What Does It Mean To Love God?
What are the INCENTIVES to provoke and inflame our love to God?
(1) God’s benefits bestowed on us. If a prince bestows continual favours on a subject, and that subject has any sincerity, he cannot but love his prince. God is constantly heaping benefits upon us, “filling our hearts with food and gladness.” Acts 14:17. As streams of water out of the rock followed Israel wherever they went, so God’s blessings follow us every day. We swim in a sea of mercy! That heart is hard, which is not prevailed with, by all God’s blessings — to love Him. “Love attracts love.” Kindness works even on a brute — the ox knows his owner.
(2) Love to God would make duties of religion facile and pleasant. I confess that to him who has no love to God, religion must needs be a burden; and I wonder not to hear him say, “What a weariness is it to serve the Lord!” It is like rowing against the tide. But love oils the wheels, it makes duty a pleasure. Why are the angels so swift and winged in God’s service — but because they love Him? Jacob thought seven years but little for the love he bore to Rachel. Love is never weary. He who loves money is not weary of counting it: and he who loves God is not weary of serving Him.
(3) Love to God is advantageous. There is nothing lost by love to God. “Eye has not seen, etc., the things which God has prepared for those who love him.” 1 Cor 2:9. Such glorious rewards are laid up for those who love God, that as Augustine says, “they not only transcend our reason — but faith itself is not able to comprehend them.” A crown is the highest ensign of worldly glory; but God has promised a “crown of life to those who love Him,” and a never-fading crown. James 1:12. 1 Pet. 5:4.
(4) By loving God we know that he loves us. “We love Him because He first loved us.” 1 John 5:19. If ice melts, it is because the sun has shone upon it; so if the frozen heart melts in love, it is because the Sun of Righteousness has shone upon it.
– Thomas Watson (1620–1686) – an English, Nonconformist, Puritan preacher and author.
(… to be conCLUDED next week, DV)