On the Possibility of Saying “I Love You, But I Don’t Like You” …
The Opinion, v10 n2, pp. 5-7
The command to love is a call to the deepest and most thoroughgoing sanctification.
The command to love is a call to the deepest and most thoroughgoing sanctification.
If we are unmerciful, unforgiving people, if we hold grudges or cherish resentments or plan revenge, then what we are saying in effect to God is, "This is the way I prefer life to be." And so he will give us what we have preferred at the day of judgment; no mercy, no forgiveness, but only vengeance. If Christ has not changed us (and I don't mean perfection, but only significant change), then probably we have never known him.
When a person strikes rock bottom with a sense of helplessness he may find that he has struck the Rock of Ages.
How can I admit that I am a worm and yet “love my neighbor as myself”?
Freedom flows forth in love just as surely as a bubbling spring flows forth in a mountain stream.
Hate is the evidence of blindness to the light of God. Love is the evidence that sight has been given to the blind.
The evidence of being indwelt by the Spirit of God is the experience of loving Jesus the way the Father loves him.
Christian kindness is not merely an external change of manners; it is an internal change of heart.
Serving and loving and helping and encouraging and supporting the saints is the way we show our love for the name of God.
Something tremendous is at stake in the practical unity of love in the body of Christ.
God is love. The implications of this for the way we live are big.
How does Christ's love for us turn into our love for others?
Even inside perfection, there is good, better, and best. And understanding this will help us love as we ought.
All of Scripture hangs on two great purposes: that God be loved with all our heart, and that we love each other as we love ourselves.
Loving God sustains us through all the joy and pain and perplexity and uncertainty of what loving our neighbor should be.
Becoming a child of God and being transformed on the inside precedes and enables love, not vice versa.
Jesus is calling us not just to do good things for our enemy; he is also calling us to WANT their best.
God intends for us not merely to do to others as we would have them do to us, but he wants us to feel toward other believers a certain way.
Is there something in your life that is hindering your fruitfulness in Christ—something that you need to die to?
We simply cannot love the way Paul describes until we die.
God is wakening people to the astonishing reality that they can be different and better in the way they love others.
Should the sins of others keep us captive in a prison of sorrow?
The law is not our primary means for bearing fruit. It serves mostly to teach us that we don't bear fruit apart from the gospel.
Thoughts on mercy and justice in 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15.
If we are true Christians we will want to show mercy to suffering people.
You can be a liberal hypocrite, and you can be fundamentalist hypocrite. But love is not that way.
Don’t be a loner in the Christian life. God did not design it that way.
What can we learn from how Paul sends his greetings?
Christians are precious to each other when they feel deeply what they have been saved from.
Listen to John Piper talk about how we should be different than this culture in the way we offer and receive criticism.
Paul isn't abstractly defining love 1 Corinthians 13. He is showing how it applies to the church.
4 examples from Philippians 2 of people who put others' interests before their own.
What's new about Jesus' new commandment?
How to interact with those who are struggling in their faith.
Thoughts on Bethlehem Baptist's new relational commitments.
Six biblical guidelines for loving each other.
John Piper says that it takes spiritual wisdom and discernment to determine whether you should confront someone over sinful behavior.
“Our only hope for loving our enemy is to be a new creation in Christ. And our only hope for being a new creation in Christ is to be reconciled to God through the death of his Son” (p. x).
“The greatest ministry you can have to me is for you to enjoy Christ. Turn that around and ask, ‘How can I be the greatest blessing to the people around me?’ The answer: Get up in the morning, go to the word of God, and, like George Mueller said, ‘Get your heart happy in God’ before you meet other people.”
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