Our Love For Christ Is Central To Our Christian Existence By Thomas Vincent

Our Love For Christ

If anyone does not love the Lord, that person is cursed!~1 Corinthians 16:22

Punishment for abandoning her first love

As punishment for abandoning her first love, Our Savior threatened to remove her candlestick from the church of Ephesus. He would take her light if she didn’t find love. He also despatched another epistle to Laodicea, rebuking her for her lukewarmness and threatening to spit her out of His mouth since she was neither hot nor cold (Revelation 2:45; 3:15-16). Undeterred by those who mock the flames of Christ-love, like dogs barking at the moon so far above them, are professors in Britain under no such guilt, no such threat?

Few Christians truly love Christ

When so few Christians truly love Christ, when there is such a general decline in love for Christ in the land, Lord, what will become of Britain? Have we not prompted the Lord to remove our lamp? So, have we not caused the Lord to send us worse than Egyptian darkness to cover our light, because the light of knowledge in the mind is accompanied by so little warmth of love for Christ in most Christians’ hearts? In a day of such general loss of love for Christ, undoubtedly some such fetch fire from heaven, and employ bellows too; arguments, I mean, to enkindle and blow up the spark of love for Christ which seems so ready to perish.

The following discussion of the real Christian’s love for the invisible Christ is not well-crafted in wit and language. It is not adorned with metaphors, hyperboles, rhetorical flourishes, or poetic fancies and fragments. It is not embellished with a flimsy display of marginal quotes from many authors. The message is simple, but the author has tried to make it warm, hoping to gain your respect by lowering his own, so that his Lord may gain your love.

This discourse on Christ’s love is primarily exhortation, with a variety of arguments and motives to stir us up to Christ’s love, as well as several directions on how to attain this love in truth and strength. An appendix is also provided to encourage the love of Christ by revealing Christ’s manifestation to those who love Him. The whole discussion is practical and non-controversial. True Christians will not oppose this need to love Christ; only Turks, Infidels, and Devils will do so.

The Lord bless this little book to warm and enflame your heart with love for the invisible Christ—is the fervent prayer of,

Our love for Christ is central to our Christian existence

Our love for Christ is central to our Christian existence. We are spiritually dead without Christ’s love, just as a body without a soul is physically dead. A professor without love for Christ is a dead professor, dead in sins and trespasses. We may have the label of Christians, but we lack the nature of Christians. We have the appearance of godliness but not the power of godliness. “Give me your heart!” says God to everyone, Proverbs 23:26, and “Give me your love!” says Christ to all His followers.

True love to Him will engage other affections for Him

Christ understands how true and strong love to Him will engage all other affections of His disciples for Him; that if He has their love, their wants will be principally after Him. Their delights will be in Him; their hopes and expectations will be from Him; and their hatred, fear, sadness, and rage will be directed against sin—as it offends Him. The power and faculties of their souls will be engaged and employed for Him by love; their thoughts will be brought into captivity and obedience to Him; their understandings will be employed in seeking and finding His truths; their memories will be receptacles to retain them; their consciences will be ready to accuse and excuse as His faithful deputies; their wills will choose and choose again.

Their senses and bodies shall be His servants. They will see for Him, hear for Him, speak for Him, work for Him, and walk for Him. Their talents will be devoted to Him. If they love Him, they will do anything He asks. Whatever He asks of them, they will endure. They will not hesitate to deny themselves, take up His cross, and follow Him wherever He takes them if they truly love Him. As such, I have chosen to treat the subject of love to Christ, and my main goal herein shall be to excite and provoke Christians to the vigorous exercise of this grace of love unto Christ.

Though you have not seen him, you love him

Peter, the Jewish Apostle, wrote this epistle “To God’s elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia,” as stated in verse one of this chapter. These strangers refer to the scattered Jews who were foreigners in their various countries of residence. In the Temple, hearing the Apostle speak in numerous languages, which were used in various areas where they lived, and without instruction from man—but as the Spirit gave them utterance—they were startled and confounded. Three thousand people were added to the Christian church after hearing Peter preach in the amazing power of the Spirit. Aside from what they endured from their own countrymen or unbelievers after the Pentecost feast, these converted Jews faced opposition and suffering from heathenish and idolatrous countries where they lived, families, and occupations.

The Apostle seems to esteem them in this epistle when he encourages them in their hardships for Christ. In verse 2, he hoped for more grace and peace in and towards them, so that their pains would be more than compensated. A live hope of the beautiful and everlasting heavenly inheritance was reserved for them through God’s boundless grace, and they were reserved and preserved by God’s great power through faith. In verses 6 and 7, he reminds them that though they were burdened by many sufferings—the world’s left-hand temptations—these afflictions were only temporary. Weeping may last a night, but the pleasure comes daybreak. They were for the trial of their faith, that the truth of it might appear both to themselves and others, and that the worth of it might appear more precious than gold when tried in the fire, which might carry them through their sufferings.

The Apostle then uses the text to speak of their love for this Jesus Christ, and of the indescribable and glorious joy that comes from believing in Him despite not seeing Him, which no trouble or affliction could ever overcome or hinder; “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” So note:

Three Doctrines

Doctrine 1. True Christians have the right and responsibility to love Jesus Christ, whom they have never seen; “Though you have not seen him, you love him.”

Doctrine 2: True Christians believe in an unseen Christ.

Doctrine 3: True Christians rejoice in believing with incredible and wonderful joy, or may rejoice in believing with overwhelming and beautiful joy. “you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”

There are three excellent points to consider:

1. Christians’ love for Christ; 
2. Christians’ faith in Christ; 
3. Christians’ joy in believing.

This article is edited from “The True Christian’s Love to the Unseen Christ” by Thomas Vincent. Check our collection of articles on this topic in the related posts, alternatively, you can get a copy of the book from Amazon.