The Love of The Lord Jesus Christ

Unsaved people can do the things that the Lord tells believers to do and have a sense of pride about it.  This is not the love that Christ is describing in the entirety of His Word.  His love is much deeper and flows from the richness of His very being.  His love leaps at the presence of another believer who loves Him and possesses His Holy Spirit.  

It is not a superficial friendliness that we can experience in any secular gathering, but a devotion to those who are not only like minded but share the radical allegiance to a Holy God that only those who walk closely with Him can experience. This oneness of Spirit transcends superficial friendly chatter.  

The desire to share the truths of the Word and bathe in the wisdom of God is overwhelming at times.  One has to wonder about the dryness that overtakes most of our "fellowship" gatherings, when the songs are sung in a utilitarian and mundane low tone, and the enthusiasm that should overtake us as we worship Him is absent. We have to wonder where that love of the Lord is hiding.  

Friendliness does not constitute fellowship and happiness is not evidence of the joy of the Lord.  Emotionalism does not reveal spirituality, but enthusiasm for the Lord is evident everywhere we go and with whomever we are visiting, especially those who possess the Holy Spirit.  There can be no greater fellowship between those of like mind than the melding of the Holy Spirit within each believer with each other believer.  

When there is competition, apathy, pride, arrogance and guarded hiding, there is worldliness.  When we have been made free by the blood of our Savior, we can be transparent, honest and open.  There is bondage in the superficial rote of mechanical Christianity but freedom and faith among those who have left their own way to follow the way of the Master.

We must ask ourselves if we are Christians who care to appear spiritual but will not submit to the Lord, still wanting to control our own Spirituality, or are we believers who wish to let go of our "image", our false spirituality, which we display to others for self glorification.  We must let go of our false way, to trust and follow Christ.  He is not interested in our image, but our love and devotion.  He said clearly that He does not want our sacrifice but our heart.  

Personal relationships with other believers is the same, we do not desire random acts of kindness out of duty, but everything done out of the love of Christ that dwells deep within our souls. That love ultimately glorifies God.  The other kind of superficial devotion out of duty glorifies self and tends to be expectation oriented.

To trust Christ means to let go of our own way and follow His.  It's all there in the Book, in case we are not sure what it looks like.  But that is not enough, we must ask the Holy Spirit to show us what we need to see that we may be blinded to, and then He will show us.

Emotions Were Given To Us By God

John 22:39-44

"And coming out, He went to the Mount of Olives, as He was accustomed, and His disciples also followed Him. When He came to the place, He said to them, 'Pray that you may not enter into temptation' And He was withdrawn from them about a stones throw and He knelt down and prayed, saying 'Father, if it is Your will, remove this cup from Me, nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.' Then an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him. And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. And His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground..."

Even our Lord Jesus Christ had emotions in His fully human and fully God state.  He suffered everything that we have and more as human beings.  We do not need to pretend we have no emotions in order to appear more spiritual than anyone else. We are free to express our emotions as we trust Him through them.  

God said that we were to "weep with those who weep and laugh with those who laugh."  We are to share in the difficulties and the joys of our Christian brothers and sisters.  God says that we do not have the spirit of fear, this is true, but that does not mean that we never feel fear if we are spiritual.  We give those fears to the Lord and proceed in obedience in spite of them.  We do not walk a lifestyle of fearfulness; we know where we are going and Who is in charge.

Fear is an emotion, we feel happiness over good things that happen to us and we feel sadness or fear over difficult things, this is the human condition and while Christ was on the earth He too experienced fear and sadness, but obeyed the Father anyway.  That is our challenge, to obey in spite of our emotions.  

There are those who would tell you that if you fear you do not have faith and you are sinning.  This could not be farthest from the truth.  God sometimes takes away our fears and other times He leaves them in tact to strengthen our resolve to obey Him in spite of whatever we must go through.  There is no faith required to do a thing if it has no fear or difficulty in the process.  Faith is demonstrated when we obey no matter what we may have to endure.  Faith is present through the tears, fear and danger; this is the mark of a spiritual believer, one who obeys no matter what the feelings are.  

Feelings are emotions, God gave them to us, but they are not indicators of our spirituality.  Our actions and heart attitudes are the real indicators not the feelings.  

If we were not to have the feeling of fear, then we would not have the feeling of happiness, joy or peace.  These are all a part of the equation in the Christians life.  If we should deny any of them then we would have to deny all of them, the joy, happiness and peace too, not just the fear and sadness.  

Such silliness in thinking that we are not spiritual if we admit our feelings.  Those who are prideful and want to pretend that they are more spiritual than others by denying feelings, a natural experience of the human condition, are in a sense lying.  They claim that if we are walking in faith we never feel fear, disappointment or sadness, but they like to embrace the other feelings of happiness, joy and peace.  Did God make a mistake when He gave us all these feelings, did He not mean it when He says He catches all our tears in a bottle.  Did He lie to us when He said "with great wisdom comes great sorrow."   

If we love God, the closer we walk with Him and grow in holiness the worse the sin in the world around us will appear. God told us to focus on Him and His principles, the more we do that the blacker the world looks and the more we are grieved over what we see.  

The deep down joy that the Lord gives us never leaves us because He lives in us, but the emotions still play a large roll in the shaping of our character.  How can a friend ever display tenderness and compassion if we are expected to never need their comfort.  God clearly stated that we should comfort one another in our troubles.  If sadness and fear were unspiritual then our Lord would have never wept over Jerusalem.  He would have never shed tears like great drops of blood at Gethsemane, nor would he have felt a sense of betrayal from Judas.  He felt all of that just as we feel those things when are faced with this life.  

Our comfort to one another should be, "we can get through this together with Christ."  Never should we intimate to a broken and bleeding soul that they are being unspiritual for having feelings.  When we share an emotion with our brother or sister we are showing the greatest kind of love, Christ's kind of love.

Praising the Wicked Rather Than Comforting the Victim

Praising the Wicked


By Rev. R.J. Rushdoony – bio





Category: Articles




(Reprinted from Bread upon the Waters: Columns from the California Farmer [Fairfax, VA: Thoburn Press, 1974], 93–94.)


CA Farmer 229:7 (Oct. 5, 1968), p. 37.


Praising the wicked, and rewarding them, seems to be the main purpose of our judges and legislators these days.


If this seems too strong a statement, then take it up with God because Scripture plainly declares, “They that forsake the law praise the wicked: but such as keep the law contend with them” (Prov. 28:4). The law in question is God’s law. If men abandon it, they are deserting not only law but righteousness and justice. They will therefore “praise the wicked” instead of contending with them, instead of trying to control and suppress evil.


Recently, I sat in a courtroom during hearings for two criminals, one caught in the commission of a crime, the other with a car he had stolen before witnesses. They were planning to plead innocent and were going to be provided with public defenders at taxpayers’ expense; those robbed would get no return, in one case for stolen funds and in the other case for a possibly damaged car. There was no thought in the court or law of the Biblical law of restitution. The penalty was being paid by the victims in many hours lost in the courtroom, lost goods, and taxes paid. The criminals, both with records, were dealt with gently, lest it prejudice the case, and the victims and police were questioned at times sharply.


A fair trail is a necessity under God’s law, but a court that continually penalizes the victims is in effect praising the wicked.


We need to ask the question, therefore, as to why men and nations praise the wicked. Birds of a feather flock together, and evil men will show their preference for evil, and guilty men will work to make justice ineffective lest it judge them also.


“Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he” (Prov. 29:18). A Biblical scholar, the Reverend Derek Kidner, has pointed out that the Hebrew for this verse can be translated literally as, where there is no prophecy or vision, that is, no preaching of the Word, “the people run wild.” Because there has been very little true preaching of the Word of God, the people run wild. And a wild people will praise the wicked.




Rev. R.J. Rushdoony (1916-2001) was the founder of Chalcedon and a leading theologian, church/state expert, and author of numerous works on the application of Biblical Law to society.

Show A Little Grace

There are many in the church who think they are saved because they decided to be good and join an elite club of do gooders. This is not Christianity. Christ said that if we do not come to Him with a broken heart over our own sin, desiring to be changed by Him into a new creation, then we have come in pride and He will not change us when we elevate ourselves. In humility and brokenness we come and then He will make us a new creation. Did we hear this...HE makes us a new creation, we do not recreate ourselves to fit our ideas of a good person, but He changes us into His image. We have nothing to offer Him, He has everything to offer us if we will humble ourselves.






Those who think that they are better than others, comparing their sins against the sins of others, are deluding themselves. Every sin, no matter how small can put us in hell. There are no little and big sins. Pride was the sin that got Satan thrown out of heaven and which is at the center of every other sin in our lives.






If we have not trusted Christ in repentance and brokenness, comparing ourselves only to the holiness of God, then we have not been saved.






I have watched the strut of arrogant self absorbed men and women, grieved over their willful self exaltation. None of us has any reason to condemn another believer over their warts. A wart is a wart no matter how big. Let us deal with sin in our friends with caution, grace and deep love for their well being, not with pride and an attitude of stomping them down as far as we can to elevate ourselves. If we love our brother we will go to him about his sin, but with a compassion for them that we would want others to show to us if we needed to repent and become restored to the body or in a relationship.






When God said "love covers a multitude of sins" , I believe He was telling us not to condemn and harm other believers over the petty, small things, but to be willing to be inconvenienced for the sake of the other believer. God can show us our flaws in the small matters. We do not have to confront or exact revenge on every unimportant matters. We can act in grace and patience, JUST LIKE THE LORD DOES WITH US.






Let the little things pass, bless those who are not perfect, because we are not. If we compare ourselves with Christ, then we will spend more time being ashamed of ourselves than we would noticing the flaws of others.






Do not ignore the big sins, but handle them with love and grace, according to the Word, and let that little stuff pass.

Satan's Tactic: Intimidation

There is a movement afoot to blame "Christianity" for the falling away of Christians from the church.  There have been many articles in the past few years about the hordes of people leaving the church and becoming atheists.  They blame "religion" on the hypocrisy they experience within the walls of the "religious" institutions.  

They are right, those atheists, when they say there is hypocrisy in the church, not only is it there, but it is in all the institutions that are not Christian too.  Perhaps we need to look at the definition of hypocrisy before assigning that term to an organization or person.  

Hypocrisy: "pretending to be what one is not, one who pretends to be virtuous and pious when one is really not."

Obviously, a person who is judging another as virtuous when they are not, is the self righteous non-believer.  They think that there should be a higher standard for believers than they assign to themselves.  Anyone who will not live up to a particular standard, becomes a hypocrite when accusing others of also not living up to the standard.  This flawed thinking is nothing more than verbal manipulation to confuse and embarrass the believer.

This definition describes every human being on the face of the earth.  Those who say they hate hypocrisy and blame Christians for being so, do not hold the same standards that they expect out of believers, therefore they are what they blame others of being.  This is Satan's tactic for silencing the believers.  If he can make us ashamed of our failures and leave us with a sense that we have no right to speak boldly on the subject of the lost sinner, then we will have little or no effect on our culture, families or friends.  We will be muted for the sake of shame and tolerance.

It is important to live up to God's standard, but not for the sake of the non-believer, but because of our love for God.  When we love Him and live according to His will, He will bless us with a proper witness in the community.  He will use us for His purposes.  We do not have to walk about worried that we do everything to impress others, we can rest in Him. Obey Him and when we fail, confess it and move on to obedience once again. 

There is one thing that the accusers can not know and don't think of and that is the nature of the human race.  All people are "desperately wicked" and all people do not have the ability to be anything other than sinful, hypocritical and self willed. Everyone "falls short of the glory of God."

The only remedy to combat this wretched condition is to be changed into something we could not be on our own. Someone else would have to change what we do not have the ability to change in us.  We can work ourselves silly to be something we would like to be, but we can not do it in our depraved condition.  So how can non-believers open their mouths in protest at the imperfections of the believer when they are still in their lost status?

One of Satan's tactics is to keep the believer focused on their past sin and human failures.  He is the accuser of the brethren in the heavenlies.  God says that if we have trusted Christ, He has changed us and will keep us.  

Don't fall for the attacks of the devil.  Look to Christ rather than the words and manipulations of unsaved people.  When they accuse us of being hypocrites, agree with them.  We are all hypocrites when we do not obey the Lord.  Some who are in the church are not saved just as the accusing unbeliever.  They walk not with our Savior, but they claim His name.  Any non-believer who loves his sin, has no standing to accuse others of theirs.  

The non-believer needs the gospel message that he is lost in his sin and his only recourse is to trust Christ to avoid the punishment that is coming for those who will not love Him.  The key to our emotional sanity is to ignore the accusations of the non-believer or the believer who is disobedient, and keep our eyes focused on our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Pray for all those who are saved and walking disobediently, those who are unsaved and those in the church who would claim Christianity but appear to be unsaved.  God knows who is who and what each one needs.  Also we should be praying that we are not sucked into the whiles of the devil through argumentative spirits who wish to disarm us through shame and embarrassment.  

The most effective weapons against the onslaught of accusation are to continually stay in the Word, prayer and the companionship of other like minded believers who can keep us focused on Him.  May the Lord make us all effective, focused and bold in our witness and walk.  

Can We Hear The Holy Spirit?

When we become saved we are given the Holy Spirit by God. He will speak to us in our hearts, we will know it is Him. If we read our Bibles and know God's Word, we will be more able to hear the Holy Spirit. He will speak to us through the Word (the Bible). We have the choice to obey or ignore His promptings. If we obey, we are blessed and grow. If we ignore Him, we will suffer the consequences that come with disobedience and we will remain baby Christians. We should feel guilty over sin, although if we ignore Him long enough we lose the ability to hear Him. God will allow us to experience the consequences of our disobedience. Sometimes it means He will take us home early, we will then miss His blessing. We don't ever want to grieve the Holy Spirit. We want to please God and obey the Holy Spirit. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 "All Scripture is inspired of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work."

Criticism and Failure are our Friends and Teachers

Toil and sweat, then stand back and enjoy the consequence of our labors.

Recieve correction and criticism with gladness and we will grow into accomplished individuals with a greater purpose.

As a culture, we have praised children to the point of being dishonest with them. We have told them they did a good job on something when they didn't even try, just to "encourage" them. What we have created are self inflated monsters who feel a sense of entitlement to praise and personal attention.

We no longer have children who can be  team players and cooperate with others, because their focus is completely on themselves as the center of attention. They are selfish and materialistic. There are those exceptions, but for the most part children are entertained continually and not expected to work hard enough to draw a sweat, so they are also lazy and angry when they have to work. Productivity will fall off, and has, in our country, if we do not raise the next generation to invite criticism to be able to improve themselves.

Criticism is our friend, but our culture considers it rude and unkind. A child feeling good about himself has taken priority over actually doing well at something and standing back to enjoy the accomplishment.

Failure teaches, discipline teaches and criticism teaches, when we remove these elements we set a child up for life long failure and continual disappointment.  

Phony praise is not a blessings but a curse.  Honest evaluation brings true accomplishment that the children can build on for future success.  To doom a child to mediocrity is not only unkind but a sin.  Teaching excellence builds a person of character and resolve to do what is best and gratifying.  There can be no better feeling than knowing that we worked hard, learned new things and can stand back and look at our creation with confidence and pleasure.  

Learning is a wonderful thing, but it is not without hardship and sweat.  Let's go for the greater good and feelings of accomplishment rather than the temporary feelings of flattery.