How to Apply the Love of Christ | The Whole Counsel

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00:03

A couple of great applications for the sermon, one is that when a person rejects the claims of Christ, a man may measure the guilt of that by what he thinks of Christ's love.

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So if he thinks Christ wants to use him, as we mentioned, and he rejects this king's claims, then his guilt, in his own mind, his feeling of guilt is pretty small.

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Well, the guy was just trying to use me. If he thinks that the love of God is a small thing, it's, you know, hey, everybody's loved, and it's just a common thing, it's not a distinguishing, wonderful thing, and he rejects it, then he has a small sense of guilt.

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If he thinks he earned God's love, but then told God, no thanks, it's not a big deal.

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But if what Witherspoon has said is really scriptural, summed up in these points, and it's true, then to not love him is the most heinous of sins.

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You know, if you talk to a man and say, are you a sinner, do you need a Savior, they'll say, well, yeah, most of us will say, well, sure,

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I'm a sinner, I'm not perfect. And if you ask them, would you be willing to write down on a piece of paper your two or three most embarrassing, shocking sins, well, they probably wouldn't do it, but if you could get them to do it,

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I doubt that not loving Christ back would ever be on their list. And yet, it's the great sin.

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Yeah. If you think of the great commandment, to break that commandment, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, if it's not obeyed, then it must be a great sin.

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And that also leads, then, to the second of these applications, that love is the motive for obedience.

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John 14, 15, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. So clearly, the fuel for obedience for the

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Christian is not trying to get something back out of God, not earning, not keeping my station, not a self -centered, you know, now that I'm a

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Christian, I need to really be wholehearted because I'm getting a lot out of this, you know.

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But rather, in a sense, almost a self -forgetfulness that you only feel when love is at the heart of a relationship.

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And it's for love of the other person who has loved you so conqueringly that you almost forget that you exist and you just want to show love.

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You know, when we think about the law of God, if we think of it as a ladder that we're climbing to become better people or maybe to get into His kingdom, we know that's wrong.

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But what is the law of God? The law of God is like a beautiful path that God has laid for us to say to us, if you want to walk near me, if you want to love me, this is the path.

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And so the law becomes a friend to us now. And you know, it's like a little kid that wakes up and says, I want to give something to my parents to show them

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I love them. What are they like? Well, the law shows you, walk here. And it becomes a sweet expression of love rather than some sense of a heavy burden.

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So rather than having a taskmaster behind you driving you down that path, then you have the Father in front of you saying, come.

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Yeah. Come near. Witherspoon said that love reconciles the heart to the most difficult duties.

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The hard things that you would rather not do, you pick up and do because love. Yeah. Yes, it does.

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It really is the fuel that moves every aspect of Christian virtue. When I was a young Christian, before I was a

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Christian, I used to think that the most powerful word in the Bible was a word like holiness, wrath, you know.

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After I became a Christian, the man that led me to the Lord asked me, John, what do you think the most important word in the Bible is?

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That's a very subjective thing. You know, we don't have a passage that says it. But for the first time ever, and I would still agree with my answer back then.

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But for the first time ever, immediately the word that came to my mind as the single biggest word in the whole

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Bible was love. And I used to think that was such a small word, you know, the love of God. I thought, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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But the holiness of God, now that's impressive. But after being saved, you know, I had seen myself for who

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I really was. And to be saved, to be loved then was like a wrecking ball against every little paper fortress

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I raised up against him, you know, and it would just, it would just crash down, you know, and the love of God would be there.