Your Only Object…Charles Spurgeon

   “You are not acting as you ought to do when you are moved by any other motive than a single eye to your Lord’s glory.  As a Christian, you are ‘of God, and through God,’ then live ‘to God.’ Let nothing ever set your heart beating so mightily as love to Him.  Let this ambition fire your soul; be this the foundation of every enterprise upon which you enter, and this your sustaining motive whenever your zeal would grow chill; make God your only object.”

-Charles Spurgeon, Morning November 17 citing Romans 11:36, “To whom be glory for ever.”

What Does It Mean to “Love” God?

 It was asked of me recently on the way home from a bible study.  I had dealt with this concept only this past Spring 2007 and into the Summer.  How so?  I heard a sermon on Romans 8:28 by John Piper.  I was heartily convicted when I was exhorted to examine myself in light of its massive, overwhelming promise, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose” (KJV).

In his Desiring God Radio broadcasting on March 22, 2007, John Piper said, “Day by day, there are people that walk through painful experiences and do not trust God to help them get through these things then turn them for good.  And those painful experiences then, will be wrath for them.  They will be the foretastes of final and eternal pain.  Or they walk through pleasure…not giving any thanks to God at all and not turning those pleasures into a moment of worship whereby they see in and through those pleasures the beauty of God and cherish Him above those pleasures.  And those pleasures will come back on their head as condemnation in the end.  All things will work for bad for those who do not love God and are not called according to His purpose. And we don’t want to be that way.  I’m sure you don’t.  We want this promise to be true for us, and so we need to…take it and figure out if we qualify.  Is it ours” (2007)?

This is quite the query.  How often do we forget the qualifications of this beloved promise?  I was struck to the heart.  So what does Piper propose?  In this first examination,  he asks: “Do you love God this morning? If you don’t, this promise is not yours” (2007).

Piper begins by explaining that we must examine what it does not mean.   He cites three things that it does not mean to highlight what it does mean.    I pray that if you don’t love God, this essay will make it clear so that you can take steps to embrace him as your only hope and satisfaction.

Point 1.

Love for God does not mean meeting God’s needs.

 While it may seem obvious, I think we can get this confused because that is exactly how we do and ought to love one another.  This love is horizontal, but it cannot be vertical.  “If you try to take that definition of love and move it into your God relationship, you will blaspheme” (Piper, 2007).  He cites one verse to shatter that proposition. I will use the verse preceding as well to clarify the context within the KJV.

Acts 17:24-25 says this:  “God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life and breath and all things.”

 ”God is radically different from people. Our love for him is very different than our love for each other. It is never, ever, ever  meeting needs.  You do not meet God’s needs because God has no needs.  He has no deficiencies that we can supply.  He has no defects that we can reverse. He has no needs that we supply.  Therefore…the essence of love to God is always and without exception receiving…Now I said ‘essence’ because I know that we do use the word ‘love’ to cover, not only its essence, but often its fruits, its behaviors.  And so sometimes we think of ourselves as giving praise,  giving honor, giving service, giving obedience.  It’s a very dangerous use of language, not wrong, just dangerous.  Because the essence of loving God is receiving from God…I mean that joy in God is always a receiving of pleasure from the object of our delight” (Piper, 2007).

Point 2.

Love for God is not love for his gifts.

Piper includes: forgiveness of sins, justification, escape from hell, resurrection to a pain-free life. 

“Loving God does not mean being glad that your sins are forgiven.  Loving God does not mean, in its essence, being glad that you are imputed righteous.  Loving God does not mean, in its essence, gladness that I have escaped from hell.  Loving God does not mean, in its essence, gladness that I will be free from disease someday and have an everlasting life of pleasure.  We know that that’s not the essence of loving God because people who don’t love God are glad for all those things.  Nobody wants a guilty conscience and [they are] very happy if you can tell them a way to get rid of it.  Nobody wants to go to hell and suffer forever, and they’re very happy to escape from that.  Whatever means they can use to get out.  Everybody will love the prospect of eternal joy, and everybody would like to be counted righteous when they don’t have to be righteous.  And none of them has to love God” (Piper, 2007).

Piper continues with this piercing illustration:  “If they can convince themselves in their minds that ‘I’m forgiven because of Christ, I’m justified because of Christ, I’ve escaped hell because of Christ,  and I’m going to heaven because of Christ, and frankly, I like television better than Christ.’”

I’m convinced that there are tons in today’s church just like that.  “They’re really happy to be safe, and they have no heart for God.  NONE!” (Piper, 2007)

Point 3.

Love for God is not the things that love prompts you to do.

“The Love of God, the love for God, might prompt you to leave mother and father and lands and houses and declare the name of God among the nations.  But leaving mother, leaving father, leaving houses, leaving lands, declaring the glory of God is not the love [for] God.  The essence of the love [for] God is not the fruit of the love [of] God” (Piper, 2007).

He remembers John 14:15 when Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”  Piper explains that he’s heard so many people take that text and make “keeping the commandments the definition of love.  That exactly the opposite of what the text says!” (Piper, 2007)

“‘If you love me,’” Piper explains, speaking as Jesus in this verse, “‘then you will do a certain thing and the doing is not the loving. This is the root; this is the fruit” (2007).

He cites the incident when Jesus explained this to Peter in John 21:15-17.  “‘…Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?’ He saith unto Him, ‘Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee.’  He saith unto him, ‘Feed my lambs.’”

Piper asks the question, “Did Jesus say, ‘Well good, that’s all that needs to be said [because] clearly you’re doing everything I command you to do. Because that’s what love is’? He did not say that because that’s not what [love for God] is. He said, ‘If you love me, Peter, feed my sheep’” (Piper, 2007). 

Piper’s interpretation says this, “If you love me, then you will act like it.”  The love is first, the acting-like-it is second.  The second ’flows out of’ or ‘is a result of’ or is ‘the fruit of’ the first.  Acting-like-it is the fruit of loving God.  “The acting is not the essence of the loving” (Piper, 2007).

So what is it?!!!!

“What I’m saying,” Piper continues, “is that ‘love for God’ is the heart’s esteem for God before it produces anything else.  The heart’s esteem for, admiration of, delight in, cherishing of…God…before it produces anything” (Piper, 2007).

“Love for God is not, in its essence, a deliberated choice.  Love for God is not, in its essence, a deed.  It is a reflex of the newborn heart, the called heart, to the beauty of God in Christ.  You don’t decide to taste honey as sweet.  If you have living tastebuds, and you put it on the tongue, it is sweet.  If your taste buds are dead, it isn’t sweet.  And you can rummage around with all kinds of decision and it will stay non-sweet” (Piper, 2007).

 It is the new life which God gives that produces love for God.  It is the reborn heart’s reflex to the sight of God’s glory.  Just as your tastebuds must be alive to taste something for what it is, so you must be called by God, called according to his purpose in order to love Him.

I see the question coming because I asked it.  “Why is this so important?  What’s the big deal, Piper?”

He answers, “I stress this because I don’t want to produce hypocrites…I don’t want to go to my grave [and people say] ‘John Piper helped produce a big church of hypocrites.’  And that’s exactly what we produce, I believe, by equating deeds of love with love [itself].  If the essence of love is the deeds that love does, they can be imitated” (Piper, 2007)

In other words, when love equals deeds of love [love=deeds of love] then anyone can do these “deeds of love,” and they can do them without ever having “loved God.”  It is hypocrisy.  “Imitated love is hypocrisy.  If the deeds of love do not come from this deep wonderful God wrought miraculous reflex of delighting in God for himself, we beget hypocrites,” Piper continues (2007).  “I fear there are many in the church: Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox who’ve been taught all their lives ‘do, do, do, do, and God will approve and you’ll be safe.’”

“This text says, ‘You want God to work for you, you want him to work everything together for your good.  Don’t start with doing, start with loving.  Experience something…of him.”

 And so I continue on with my story.  When I first heard this sermon, I was convicted in heart.  But I didn’t know why? Perhaps it was the obvious questions:  “Do I really love God, do I just love him for his gifts,  and do I just love being forgiven?”

Or perhaps it was just this:  “What in the world did Piper just say?!!!”

I can tell you from that moment that I have heard this sermon many times.  I have kept it hidden in my heart, and I have tried to discern it.  I am convinced, as I have slowly listened to it in this tenure (in order to copy it for this essay, oddly enough) that it is, indeed, true.  This morning, Charles Spurgeon reminded me of its truth.  His text was this:

“The Lord is my portion, saith my soul” (Lamentations 3:24).

He wrote these beginning truths.  (For safety reasons, I will only portray a portion. John Piper’s comments have no copyright.  Praise the Lord!)

“It is not “The Lord is partly my portion,” nor “The Lord is in my portion;” but He Himself makes up the sum total of my soul’s inheritance.  Within the circumference of that circle lies all that we possess or desire.  The Lord is my portion.  Not His grace merely, nor His love, nor His covenant, but Jehovah Himself.”

Indeed, God himself is the object of my love if Romans 8:28 should apply to me.

But how do I cultivate this in my life?

I think, perhaps, we must study the very character of God.  His very essence, which while totally infinite, is still very real in my life. God is Holy.  God is Righteous.  God is Gracious.  God is Steadfast.  God is Just.  God is Faithful.  God is Good.

I think one should commit himself to studying and understanding and meditating and knowing who God is.   When he does this, he will grow to love God, himself, more everyday.  We must love God for who He IS.

So I say this:  Know who God is and you will love him more and more.  And there are only two sources which reveal to you who He is.  The two sources are His self-revelations:  His Creation and His Holy Word which both witness to His Son and are enabled by His Spirit.

I think it was Jonathan Edwards who said, explaining the trinity, “Jesus Christ is the expression of God’s love for himself.  The revelation of all that God is [paraphrased].” 

The two revelations  (General and Specific) reveal God Himself because they point to Christ, the Incarnate Word.  At the beginning, the Father spoke, the Son created in obedience to the Father, and the Spirit moved in obedience to the Son. 

Also, Jesus Christ is the reason the Holy Spirit wrote the Bible.  It witnesses to Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  Jesus Christ is the very “image of God,” as it says in 2 Corinthians 4.  Jesus Christ is the ”brightness of His glory” and the “express image of his perfection” as in Hebrews 1.

We are to know Christ, the only name under heaven whereby men must be saved.  We know him by the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  When we know Christ, we know God the Father.  Through all of this:  We Know God, Himself.

Oh, the depth and wisdom of God! Humble yourselves under his mighty Hand.

So then….

How can we love that which we do not know? Know Him.

 It is written on a decal on the back of my car.  “Know Him.”  Just now, I get a glimpse of the glory of its exhortation. What illumination…

Working with you to love Him through knowing Him,

Vince R.

Works Cited

Spurgeon, Charles. Morning and Evening Complete and Unabridged Classic KJV Edition.  Hendrickson: USA, 1991. 642

All Things for Good Part I, Romans 8:28.  By John Piper. Desiring God Radio.  Introd. Bob Allen. Minneapolis, MN. 22 Mar. 2007.