Posted at Reformation Scotland:
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. What can we possibly say to our friends and family members who haven’t yet embraced Jesus for themselves? Do we have any advice for the people who sporadically turn up at church for occasional services and are wondering whether there may be something in Christianity after all? Thomas Doolittle (1633?–1707) pastored several congregations in London for around 50 years right up until his death and wrote several popular works with a pastoral and evangelistic emphasis. He was deeply impressed by Paul’s words, “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema maranatha” (1 Corinthians 16:22). The following updated extract is from the urgent letter Doolittle wrote to anyone who doesn’t love the Lord Jesus Christ, highlighting the danger of this lovelessness and identifying the compelling reasons for loving the lovely Saviour.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.