"Do You Love Me?" Really Forgiven

This love to Christ is the inseparable companion of saving faith.  A faith of devils, a mere intellectual faith, a man may have without love, but not that faith which saves.  Love cannot take the place of the office of faith.  Love cannot justify.  It does not join the soul to Christ.  It cannot bring peace to the conscience.  But where there is justifying faith in Christ, there will always be heart-love to Christ.  He that is really forgiven is the man who will really love. (Luke 7:47)  If a man has no love for Christ, you may be sure he has no faith. 

Love to Christ is the mainspring of work for Christ.  There is little done for His cause on earth from sense of duty, or from knowledge of what is right and proper.  The heart must be interested before the hands will move and continue moving.  Excitement at conferences, protests, and rallies may galvanize the Christian's hands into a fitful and spasmodic activity.  But there will be no patient continuance in well-doing, no unwearied labor in missionary work at home or abroad, without love.  The great workers of the Church - the men who have led forlorn hopes in the mission field and turned the world upside down, have all been eminently lovers of Christ.

These are the men and women who have left a mark on the world.  And what was the common feature of their characters?  They all loved Christ.  They not only held a creed.  They loved a Person, even the Lord Jesus Christ.

Love to Christ is the point which we ought especially to dwell upon in teaching the doctrines of the Christian faith to children.  Election, imputed righteousness, original sin, justification, sanctification, and even faith itself, are matters which sometimes puzzle a child of tender years.  But love to Jesus seems far more within reach of their understanding.  That He loved them even to His death, and that they ought to love Him in return, is a creed which meets the span of their minds.  How true it is that out of the mouths of infants and nursing babes You have prepared praise! (Matthew 21:16)  There are myriads of Christians who know every article of the Apostles' Creed and yet know less of real Christianity than a little child who only knows that he loves Christ.

To be continued...

Adapted from the writings of J.C. Ryle