Evidences of the Lack of Love to God --- Part 4

by Samuel Davies, April 14, 1756

Fourthly, The love of God is not in you—if you do not labor for conformity to him.

Conformity to him—is at once the duty and the peculiar character of every sincere lover of God. "Be holy—as I am holy," (Lev. 19:2; 21:8,) is a duty repeatedly enjoined. And all the heirs of glory are characterized as being "conformed to the image of God's dear Son." Romans 8:29. Indeed, love is naturally an assimilating passion. It is excellency, real or apparent, that we love: and it is natural to imitate excellency. We naturally catch the manner and spirit of those we love. Thus if we sincerely love God—then we shall naturally imitate him—we shall love what he loves—and hate what he hates. We shall imitate his justice, veracity, goodness, and mercy; or, in a word, his holiness. If we love him, nothing will satisfy us until we awake in his likeness.

Now, my friends, does your love stand this test? Are you laboring to copy after so divine a pattern? Have you ever been renewed in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, after the image of him who created you? And is it the honest endeavor of your life to be holy in all manner of conversation: to be as holy as God is holy? Can you have the face to pretend that you love him—while you do not desire and labor to be like him? And while there is such an indulged contrariety in your disposition to his? The pretense is delusive and absurd.

Since your conformity to him consists in holiness—then let me beg you to inquire again, Do you delight in holiness? Is it the great business of your life to improve in it? and are your deficiencies, the burden of your hearts, and matter of daily lamentation and repentance to you? Alas! is it not as evident as almost anything you know concerning yourselves, that this is not your habitual character, and, consequently, that the love of God is not in you?

Fifthly, You have not the love of God in you—if you do not delight to converse with him in his ordinances.

I need not tell you, that sincere friends are fond of interviews, and delight in each other's company. But people disaffected to one another, are shy, and strange, and keep away. Now God has been so condescending, as to represent his ordinances as so many places of interview for his people, where they may meet with him, or, in the Scripture phrase, draw near to him, appear before him, and carry on a spiritual fellowship with him. Hence it is, that they delight in his ordinances: that they love to pray, to hear, to meditate, to commemorate the death of Christ, and to draw near to the throne of grace in all the ways in which it is accessible. These appear to them, as not only duties—but privileges; exalted and delightful privileges, which sweeten their pilgrimage through this wilderness, and sometimes transform it into a paradise!

Now, will your love, my friends, stand this test? Have you found it good for you to draw near to God in these institutions? Or are you not indisposed and disaffected to them? Do not some of you generally neglect them? or is not your attendance upon them an insipid, spiritless formality? Have not some of you prayerless closets—prayerless families? And if you attend upon public worship once a week—is it not rather that you may observe an old custom, that you may see and be seen, or that you may transact some temporal business—rather than that you may converse with God and his ordinances? In short, is it not evident, that devotion is not your delight; and consequently not your daily practice?

How then can you pretend, that the love of God dwells in you? What! can you love him—and yet be so shy of him, so alienatedfrom him, and have no pleasure in drawing near to him, and conversing with him? This is contrary to the prevailing disposition of every true lover of God. Every true lover of God is of the same spirit with David, who, in his banishment from the house of God, cries out in this affecting strain, "My soul finds rest in God alone!" Psalm 62:1. "O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water!" Psalm 63:1. "As the deer pants for streams of water—so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God! When can I go and meet with God!" Psalm 42:1-2. This is certainly your disposition, if his love dwells in you.

Sixthly, The love of God is not in you, unless you make it the great business of your lives to please him by keeping his commandments.

It is natural to us to seek to please those we love; and to obey them with pleasure, if they are invested with authority to command us. But those whom we disaffect, we do not study to please: or if we should be overawed and constrained by their authority to obey their commands, it is with reluctance and regret.

So, my friends, if you sincerely love God, you will habitually keep his commandments, and that with pleasure and delight! But if you can habitually indulge yourselves in willful disobedience in any one instance; or if you yield obedience through constraint to his commands—then it is demonstration against you, that you are destitute of his love. This is as plain as anything in the whole Bible.  

Evidences of the Lack of Love to God - Part 3

by Samuel Davies, April 14, 1756

And is it not as evident to some of you, as almost anything you know of yourselves, that your affectionate thoughts are not frequently fixed upon the blessed God? Nay, are you not conscious, that your thoughts fly off from this object, and pursue a thousand other things with more eagerness and pleasure? Certainly, by a little inquiry—you may easily find out the beaten road of your thoughts and affections, or their favorite object.

And why will you not push the inquiry to a determination? Is there any matter of daily sensation and experience more plain to some of you than this—that God is not the object of your highest reverential love, and of your eager desires and hopes? Do you not know in your consciences, that you delight more in a thousand other things: nay, that the thoughts of him, and whatever forces serious thoughts of him upon your minds—are disagreeable to you—and that you turn every way to avoid them? Do you not know that you can give your hearts for days and weeks together, to pursue some favorite creature, without once calling them off, to think seriously and affectionately upon the ever-blessed God? Are not even all the arts of self-flattery unable to keep some of you from discovering a fact at once so notorious, and so melancholy?

Well, if this is your case—then never pretend that you love God. You may have many commendable qualities—you may have many splendid appearances of virtue— you may have done many actions materially good: but it is evident to a demonstration, that the love of God—the first principle and root of all true religion and virtue—is not in you.

Thirdly, The love of God is not in you, unless you give him and his interests the preference above all other things.
I have told you already, that if you love God at all in sincerity, you love him above all. And now, I add, as the consequence of this, that if you love him at all, you will give him and his interest the preference before all things that may come in competition with him. You will cleave, with a pious obstinacy, to that which he enjoins upon you, whatever be the consequence: and you will cheerfully resign all your other interests, however dear, when they clash with his.

This you will do, not only in speculation—but in practice. That is, you will not only allow him the chief place in your hearts—but you will show that you do allow him the supremacy there, by your habitual practice. I beg you to examine yourselves by this test: for here lies the dangerous delusion of multitudes. Multitudes find it easy to flatter themselves, that they love God above all his creatures, while, in the meantime, they will hardly part with anything for his sake, that their own imaginary interest recommends to them.

But this is made the decisive test by Christ himself: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple." Luke 14:26. By hating these dear relatives, and even life itself, Jesus does not mean positive hatred: for, in a subordinate degree, it is our duty to love them. But he means that every sincere disciple of his must act as if he hated all these—when they come in competition with his infinitely dearer Lord and Savior. That is, he must part with them all, as we do with things that are hateful to us. This was, in fact, the effect of this love in Paul. "But whatever was to my profit—I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss—compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ." Phil. 3:7, 8.

Now, perhaps, this trial, in all its extent, may never be your lot: though this is not at all unlikely, if a mongrel race of Indian savages and French papists, by whom your country now bleeds in a thousand veins, should carry their schemes into execution! For popery has always been a bloody, persecuting power, and gained its proselytes by the terror of fire and faggot, and the tortures of the inquisition—and not by argument, or any of the methods adapted to the make of a reasonable being. But though this severe trial should never come in your way—yet, from your conduct in lesser trials—you may judge how you would behave in greater.

Therefore, inquire, when the pleasures of sin—and your duty to God interfere—then which do you part with? When the will of God—and your own will clash—then which do you obey? When the pleasing of God—and the pleasing of men come in competition—then which do you choose? When you must give up with your carnal ease or applause among mortals—or violate your duty to God—then which has most weight with you? When you must deny yourself—or deny your Savior—then which do you submit to? 

What is your habitual conduct in such trying circumstances? Do you in such cases give to God and his interests the preference in your practice? If not, your pretended love is reprobated, and appears to be counterfeit. Friends, it is little matter in this case, what you profess, or speculatively believe: but the grand inquiry is—what is your habitual practice? And if you must be judged by this—is it not evident, that some of you have not the love of God in you?