Believing in Jesus goes hand in hand with loving Him. As soon as we know Him well enough to trust Him, we can’t help loving Him too. Yet some people who have heard of Jesus somehow don’t fall in love with Him.

Dear friend,

The glorious person who is both Lord, and Jesus, and Christ, has suffered and done and promised just the kind of things that might win the love of sinners to Himself. By these things He pleads with sinners to set their affections on Him.

Think of who competes for your love

In opposition to Him stand the world and sin, competing with Him for the love of our hearts. Christ calls, “Sinner, love me!” Sin and the world shout aloud, “Love us!” The Spirit, the Word, ministers, mercies, and a well-informed conscience press hard for us to love Christ. The devil and the flesh are rooting for us to love sin and the world.

Love we have, and one of these we will love. Both we cannot love at the same time, with a predominant love, for either we will hate the one and love the other, or else we will hold to the one, and despise the other. “Ye cannot (love and) serve God and mammon” (Matt. 6:24). Predominant love to the one is incompatible with predominant love to the other. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15).

Who can avoid grieving, and who can abstain from floods of tears and bitter lamentation, when they see that the love of man — such a noble affection in itself — is set so much on sin, which is so bad in itself, and so bad to those who love it? and set on the world, which proves a vexation to those who are so fond of it? They love and are vexed. They are vexed by it, and yet still continue and increase their love to it. Their vexation by it does not abate their inordinate love to it. Meanwhile, Christ, who is the primary, principal, and most delightful object of love, is slighted by so many, even by the majority.

Realise how irrational it is not to love Jesus

Blind sinners! You love sin so vile, and the world so contemptible, and not Christ, who is so altogether lovely and desirable! What perverseness is this, that Christ, who is best in Himself, and best for you, is refused, and sin, which is worst in itself, and worst to you, is embraced! What folly and madness is this, that Christ is kept out, standing at the door, when sin and the world are let in, and lodged, and kindly entertained in the chief room in your hearts!

When sin should have no love, will it get all? When Christ should have all, does He get none? Why is disgusting sin so lovely, and a precious Christ so unlovely in your eyes?

Have you considered what sin is, and what Christ is, when you have greater love to the work of the devil than to God’s own Son? And even when sin is so bad and vile that, as sin, it cannot be loved even by the worst of people unless it is first disguised and dressed up with the appearance of good — yet Christ is so good that, as Christ, He is to be loved most of all!

When you are called, invited, and charged, in the name of God, by the ministers of Christ, showing you God’s call, invitation and charge to love this lovely Jesus, why do you retort and say, “What is your beloved above another beloved, O ye ministers of Christ?” How long will you keep saying, “He hath no form nor comeliness, we see no beauty in Him that we should desire Him”?

Read More