2007-01-03 - More Love to Thee

Ephesians 6:24, "Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love."

Who loves Christ more? It is hard to tell. Some might think it is the minister who has lots of people in his church must love Christ a lot in order to be so blessed. Some might think it is someone who has sinned greatly, come to repentance and faith and thus has had a lot more bad, really bad, things forgiven (Luke 7:41-43). Some might think it is that person who is always talking about Jesus, and we have to admit that in our heads we secretly hope that they would tone down the volume at least a tad. Who loves Christ more? Really we can't know, and it would be crazy to try to figure it out, but there are a couple of things we can say respecting this topic.

It is not always the person who has been forgiven the most that loves Christ in return the most. That is often the case, but there are some very great sinners, who have been forgiven much who don't seem to love Christ as much as we might expect. There are others, who in the eyes of men, are not so great sinners, who seemed to have avoided the pitfalls of gross sins, who love Christ all the more and have a very sensitive conscience toward sin.

The issue of conscience is central in this determining of love to Christ. There are some who have the deepest sense of the guilt of their sin, for sins that others, because of the magnitude of their sins, would simply shrug off. Someone can consider themselves to be the worst offender of God's law, (We are still affirming that both the great sinner and the average sinner equally need mercy and grace in Christ), who have not done the big sins according to the eyes of man. They have a tender conscience and their love to Christ for His undeserved mercy toward them effects them greatly. Such can often have even more love to Christ as their conscience has not been seared by years of sin.

We ought never to seek to quiet our sensitivity to sin. We ought always to look at sin in the real blackness that it is. There really are no little sins. While adultery, murder, and drunkenness seem to get a lot of attention, the white lie or exaggeration of the truth should equally pierce our heart. One way to keep up a sensitive conscience of our sin is to have a deep sense of the excellency of God. When we focus on the true wonder and majesty of God our sin becomes evident in all its foulness and putridity. If, by the Holy Spirit, we achieved a true sense of our sin then our love to Jesus Christ, for his pity upon us, would deepen and we might not wonder who loves Christ more, but rather be caught up ourselves in seeking to love Him ourselves more and more.

Soli Deo Gloria,
T-

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