A Classic Holiness Sermon

Supreme Love to God

by Rev. J. A. Wood

J. A. Wood, a preacher in the Wesleyan tradition, wrote the bestseller book, “Perfect Love,” published in 1878. He was the first to suggest a national camp meeting for the purpose of preaching and teaching entire sanctification.

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” (Matthew 22:37)

This passage is an epitome of Christian duty and comprehends all that God requires of man, including all the duties enjoined in the Decalogue—love to God and man, comprising the whole of experimental and practical Christianity. “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” They are iterated again and again in both Testaments. Three of the evangelists—Matthew, Mark and Luke, give us the text.

To recover fallen man from his alienation and corruption, and secure his observance of this commandment, was the great design of Moses and the prophets in the earlier dispensation and of Christ and the apostles in our dispensation.

“This is the first and great commandment.” It is first in importance, for it comprehends all others. It is first and greatest, not only in comprehension, but in dignity, excellence and duration. It is the statute law in the moral universe, binding equally on all created moral beings from the highest celestial intelligences to the lowest of the human race.
In this great, first commandment, our whole duty is made a love service. How different this from the common error that Christian duty is tedious and burdensome! In the experience of the devoted heart, it is more of a delightful charm than a reluctant constraint. Our Lord declared His “yoke” to be “easy” and His “burden” to be “light.” John says, “His commandments are not grievous.”

Christian duty may appear hard and intolerable to corrupt human nature, but it is easy and delightful to the renewed heart. How could it be otherwise, as God’s service is a good service, a useful service and a profitable service! It is not merely tolerable, but delightful. It is an assisted service, hence an easy service. It is a rational spiritual, love service.

The divine requirements are never malevolent, capricious, selfish or arbitrary. They are necessary, being based in the nature and relation of things, and originate in, and harmonize with, infinite wisdom and love. They accord with our highest interests and happiness and never conflict with them. They involve the highest liberty and freedom of which our nature is capable. Evangelical love to God is the antithesis of legal bondage. A complete Christian life is the perfection of liberty—the soul’s loving recreation. “Whom the Son maketh free shall be free indeed.”

To the devoted soul nothing is more agreeable than that which God requires. Faber expressed it thus;

“I worship Thee, sweet will of God,
And all Thy ways adore,
And every day I live I seem
To love Thee more and more.”

I. Consider the object of supreme devotion.

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God”—Father, Son and Holy Ghost—the Triune God—our Creator, our Preserver and our Redeemer! As God is the fountain-head of all beings, He is to be loved by all with supreme devotion. His nature and perfections, moral and natural, command the homage and superlative love of all responsible creatures. The depraved and rebellious condition of humanity, with blinded minds and guilty consciences, is a very unfortunate state in which to form correct views of the infinitely holy God.

The reasonableness and obligation of this duty to God is seen in His adorable perfections, in our relations to Him, and in His benefactions and purposes which flow from His infinite generosity.

The glorious character of God is revealed in the declarations, “God is love” and “Love is of God.” In these two short sentences we have a beautiful portraiture of the lovely character of the incomprehensible God. Never was there more meaning in so few words. Here we see love to be the essence of the divine nature. His love, like His nature, is unchangeable and eternal, “the same yesterday, today and forever.” His adorable character deserves, as it commands, universal confidence and worship. His requirements do not exceed the demands of His supreme benevolence and worthiness, and they never go beyond our honest convictions of duty. If God is infinite love, He ought to be supremely loved by every creature He has made.

“Love is of God.” He is the original fountain of all love—the origin of all that is loving or lovable in creation—and all love is originated, sustained and animated by Him, whether it be in men or angels, in the highest or lowest of His creatures, responsible or irresponsible.

Christ was God’s love incarnated, and the atonement eclipses all other manifestations of love in the universe. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
God’s love, as manifested in creation, providence, and especially in redemption, will constitute the chief element in the bliss and glory of heaven. It will be seen as a boundless, fathomless ocean of glory that never can be measured or fully comprehended.

“God is glorious in holiness.” His purity, majesty and loveliness beggar all description. All the virtue, purity, beauty, excellence, loveliness, generosity and love in the created universe combined, outside of God himself, is only as a speck of dust compared with the sun, when contrasted with the perfections of God. They are only the streams or trickling drops, from the infinite fountain of divine perfections.

The obligation to love God is seen in our relations to Him. “The Lord thy God.” He is our Creator, Preserver and Redeemer. As such (I say it reverently), He is our nearest relative—our heavenly Father! Our constant Preserver! Our glorious Redeemer! He is nearer to us that the mother who bore us, or the earthly father who fondled us in childhood. God is as near to us as we are to ourselves. Preservation is equivalent to a constant creation. It takes the same power to sustain creation as it did to cause creation, and hence the same power to sustain our being as to create our being. All power is from God. The power to see, to hear, to feel, to think, to know, to will and to love, is all from God. “For in Him, we live, and move, and have our being.” We cannot stir a hand, or a foot, or a tongue, but by Him. We have our being from Him not only at the first, but have it from Him still. Without His constant care and preservation we would sink at once into nonentity. We are God’s offspring; He is our Father that begat us, and preserves us, and all life, motion and being is from Him. We should ever remember that our continued existence, is by His present, all-pervading and supporting energy.

Look at His generosity and benefactions. These exceed all our apprehension or comprehension. We cannot number them, one of a thousand. They have swarmed about us every hour of our existence. They come from above and beneath us, and from every point of compass around us. They never cease day or night. They are so associated as to augment each other a thousand-fold. They constitute innumerable millions of items, and embody every blessing we ever had, or now have, or can ever hope to have. We are absolutely shut up to God for every blessing of this life, and will be for all eternity. While we are absolutely dependent, and will be eternally, all our resources are in God, the author of infinite benefactions.

God, the object of supreme worship, has given humanity every expression of tenderness and sympathy, care and grace, and has the highest purposes conceivable in regard to them. Any man who will refuse to love and who wickedly insults and disobeys God, ought to suffer, and will suffer the natural and penal results of his sins.

II. Consider the nature of the love God requires.

It is not natural in fallen man, but gracious, and exists only in renewed natures. Love to God dwells in no unregenerate heart, hence the necessity of the new birth, which is the beginning of love to God. “He that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.” Every regenerate man has “the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto him.”

This love divinely implanted in the heart, is consonant with the nature and relation of things, and it has a filial aspect. God is our heavenly Father. All Christians are “sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty.” The promise is, “I will receive you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” Here is the filial relation, and love answers to it.

God is infinitely trustworthy, and this love has a confiding aspect. Love always confides, and “faith (confidence), works by love,” and love makes faith natural and easy. God, in His boundless benevolence, is the Great Giver, and this love correspondingly flows out in gratitude to Him and holds the soul in a delightful responsive attitude to the reception of His bounties.

“The sweetest bliss of moral beings is in loving, and this love has an inspiring aspect of delight in God. It rejoices in Him, adores Him, and is charmed and delighted with Him. Inspired by this love, the soul cries out, “This God is my God forever and ever,” and “Whom have I in heaven but Thee?” and “There is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.” This love is the temper and the molding force in the Christian life. It breathes itself through the whole spirit, pervading the activities, and giving character to the exterior life.

III. Notice the extent of this love.

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” This love is to be bounded or omitted only by our knowledge and capacity, “with all our heart.” Richard Watson, in his exposition, says, “The terms heart, soul, mind, to which St. Luke adds strength, are not intended so much to convey distinct ideas as to give force to the precept by the accumulation of words of nearly the same import.”

Mr. Wesley, in his notes, says, “With all thy soul, with the warmest affection; with all thy strength, the most vigorous efforts of thy will; with all thy mind or understanding, in the most wise and reasonable manner thou canst, thy understanding guiding thy will and affections.”

These words must mean that God is to be loved with the entire affection of the soul, so that all its powers and faculties are devoted to His service. This is perfect love, and in order to it, the whole soul must be under the reign of grace and cleansed from all impurity. No man can love God with all his “heart,” “soul,” “mind,” and “strength,” until the blood of Christ has cleansed him from all sin, so that no antagonisms to the love of God remain in the heart.

The provisions and promises of God cover our necessities, and are co-related to His commands. “The Lord thy God will circumcise (purify) thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.” The apostle asserts, that “circumcision is that of the heart, in the putting off of the body of the sings of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ.” No man should complain of inability to love God with all his heart, or to the extent of His capacity or ability, as God has promised; “I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to keep My commandments, and ye shall keep My judgments and do them.”

This first and great commandment enjoins evangelical, or Christian perfection. Perfect love, or Christian perfection is simply the observance of this command—loving God with all thy heart. “Pure love,” said Wesley, “reigning alone in the heart, this is the whole of Christian perfection.” The Methodist catechism defines Christian perfection as, “The state of being entirely cleansed from all sin, so as to love God with all our heart and mind, and soul, and strength.” This catechism was revised by Bishop Heeding, and Drs. Olin, Bangs and Holdich, and endorsed by the general conference.
St. Paul says—“The end of the commandment is charity (love) out of a pure heart.”
The holy Fletcher defines Christian perfection as follows, “It is the pure love of God and man shed abroad in a faithful believer’s heart by the Holy Ghost given unto him, to cleanse him, and to keep him clean, ‘from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit,’ and to enable him to ‘fulfill the law of Christ,’ according to the talents he is intrusted (sic) with, and the circumstances in which he is placed in this world.”

All who are cleansed from all sin love God with all their heart; and all who love God with all their heart, will obey Him with all their power.

REMARKS

This love, experimentally and practically, constitutes true evangelical obedience. “Love is the fulfilling of the law,” the substance and fulfillment of the law. “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Love to God is the main feature of moral likeness to Christ. “As He is, so are we in this world.” To be godly is to be godlike, and in the possession of this love, “we are made partakers of the divine nature.” “He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him.” In this divine union is our “love made perfect.” “Herein,” says John, “is our love made perfect.”

This love in its incipiency is a distinguishing mark of the new birth—“Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.” This imparted love is the chief element in regenerate nature, and is the breath and temper of all true piety. Being a special fruit of the Spirit, it is a mark and badge of Christian discipleship. ‘By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples if ye have love one for the other.’

This dispositional, abiding force dwelling in pure hearts, controls and directs the life and extends its influence through the whole soul, and is the bond of unity in the moral universe. It is the highest and grandest element in moral beings, full of sympathy, kindness and tenderness. It is only through a heart full of this love, that mankind can know the true meaning of peace of rest, and of joy and fellowship with God.