I Cannot Love As I Ought To Love

The central problem that I am learning of my heart is not that I will fight against the sin of my heart, that is, fight against evil desires. The fundamental problem that I see myself encountering on a regular (weekly, daily, hourly and minute-by-minute) basis is the lack of desire that I have. I have desires for all sorts of things. I have desires for my own well-being, my own prosperity, my own pleasure, my own laughter, my own happiness. But I find myself so often fighting. Fighting against evil and sinful desires, trying to suppress them .

But for what? What am I fighting for? That i may simply stop? That I may one day stand alone and say, "Behold! world! I have arrived! I no longer do evil things!"

This is evil

It is not that I spend my money on myself and on my pleasures that needs to stop. It's not that my words need to stop being crass, vulgar and evil. It's not that my thoughts need to stop dwelling on evil things. It's not that my actions towards others need to stop being hurtful, prideful, and destructive.

It's not that I need to spend my money on others, its not that I need to encourage others, it's not that i need to have good thoughts, it's not that I need to start helping others, lifting others up and being constructive in my actions.

I can do all of the above and my heart may never change

The problem is that I find that the desire isn't there. In fact, its deeper than this: i don't have a longing. I am not carried away with doing good to others. I don't love to do so. In fact, i find the opposite - I don't want to do good to others. I don't want to think about others. I don't want to help others. I only want to think about myself, I only want to help myself.

What I need is new desires. I need not simply to give my money, but want to. I don't simply need to speak well of others, but want to, I need not simply think well of others, but enjoy doing so, i need not simply to help others and be constructive, I need to want to.

And this is where the cross finds me in my soul and tears me straight out of every comfort I insulate myself in and thrusts itself before my eyes. The cross doesn't tell me to stop spending money on myself and start giving money to the poor. The cross doesn't tell me to stop slandering others and start speaking kind words. The cross doesn't tell me to stop thinking wicked things and start thinking good things. The cross doesn't tell me to stop being destructive and start being constructive. In fact, the cross doesn't tell me to love God and to love my neighbor. The cross doesn't tell me to be a good person. 

The cross tells me that I'm not a good person. Even more, the cross tells me I am a very evil person. The cross says, "You are evil, you are wicked, you don't do any good, you're a liar, you're deceitful, you steal, you covet, you lust, you murder, you hate. You're despicable, deceived, rejected. You're full of poison. You are worthless, vile, destructive." 

The cross is the only thing that shows me who I really am and what my heart really looks like. The cross is brutally honest. 

But Jesus does not stop.

The cross comes and finds me and says, "You're a sinner, and I died for you. You didn't ask me to, you didn't want me to, but i did."

The cross tells me, "you are nothing what you could be and you will never become what you ought to be, so I will make you what you ought to be."

The cross tells me, "where you have no desire, I desire. Where you do not want, I want. Where you have no love, I have love. Where you are weak, there I am strong. Where you fail, I succeed."

Because of the cross I can look at my neighbor and with full honesty say to their face, "I will never love you as you need me to. I will never provide, never speak, never think of you as your needs demand and for what you are worth." But at that same moment I can say to them, "Jesus loves you."

I can say to them, "I can't love you as you need. I am not able to. I have not the strength nor the perseverance, not the sustained desire nor the depth of desire to do so. But I can offer you the love of Jesus because only he will love you as you need."

This is the place that we must come to in our lives. We must realize our utter inability to love as we ought to, to desire as we need to. We must realize that we cannot do what we are supposed to do as we are supposed to do it.

We must realize that we can't love anyone. You must realize that you don't really and truly love anyone. The reason that we must come to this place is because if we think that in our own strength that we can really love somebody then we are destined to a life of failure, depression, self-righteousness and sorrow. We will always fail to do what we strive to do. We will become depressed and full of sorrow because we will see that we continually fail to love as we ought to. And at the very same moment we will become self-righteous because when we succeed in loving people the way that we think we ought to, we will be happy with ourselves and what we did.

 The fact that we don't really and truly love others is evident in the fact that just one failure to do so makes clear that we don't truly love them as we ought or think we do. And what is unconscionable is that we actually think we do. We actually think that we love others. We think we love our family, we think we love our spouses, we think we love our friends, we think we love our co-workers, we think we love our enemies. But we really don't love them. We only love them until it gets in the way of what we want. And at that moment we show that we don't really love.

This is why the cross is life and death, this is why the cross is so vital to our lives. Because although in every moment we fail to truly love as we ought, and in every moment we fail to desire another's good as we ought, Jesus does. And unless we have the cross, then we can never truly love each other.

The cross shows me another who wants to help me because He has a good heart. Jesus wants to. It's not that he needs to. Jesus is not obligated to help me. No one coerces him. He has pity on me. He has grace towards me. He looks and feels.

The cross shows me of one who actually does desire my good. 

We must come to the cross and say to Jesus, "I have failed. I cannot love. I am unloving." When we come to the cross we find the only one who will ever love us as we need. In fact, we find the only one who truly loves me even though I am sinner. It is at the cross that these words are exchanged

"I do not love"

and

"I love you"

We cannot manufacture a desire to love. No amount of self-convincing, no amount of self-deprication, no amount of self-conjured-up motivation will ever bring us to really love anyone. We must come to the cross of Jesus and there we must say,

"I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives [with reference to] 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" (Gal 2:20)

It is from there that every act of love becomes an act of faith. Every time I move to love somebody I am living in the faith that Jesus alone can truly love this person and that he alone truly desires to do so. It is Jesus who lives in my place and the life I live is only lived because he lives in reference to everything I will ever do. No action will ever be good enough. I may grow and learn to love better but what we must always understand is that the love I have to offer will never be good enough. It is only Jesus' love that is good enough and so if we are not loving others through faith in Jesus then we are not truly loving others.

You cannot say to your brother or your sister or your mother in your own strength that you truly love them. You can only say that in the strength that Christ supplies, that only in the love that Christ gives and poured out on the cross can you love them. And this and this alone is perfect love. It's not that we must learn to love as Jesus loved, we must learn to love through Jesus' love. We must not look at Jesus and simply see an example, we must look at Jesus and see that he is the source.

Yes, I do not love as I ought, yes i often live for myself in negligence of others. Yes, I fail to help others as I ought to. And of these I confess. But Christ is sufficient for me, and it is only through the strength that Christ supplies that I will ever be able to love any other person as they need to be.

"In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his one and only Son into the world, so that we might live through him"

1 John 4:9

"I can do all things through him who strengthens me"

Philippians 4:13

When I am Most Near God - A Puritan Quote

And truly, when I am most near God, I have no greater request then this for myself and you, that God would use any means to make us see things really as they are, and pound our hearts all to pieces, and make indeed sin most bitter, and Christ most sweet; that we might both be humbled and comforted to purpose

Jonathan Mitchel, A discourse of the Glory, 3

Treasures in Heaven

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:19-21

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.

Revelation 3:20

Those whose treasure on earth is God himself, when they arrive in heaven, will not anticipate the lavishing of external things. They will not stand in heaven and await some external reward, as if God were going to give them more loot and booty to enjoy, like our Christmases. Instead, those whose treasure on earth is God himself, upon standing before the throne of God awaiting their will reward, will request nothing more than to have more of God himself. They will not cry out for a greater position in heaven, they will not cry out for more possessions or a greater plot of land in the kingdom. Instead, they will cry to God for him to divulge himself to them and cease to relent until he does so. The greatest blessing and gift they desire is the outpouring of God himself into their hearts and being overwhelmed with the gift of himself. They will say, "If i may but have a greater capacity to enjoy you, to look upon you in your holiness and beauty, to have the sides of my heart pressed outward so that there may be more space to receive you."

In heaven, this will be poured out through the gift of His Son and yet still mediated by the Spirit of God. On this earth our experience of God's Son mediated by the Spirit is often hidden to our eyes or is a scarce experience. It is not as if upon entering heaven's courts that the presence of the indwelling Spirit will depart now that we look upon Christ with our own eyes. Nor will Christ himself cease to be the object we look upon in heaven as if the Father now was the central object alone that our gaze is fixed upon. The presence of the Spirit will be released in a dimension that cannot be fathomed or grasped in this age. The release and outpouring of the Spirit that will come when we enter through heaven's gates will open our eyes to the Lamb that was slain, and in that moment we will stand in utter amazement as we behold the Lamb of God, seeing the wounds that bought us are still present upon his flesh. The Spirit will grant us to see Christ, and it is in and through Jesus Christ that we will see our God and Father because Christ is himself the "image of the invisible God" in whom "the fulness of deity dwells".

This is the request that will fall from the lips of those who have entered courts, to taste nothing else but the beauty, glory and holiness of God and to have their hearts enlarged to do so.

To think that any upon this earth who do not now delight in God will for a moment enjoy the place of heaven is such an absurd notion and has yet to understand heaven's true prize. If one has no capacity upon the earth to enjoy and delight in God, then heaven will be hell to such a person. They would enter into the place where there is no light in the sky "because the glory of God gives it light", where the centerpiece is the throne of God where he sits and is worshipped. Any man who cannot delight in such a place now would find such a place to be a repulsive, hellish torment. God's unabated holy presence will be the most abhorrent thing to such a person. Even in their present experience on earth it is still an abhorrent thing. Humanity flees, as if it were a flock of great birds, from God's presence and holiness even now, what would cause one to think that they could at any chance enjoy such a place as heaven?

Many Christians will be shocked at the place of heaven's when they arrive. They will not be raptured with its beautiful streets, its wonderful walls, its clear streams and fruitful trees. All such things, though beautiful they may be, will only be the pathways through which they travel to arrive at the throne to worship and to be filled. They will realize that the notion they entertained of heaven being a place of gaiety, conversing with old friends and honored saints, of sportiveness and humor, though such things will occur, that this is not what heaven's great prize is. All believers will see with what great insufficiency they loved and devoted themselves to God on earth. They will see that every moment upon the earth was often spent in delight of things apart from God. They will see that it has truly been the grace of God and grace alone that has sustained them to reach heaven's shore, for on account of their paltry devotion given to God on earth they should have been cast into hell, but God, by his grace, sustained them and made them grow.

And it will be that when walking through those gates we will not turn our face to our brothers and sisters, or stare upon the walls as if they were the location of joy, but we will run unashamed until we reach the throne, and there we will cast ourselves down before God in joy. And there, with our brothers and sisters we will rejoice, there with the honored saints we will sing, there we will look with our eyes and see rightly the world that God has created and see that it is good, and there we will see by his creation how truly good our God is. And we will want nothing more than for God himself to "come in to us eat with us"

Heaven stands as a place of boundless joy in God himself, what does this remark of our present time on earth?

Worship Through Music

"This people draw near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their heart is far from me"

Isaiah 29:13

Worship with music is the consummation, not the beginning of worship. The christian life is one where worship begins in the home and in the heart, it has been carried along all week and finds is ultimate consummation and expression in singing of words. For this is quite evident what singing is: the overflow of the heart. How can a heart sing which has been dead and wanton all week? How can a heart come before God to rejoice and sing praise when it has been in negligence of him all week. If you wonder that your singing is so cold the root is not far off but dwells within your own self. It is not simply because the music is not stirring enough, or not loud enough, or the lights not dim enough. It is because all week you have not been living in worship of God with your conduct. You have given God no honor or glory in you behavior, in your conversations, in your reading, your writing, your learning, your working, your resting, your enjoyments. You have spent yourself on the world and your soul feels it deep within itself. And so there is no amount of singing that will bring your soul out of this state.

Men have made elaborate services in an attempt to draw the soul out of this state. The flesh is an easy subject to manipulate. Satan has been at work for millennia tempting the flesh because it is so easily enraptured with delights. But all these fashions and intricacies that surround our modern "worship services" are but a veneer for the deadness, coldness and silliness that fills our lives. We must have loud music lest we feel this coldness. We must have dimmed lights, lest the light expose our loose conduct and ill-spent days. We must have music that woos and swoons our emotions because we could not for the life of ourselves sing out of the abundance of our hearts. No wonder so many complain of the music played in worship services today. Every man wars for his preference because he scarce can sing a song that is not in his own emotional language. And if he comes to a "worship service" with a "musical dialect" differing from his own, no wonder he is silent, no wonder he is out of place. His heart has no room for rejoicing. It is not the sounds themselves, but the deadness and coldness of his heart that has no room for rejoicing. We manipulate the worship service in such a manner so that it so well suits our fancies that when we walk out we speak of how great we "feel", when all the while we should have walked out of such a service and spoke of how terrible we feel because we have spurned our Savior all week long, we have neglected him and enjoyed this world itself in exclusion to him.

No wonder the older generations were vehement against the introduction and multiplication of instruments in their services. Though they wrongly attached to an outward thing the inward movement of the heart, that is, that "simple" music wrought a contrite heart. But they saw at work the degeneration of true worship. They came to services and instead of being in the presence of other Christians whose hearts were ready and prepared to worship God, they were in a multitude of dead, impenitent, wayward sinners whose hearts had but a faint beating after the good gifts of God. Such sinners came after living a week spent in front of the worldly entertainments and could scarce be lifted out of their worldly stupor and so, in needing to have their minds assuaged that they were not nearly as vile as they felt, they called for emotional and moving music, they colored the lights, they dimmed them, they raised the volume, and all this was done to drown out the violence of their hearts. This was what lay beneath the outcry of the older generation. They came to a service of simplicity, of rather quietness, where it was not to be pleasured by music but to bring the abundance of their hearts before God in praise to him. They did not need loud, amplified, banging instruments to do this. They could simply, without any instrument whatsoever, bring their voices to God in praise and this alone was sufficient.

We would be foolish men and women to think that in order to have a true service of worship we must return again to these simple forms of music. This would simply be to introduce a form Pharisaism into the church, that is to say, that "we would be better if we did such things, that our worship would be holier if it were simpler." We mustn't fall into this trap that many are falling into today. They think that it is the mere reintroduction of "old hymns" that will produce a "worshipping church". This is folly. You may put before your congregation the greatest panoply of history's hymns and songs, even David's, Asaph's and the Sons of Korah's psalms themselves, and it would scarce raise the deadness of the hearts of those who move their lips and vocal chords. We have become clanging gongs and cymbals. We make a noise with our mouth but there is no truth behind our words. We praise our Creator once on Sunday morning, and praise our own creation on Sunday evening and for the following six days as well.

We have so identified worship with "time". We speak of "moments of worship". How many times have our lips said, "we had a great time of worship". But Scripture does not think of worship in such manners. Worship is conduct, the manner of your life, the way in which you live before God. Time is irrelevant to worship. Jesus says that the "true worshipers will worship in spirit and in truth" not "in words and songs". Both spirit and truth respect the manner in which you life your life. The words you speak and songs you sing are not the essence of worship, they are not even the expression of worship. The expression of worship is "doxology, a giving of glory, praise, honour, and homage to God... all true piety is worship - Godliness is worship" (J.I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness, p. 249). Songs and words are only then the expression of that worship. If you lack the former, the life, then the latter, the song, will be vain and empty. God looks upon the songs sung by thousands today and sees it all as silliness. He sees a myriad of clanging gongs, who come to him but for a moment in the week and venerate and invoke his name, and then all week malign him with their entertainments, their time, their pursuits, their behaviors, and their joys.

What we need today is not better "worship services", that is better, more up-to-date music in our services. What we need is prophetic worship services, that draw out mens' hearts and expose them to their vileness and vanity that they live in. We need our hearts to be exposed on Sunday morning to how we have been living in rebellion against our Creator for the last six days, how we have esteemed entertainment as more pleasurable that him, as worth more of our time than to spend our time in learning and understanding of him. Our country is in great need of repentance concerning their "worship". We have "exchanged the glory of the immortal God" for entertaining, emotional, stirring music, so that we do not have to truly confront the majestic glory of God. Were we for but a moment walk into the presence of God in a worship service we would be struck down and tremble. No man enters the presence of God flippantly. No man comes into the presence of God awaiting an "experience". Such a man will only walk away terrified, and cry out with Israel, "do not let God speak to us, lest we die." We have erected a barrier between ourselves and God so that we do not have to experience the deep disquietness that resides in our hearts, lest we truly "experience" him and are brought down on our faces. We have set this veneer over our services, and of this veneer we must repent.

But there is a deeper repentance that must occur among our congregations. We must repent of the lives we have lived in the other six days. We must repent of the lives we have spent in worship of "images resembling mortal man, and birds and animals and creeping things.". We must repent of the lives we have spent in omitting worship of the true Creator. We have neglected him with our conduct, we have failed to "regard as holy what is holy", we have failed to "be holy, because he is holy". We must repent of this life lived apart from God and not before God and there we must "draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need". We must grip the feet of our Savior and confess our sins to him and find him alone to be our only hope, our only peace, our only joy. It is then, and only then, that we will begin to truly worship our Creator. It is then, and only then, that we will be able to sing and make music to God.