation itself, and for every mercy and yesterday’s mercies and last night mercies, and today’s provisions and today’s patience and blessings? Praise him and thank him for Calvary every day, every morning, every afternoon, what he has done for us. When you come to the house of God, read the words of the hymns and the Scriptures, feel them, mean them. They are much more important than the tunes. Remember the old motto of the Puritans – worship is words.
Obedience. Says the Lord Jesus Christ six times in the Gospel of John, the person who loves me is the person who obeys me. Say, ‘I will obey thee, Lord, every day.’ On that foundation the Lord can build love in your heart for him and appreciation of his love.
But we can obstruct it. How? How can you obstruct the work of God to increase your appreciation of his love and to love him more and more? Well, you can love yourself too much. Is your mind always on yourself – self-congratulation, or another form of self-love – self-pity, airing your grievances to yourself, rehearsing your sorrows, counting your trials or your problems? It is all a branch of self-love. I count, I am the centre of the universe, I am the one that matters. Temptation comes to everyone, but if we wallow in it or allow it and stay with it, we obstruct the practice of the love of God. God will increase in our hearts appreciation of his love and our love for him, but not if that heart is full of me, in one way or another. We may obstruct it by love of the world – inordinate love for things that you may legitimately love. Love your family, love husband and wife and children, but be careful not to love them to the exclusion of the love of Christ and the love of God and his service and his command. Then it becomes inordinate love, excessive love. You can appreciate all manner of things that God has provided you with, possessions and amenities, and there are things that you appreciate in your life and things of beauty, maybe in the garden, maybe in the home. But be careful you do not love them excessively so that your heart has no capacity, no emotional power or muscle to love your God and your Saviour, and his service and his worship.
If you omit from your Christian life the practice of loving God and appreciating his love, you become cold, your affections are not directed to him, you are not a person who is easily moved. If you are altogether on the intellectual level and your faith is not in your heart, then you become vulnerable to spiritual attack and depression even. You become vulnerable to temptation, the appealing things of the world, because your affections are not active and absorbed in the most high God, and in the appreciation of Christ, and in the wonder of his love for you, and your affections are not sufficiently engaged. So the devil will engage them on unworthy things and earthly things and silly and foolish things.
Is God fair to determine to overwhelm the rebellion of millions of sinner before they are even born? Everything that God does is fair. The will of God is perfect, even when it stretches far beyond our understanding. The will of God is magnificent and unchallengeable and perfect. We never will challenge it but we must appreciate it.
‘And into the patient waiting for Christ.’ What have our translators done here? All the modern translations go in a different direction; they render it, ‘and into the patience of Christ’. That is to render the Greek subjectively. Our translators in the King James Version and other older versions have translated it objectively – ‘into the patient waiting for Christ’. Which is correct? Well I would say, undoubtedly the older versions are correct and the newer versions have gone in the wrong direction. As ever the context decides, and that is chapter 2. There is all the teaching about the man of sin, the man of lawlessness, and how he will be destroyed with the brightness of Christ’s coming. It therefore seems wholly natural that the apostle should pray that the Lord would direct our hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ.