You Still Love Him

“Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:” (1Pe 1:8 AV)

 

The context of this statement is enduring through trials of faith.  Peter is speaking to the Jews.  The Jews have a record of abuse and persecution like no other.  New Testament saints may have been, and are still being, persecuted.  But nothing we have endured compares to that which God’s chosen people have had to endure.  Peter is encouraging them that no matter what the devil or the world wants to tell us, we do love the LORD Jesus.  We may not be faithful in showing it all the time.  But we do love Him.  We may fail Him more than we care to think about.  But that does not mean we are absent of all love.  Yes, we know that love for God is manifested by obedience to His word.  He tells us that if we love Him, we will obey and follow.  No one is perfect.  We all fail.  Does that mean if we are more of a failure than we are a success then if we add it all up, we really don’t love God?  Not so!  This is a lie of the Devil to discourage us from striving after holiness.

I know.  What I have written above may seem like heresy.  But let me illustrate.  None of us were perfect parents.  None of us were perfect children.  Sometimes being who I am with the last name that I have required I went through some things that other children did not.  Our last name meant something.  To the community, our family was supposed to be an example for others to follow.  There were expectations placed on us that were not on our friends.  To a teenager, resentment was a real challenge.  Rebellion was not all that hard to come by.  We resented the lives we were forced to live and were not too pleased with a Father who enforced these standards.  At the time of enforcement, our love for Him may have been a challenge.  However, take away the environment in which the standard was applied, and we realized how much we loved our dad.  It may not have seemed like it at the time.  But that didn’t change the love we had for him.  There were times when temptation got the better of us.  We disobeyed.  This did not mean we ceased to love our dad.  It simply meant that at the time, we loved ourselves more than our dad.  Our love for our dad did not disappear.  Our love for ourselves was much stronger.  This is an important distinction to bear in mind.

The devil wants to convince us that when we fail, all love for Jesus has ceased.  This is not true.  Even though the child of God fails, there is still love.  It is merely that our love for self was stronger than our love for Him.  What that does not mean is that we have lost every ounce of love for our Savior.  We still love Him.  Otherwise, we would feel no guilt, remorse, regret, or desire for reconciliation.  As long as there is something that draws us back to Him, we still love Him.  Why, one might ask, is this important to remember?  Because the devil wants us to crucify ourselves to the point of complete defeat.  Like an erring child who is convinced they could never be forgiven, we wander aimlessly, failing to ever-increasing temptation, until we lay in ruins.  By convincing us we have failed to the point where we have no love for God, then we lose all motivation to return.  If we remember that even though we have failed to trust the LORD, or done something so horrible that we cannot even look at ourselves, that we still love Him, then the door of reconciliation is wide open.  You still love Him!  Don’t let the Devil convince you otherwise.  To cease to believe that is to end our relationship with the One who loved us first.