Should We Begin with God's Love in Our Evangelism?

Contemporary approaches to evangelism almost always begin with God’s love. People are told, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life,” or simply, “God loves you.”

In most churches, it's taken for granted that this is the place to begin when sharing the gospel. In fact, if you challenge this approach, many Christians will look at you as if you had a second head!

Well, the more I have studied the Bible, theology, and church history, the more I have become convinced that it's generally unwise to begin our evangelism with God’s love. Please don’t misunderstand me. I certainly believe we must proclaim God’s love, but I don’t think it’s the biblical starting point. Here are some of the considerations that have led me to this conclusion.

1.     There is not one example of anyone taking this approach in the New Testament. Neither Jesus nor his Apostles began evangelistic encounters with “God loves you.” If this were the right approach, why can’t we find one example of it? Read through the four Gospels and the Book of Acts and you’ll find a variety of starting points. You won’t find one example that begins with “God loves you.” Surely there is wisdom in this.

2.     Sinners will not embrace God’s love unless they are first convinced of their sin. Although saying, “God loves you,” may be used by the Holy Spirit to convince a sinner of his guilt, it doesn’t ordinarily have that impact. Instead, “through the law comes the knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20). How will sinners be able to comprehend God’s love for them in Christ’s death unless they are first made aware of their sin?

3.     This approach gives sinners the false impression that God doesn’t have a holy hatred for sinners. Most people are unaware that God has a holy hatred for the wicked, which is astounding. Christians have been fed so much cheap grace that they are shocked when you show them the very clear verses speaking of God’s hatred. For example, see Psalm 5:5; 11:5 (Read those verses carefully. Notice that they teach a hatred for the sinner, not just the sin.)  

4.     This approach fails to distinguish the different aspects of God’s love. We affirm God’s love for mankind in general. According to Jesus, God shows this love in the rising and setting of the sun and the sending of the rain upon the earth (Matt. 5:45). We also affirm that God has a loving posture toward all mankind and invites all to believe the gospel (John 3:16). But we also need to recognize that God has a special, unique love for his elect, and, in most cases, when the Bible speaks of God’s love, it speaks of his love for his Church. Believers are those who are loved by God (Romans 1:7). We are the “beloved.” If you simply consult a concordance, you’ll find that most references to God’s love are in the epistles, which are addressing believers.  

5.      This approach is relatively new in church history. As far as I can tell, this emphasis goes back to D.L. Moody. If you consider the Protestants who preceded him, they simply didn’t preach this “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” gospel. Instead, they spent a great deal of time talking about God’s holiness, his law, and man’s sin and guilt. The older preachers certainly spoke about God’s love in Jesus, but they did so only after they had explained God’s holiness and righteousness. If you look at the track record of the new approach, I don’t think it can be disputed that it has produced many false conversions. If you want a good study of the older approach, which is far more biblical in my opinion, consult Iain Murray’s The OldEvangelicalism: Old Truths for a New Awakening.

Declension in Love

Yesterday I shared some thoughts from the first chapter of Octavius Winslow’s Personal Declension and Revival of Religion in the Soul. In the second chapter Winslow narrows his focus to address a declension in the grace of love. It is possible for our love to grow cold (Matthew 24:12), and since love is “the spring-head of all the kindred graces,” it only makes sense to explain how we tend to abandon our first love (Revelation 2:4).

 

Winslow begins this chapter by explaining the importance of love in the Christian life. Love to God is “the primary and grand requirement of the Divine Law.” Jesus teaches that loving God with the whole being is the greatest commandment in the Law (Matthew 22:37-38). God is wise and good to require us to love him: “His wisdom saw the necessity of having one center of supreme and adoring affection, and one object of supreme and spiritual worship to angels and to men. His goodness suggested that that center and that that object should be himself, the perfection of infinite excellence, the fountain of infinite good.”

 

          In addition to being the essence of God’s Law, love is “the great influential principle of the Gospel.” God’s love is the first cause of the plan of salvation (John 3:16), and the motive of our religion is love: “the love of Christ controls us” (2 Corinthians 5:14). Winslow explains why this is the case: “Apart from the constraining influence of Christ’s love in the heart, there cannot possibly be a willing, prompt, and holy obedience to his commandments.”

         

          God’s love assures us of our adoption as his children. “The relation in which the believer stands to God, under the new covenant dispensation, is not that of a slave to his master, but of a child to its father.” He continues: “A holy, self-denying, cross-bearing life, is not the drudgery of a slave, but the filial, loving obedience of a child: it springs from love to the person, and gratitude for the work of Jesus; and is the blessed effort of the spirit of adoption in the heart.”

 

          Love is an active grace in the believer’s life. Faith works by love (Galatians 5:6). Love labors (Hebrews 6:10). “There is nothing indolent in the nature of true love; it is not an inert, sluggish principle: where it dwells in the heart in a healthy and vigorous state, it constrains the believer to live not to himself, but unto Him who loved and gave Himself for him; it awakes the soul to watchfulness, sets it upon the work of frequent self-examination, influences it to prayer, daily walking in his precepts, acts of kindness, benevolence, and charity, all springing from love to God, and flowing in a channel of love to man."

         

          Love is an essential part of the Christian’s armor. We are to put on the breastplate of faith and love (1 Thessalonians 5:8). “Who can overcome a child of God whose heart is overflowing with Divine love? What enemy can prevail against him thus armed?”

 

          Winslow reminds us that love exceeds all the other Christian virtues because “love is immortal; it is the grace of the Spirit that will never die.” Drawing on 1 Corinthians 13:13, he observes, “The day is not far distant, when faith will be turned to sight, and hope will be lost in full fruition, but love will never die; it will live on, and expand the heart, and tune the lip, and inspire the song, through the unceasing ages of eternity.”

 

          Before moving to the main theme of this second chapter, which is the declension of love in the soul of the Christian, Winslow invites us to consider our first encounter with the love of Christ. “For one moment let the Christian reader call to mind the period and circumstances of his first espousals to Jesus.” Let us remember that “blissful moment” when we were able to say, “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine!” Recalling our first love awakens a desire to recapture the sweetness of the love of Christ in our hearts.

 

          Since it is true that “the grace of love in a child of God may greatly and sadly decline,” Winslow gives us characteristics of love’s decline in the soul.

 

Love has declined when we think of God and desire him less than before. “If there is coldness in the affections, if the mind grows earthly, carnal and selfish, dark and gloomy shadows will gather round the character and glory of God. He will become less an object of supreme attachment, unmingled delight, adoring contemplation, and filial trust.” If we sense that we think of God and desire God less than before, we must remember that God hasn’t changed. We have changed.  


Love has declined when we do not approach God as our loving Father as we did before. “The sweet confidence and simple trust of the child is lost.” “The tender, loving, childlike spirit, that marked the walk of the believer in the days of his espousals, when no object was so glorious to him as God, no being so loved as his heavenly Father, no spot so sacred as the throne of communion, no theme so sweet as his free grace of adoption, has in a great degree departed; and distrust, and legal fears, and bondage of spirit, have succeeded it.”


Love has declined when we misinterpret God’s acts of providence as if he is against us. “The mark of a vigorous love to God is when the soul justifies God in all his wise and gracious dealings with it; rebels not, murmurs not, repines not, but meekly and silently acquiesces in the dispensation, but it never so trying.”


Love has declined when there is little desire to spend time with God and when we do spend time, we do so more out of a sense of duty than delight. If we truly love the Lord, we want to commune with him in secret prayer. We desire to talk to him and experience the blessing of his presence. A Christian “cannot live in the neglect of constant, secret, and close fellowship with his God, his best and most faithful Friend.”


Love has declined when there is less tenderness and sensitivity in our walk with God. The lover of God fears offending his Father and dreads to slight his Friend. Nothing is sweeter to him than the nearness of God.


Love has declined when Christ is perceived as less glorious to the eye and less precious to the heart. “When there is but little dealing with his atoning blood, leaning upon his righteousness, drawing from his fullness, and bearing daily the cross of Christ, the love of a believer waxeth cold.”


Love has declined when we love less the people of God. If we love God, we love all who bear his image. 1 John makes it clear that if we say that we love God and hate our brother, we are liars (5:20-21). “If we love not the visible resemblance, how can we love the invisible Archetype?”


Love has declined when we desire less and less to advance his kingdom and glorify his name. “A true, spiritual, and lively interest in the increase of Christ’s kingdom, in the diffusion of his truth, the deepening of holiness in the church, the conversion of sinners, will invariably decline with the declension of the love to God.”

 

After sharing the characteristics of a loss of love for God, Winslow then moves to the causes of love’s declension.

 

Love for the World
“Love to God will expel love to the world; love to the world will deaden the soul’s love to God.” See James 4:4 and 1 John 2:15-17 for the biblical teaching on the danger of loving the world. Winslow warns, “No Christian man can maintain his spirituality unimpaired, his love uninjured, his robe unspotted, his walk irreproachable, who secretly admits the world to his heart.”  


Making Idols of God’s Creation
When we worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator, we will always lose our love for God. He doesn’t want to be second place to anything or anyone. Winslow warns about the grave danger of transferring our love to objects inferior to the Lord. Our idols never satisfy and always disappoint.


Misunderstanding God’s Dealings
When bad things happen in our lives, and we assume that God is out to get us or that he is against us, we will lose our love for God. Acknowledging God’s smiling face behind all his bitter providences is the key to maintaining a holy love for God. In the life of God’s children, bad things are the fruits of his love, not the result of his judgment.


Finally, in a manner similar to the counsel of chapter one, Winslow tells us what to do in order to return to our first love.
 
You need to find out the cause of your loss of love for God and do something about it. “Love to God is a tender flower; it is a sensitive plant, soon and easily crushed; perpetual vigilance is needed to preserve it in a healthy, growing state.” Consider the possibility that one of the three causes mentioned above is the root of the problem. Clear all obstacles to loving God supremely.


Draw continually from the fountain of God’s love. God’s love comes first. “We love him because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). “O heart-melting truth! The love of God to us when yet we were sinners, who can unfold it? What mortal tongue can describe it?” As the sun is always shining, so God is always loving; yet we must stay in the sunshine of God’s love. We must bask in the glory of his unending love to us in Christ. “Seek to be filled with it, that you may know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, and that your heart in return may ascend in a flame of love to God.”

 

Deal much and closely with a crucified Savior. “Here is the grand secret of a constant ascending of the affections to God. If thou dost find it difficult to comprehend the love of God towards thee, read it in the cross of his dear Son.” “Deal upon this amazing fact; drink into this precious truth; muse upon it, ponder it, search into it, pray over it, until your heart is melted down, and broken, and overwhelmed with God’s wondrous love to you, in the gift of Jesus.” “Whenever thou detectest a waning of love, a reluctance to take up the daily cross, a shrinking from the precept, go immediately to Calvary; go simply and directly to Jesus; get thy heart warmed with ardent love by contemplating him upon the cross, and soon will the frosts that gather round it melt away, the congealed current shall begin to flow, and the ‘chariots of Amminadib’ shall bear thy soul away to communion and fellowship with God.”


Do not fail to honor the Holy Spirit in the great work of personal revival. “It is he that will fan to a flame thy waning love, by unfolding the cross, and directing your heart into the love of God.”


Remember that though your love has grown cold, the love of your God and Father towards you has undergone no change. “Retrace thy steps and return again to God.”

Jesus Loves Me

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2:20

 

          The love of Christ is the believer’s greatest treasure. We read in our Bibles that God loved the world (John 3:16), but the Christian knows not only God’s love for the world in general but for him in particular. “Jesus loved me,” Paul says. Every Christian should be persuaded of Christ’s love for him in particular.

          Christ's love is a personal love. Paul says, “who loved me.” Paul knew in his heart that Christ had a personal and individual love for him. This does not refer to God’s general compassion for all his creatures, but this speaks of God’s redemptive love for his own. It refers to Christ's love for his Bride and all the individual members of it. Christians believe in God’s love for sinners in general, but this is a deeper assurance of God’s love in the heart. It comes with the full persuasion that Jesus loved me, even me!

          Christ's love is a sacrificial love. Paul goes on: “and gave himself for me.” Christ gave himself for sinners on the cross--do we know that he gave himself for this sinner? Am I able to say with confidence that Jesus Christ loved and gave himself up for Logan Patrick Almy? We may know this, and if we are Christians, it is our business to know this. The Spirit will testify with our spirit that we belong to Christ and that he has purchased us with his precious blood. We sing, “And can it be that I should gain an interest in my Savior’s blood?” And when we are sure that we have an interest in his blood, we will go on to sing, “Amazing love! How can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?”

          Knowing Christ’s personal and sacrificial love for us is often misunderstood to be the warrant of faith, but we need to understand that it is rather the fruit of faith. For example, evangelists sometimes tell sinners, “God loves you. Christ died for you. Receive him into your life.” Such invitations make Christ’s love the warrant or grounds for faith. But the biblical presentation of the gospel differs from this. In the Bible we see God’s preachers telling sinners something like this: “God loves the world. God sent his Son to die for sinners and make full atonement. Whoever believes in Jesus shall be saved.” The warrant of faith in this presentation is God’s love for sinners in general and his promise to save those sinners who believe in Jesus. And it is only after the sinner believes in Jesus that he is persuaded that Christ died for him personally and sacrificially. This may seem like splitting theological hairs, but it makes a great difference in our experience of Christ’s love. In one approach, Christ’s personal love is a given, but in the other approach Christ’s love is the reward of having believed the gospel promise. There is a world of difference between these two and we ought to meditate on it.

          So what about you? Are you able to proclaim that Christ died for you? Are you able to say that he loved you with an everlasting love? Do you know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge? Are you able to say that he shed the blood of the everlasting covenant for your weak, ungodly, and sinful soul? Are you able to sing,

“O the deep, deep love of Jesus! Vast, unmeasured,

 boundless, free; rolling as a mighty ocean

in its fullness over me” ?

         

What Shall I Do With You?

“What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?

What shall I do with you, O Judah?

Your love is like a morning cloud,

like the dew that goes early away."  Hosea 6:4

 

          God the Father agonizes over the fleeting love of the children of Israel.  They love him for a moment but their love is soon gone with the wind.  Their devotion to the Lord appears in the morning but vanishes in the evening.  God expresses his perplexity with the brevity of their love with an outburst of emotion:  “What shall I do with you?”  Fathers who have longed for the return of their wayward children and husbands who have grieved over the betrayals of their faithless wives will empathize with the agony of God’s unrequited love. 

 

          Although God seems to be at his wit’s end, he is sure of his unending love for his people.  He later exclaims, “How can I give you up, O Ephraim?  How can I hand you over, O Israel?  How can I make you like Admah?  How can I treat you like Zeboiim?  My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender” (Hosea 11:8).  God has set his electing love on his people and shall never hand them over to utter ruin.  His warm and tender compassion are the result of his unconditional love for his children. 

          The contrast between God’s love for Israel and Israel’s love for God couldn’t be clearer.  Israel’s love is like a mist.  God’s love is like a great mountain that shall never be moved.  Israel’s love is fleeting.  God’s love is eternal.  The passions of Israel rise and fall and change from one moment to the next yet God’s compassions never fail as they are new every morning.  The Husband’s steadfast love is unconditional, immutable, and faithful in spite of the Bride’s faithless whoredom. 

 

          Unregenerate members of the visible church may have a love for God that is present in the morning but gone in the evening.  They may appear to have spiritual graces for a season.  Time proves them wrong.  Wait until the evening to see the authenticity of their fruit.  True love for God is enduring love. 

          Even true believers must confess that our love for God is often fleeting.  What should we do when we discover that our love for God is like the morning mist?  We must look to God’s unconditional and enduring love for us.  We love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19).  Love for God grows as it basks in the sunlight of God’s love for us.  We must keep ourselves in the love of God where we hear his agonizing compassion for his rebellious children.  “What shall I do with you?  How can I give you up?”  Throughout Hosea’s prophecy we see the sparkling diamond of God’s faithfulness against the black velvet of Israel’s whoredom.  Sin abounds; grace abounds all the more. 

          Let this also be a lesson for us who have people in our lives (spouses, children, friends, fellow Christians) who have gone astray.  We must continue to love them and never give up on them.  Our Eternal God has not given up on us even when we have hurt him most.  And like the loving father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son we must always race to welcome home the wayward son who has come to his senses by the grace of God. 

The cross of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ reminds us again and again of the full extent of God’s love.  “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).  When we are disappointed with ourselves on account of our fickle love for God, let us look to Calvary.  God did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all (Romans 8:32).  God could not and would not give up on his electing love for his chosen people.  So he gave his Son to make atonement for our sins and reconcile us to the Father.  No deeper love can we find but the love of God revealed in his crucified Son.  And it is only the ever-blowing wind of the Spirit of Christ that causes the glowing embers of our hearts to burst into flames that will never die even though they may flicker.