The Right and Only Response to God's Love

Two weeks ago I wrote a post reflecting on what God's love means to me. I often contemplate the depth of God's Love and I still stand in amazement that He did it ALL just for me. Humbling. Knowing this depth and witnessing it daily, what is our only right and true response?

First, we must worship Him. Listen to the words of Psalm 63:1-3:

O God, you are my God,

earnestly I seek you;

my soul thirsts for you,

my body longs for you,

in a dry and weary land

where there is no water.

I have seen you in the sanctuary

and beheld your power and your glory.

Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.

The words "earnestly," "seek", "thirst," "long" describe a worshipful heart; in fact, John Piper says in his book Desiring God, "We can sing and read the Scriptures and pray and not be worshiping because worship is first and most essentially an act of the heart" (83). Christ says in Matt 15:8-9, "This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me. But in vain do they worship me." It is clear that the Psalmist quoted above honors God with lips and heart; it is clear that the Psalmist has a right perspective of God--He the master, we the humble servant, a master worthy of our praise, a master worthy of our honor: "Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you." There is nothing better in life than the love we have in our Father: not our spouses, not our children, not our families, not vacations, not hobbies, not work, not leisure. Again, listen to our only response, our right response. The psalmist writes in Psalm 73:25-26:

Whom have I in heaven but you?

And earth has nothing I desire besides you.

My flesh and my heart may fail,

but God is the strength of my heart

and my portion forever.

Our desire and delight is in our Lord; everything else pales in comparison.

So firstly, we worship, praise and glorify Him, as our hearts delight and rejoice in Him. But there is something else that we must do as a right and true response to His love. Do you know what it is? Francis Schaeffer in his book, The Mark of a Christian, writes: "The badge of the believer; interestingly isn’t the shape of fish on the back of a car, nor a cross hanging around the neck of a believer, or a well worn bible, or the ability to quote well-known scripture; it isn’t church activities or the ability to sing, or play a musical instrument, or the ability to preach a well-crafted sermon; it isn’t graduating from a seminary. What is this badge? This mark of authentic Christian living? LOVE. Let love be our standard (James 2:8-9). Some of the neediest people receive the worst kinds of unlovely responses. we must frequently ask ourselves:  “How can I love this person?” "How can I love the cashier who makes a snide remark? or the co-worker who always seems to ingratiate himself to the boss?  or the child who has been rebellious? or the spouse who has been unkind? or a church member expressed his feelings toward us sharply and with bitterness? or the homeless man on the street corner who we think is freeloading, lazy, etc? Shame on us if it is anything but an act of loving deeply, as Christ loved us. If we love in these moments, then we "are learning the brushstrokes of God's love" (David Jeremiah, Signs of Life 232). Take a moment to pause and read Deut. 15:7-11 and 1 John 3:16-19.

We must love others. How are we supposed to love as He loved? This kind of love can only be expressed if first we receive the Love of the master in our hearts by confessing our sins and declaring Him Lord and savior; then we must by an act of the will allow the Spirit to work His transforming power in our hearts; only then can we express and show Jesus’s love and compassion to others. David Jeremiah writes in Signs of Life, “When we have God’s love in us, He loves people through us: (232). He writes earlier in the text about Henry Drummond, who explained, in a classic sermon, "The Greatest Things in the World," how such a transformation takes place: "'If a piece of ordinary steel is attached to a magnet and left there, after a while the magnetism of the magnet passes into the steel so that it too becomes a magnet. The way we learn to others, then is by staying so close to Jesus that His love becomes our love for others'" (165). Let's be so close to Christ, that the world will be forced to say, as they did of the early Christians, "How those Christians love each other."