He who loves God desires His presence. Lovers cannot be long apart, they soon have fainting fits, for want of a sight of the object of their love. A soul deeply in love with God desires the enjoyment of Him in His ordinances, in word, in prayer, and sacraments. David was ready to faint away and die when he had not a sight of God. “My soul fainteth for God” (Psalm 84:2).
He who loves God does not love sin. “Ye that love the Lord, hate evil” (Psalm 97:10). The love of God, and the love of sin, can no more mix together than iron and clay. Every sin loved, strikes at the being of God; but he who loves God, has a hatred of sin. He who would part two lovers is a hateful person. God and the believing soul are two lovers; sin parts between them, therefore the soul is implacably set against it. By this, try your love for God. How could Delilah say she loved Samson, when she entertained correspondence with the Philistines, who were his mortal enemy?
He who loves God is not much in love with anything else. His love is very cool to worldly things. His love to God moves swiftly, as the sun in the firmament; to the world it moves slowly, as the sun on the dial. The love of the world eats the heart out of religion; it chokes good affections, as earth put out fire. The world was a dead thing to Paul: “I am crucified to the world, and the world is crucified to me” (Gal. 6:14).
He who loves God cannot live without Him. Things we love we cannot be without. A man can do without music or flowers, but not food; so a soul deeply in love with God looks upon himself as undone without Him. “Hide not thy face from me, lest I be like them who go down into the pit” (Psalm 143:7). Alas! how do they show they have no love to God who can do well enough without Him! Let them have corn and oil, and you shall never hear them complain of the lack of God.
He who loves God will be at any pains to get Him. What pains the merchant takes, what hazards he runs, to have a rich return from the Indies! Jacob loved Rachel, and he could endure the heat by day, and the frost by night, that he might enjoy her. A soul that loves God will take any pains for the fruition of Him…. “I sought him whom my soul loveth” (Song of Solomon 3:2). How can they say they love God, who are not industrious in the use of means to obtain Him?
He who loves God prefers Him before estate and life. (1) Before estate – “For whom I have suffered the loss of all things” (Phil. 3:8). Who that loves a rich jewel would not part with a flower for it? (2) Before life – “They loved not their lives to the death” (Rev. 12:11). Love to God carries the soul above the love and the fear of death.
He who loves God loves His favorites, the saints (I John 5:1). To love a man for his grace and the more we see of God in him, the more we love him, that is an infallible sign of love to God. The wicked pretend to love God, but hate and persecute His image…. Can it be imagined that he loves God who hates His children because they are like God?
If we love God we cannot but be fearful of dishonoring him, as the more a child loves his father the more he is afraid to displease him, and we weep and mourn when we have offended him…. That Peter should deny Christ after he had received such signal tokens of His love, this broke his heart with grief. “He wept bitterly.” Are our eyes dropping tears of grief for sin against God? It is blessed evidence of our love to God; and such shall find mercy. “He shows mercy to thousands of them that love Him.”
Use. Let us be lovers of God. We love our food and shall we not love Him that gives it? All the joy we hope for in heaven is in God; and shall not He who shall be our joy then, be our love now? It is a saying of Augustine, “I would hate my own soul if I did not find it loving God.”
Excerpted from A Body of Divinity by Thomas Watson (1692)
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