When I was a young man I worked construction with some of the roughest people in the country. These guys lived on the road traveling from job to job and “drank up” most of their paycheck leaving only a small amount to send home. So, many were unfaithful to their wives; but it didn’t stop there, they bragged about it!
It used to make me sick to hear these guys as they talked about their wives. They had little concern for damage done to their marriage. They thought their wives’ unconditional love was a free pass. Their wives’ love was a weakness of which they took full advantage.
I get that same feeling today when I hear Christians talk about the love of God as if it’s a free pass to a life of irresponsibility. I hear people talk as if God doesn’t have a heart or the capacity to feel pain and disappointment. Since we’re created in His likeness and image and we have those capacities it stands to reason He does, as well. I don’t know about you, but I never want to grieve God in any way. He loves me and I love Him; so I want my ways to be pleasing to Him. In many circles that would be called legalism but in the Bible it’s called love!
I don’t think we should become sin-conscious, but I also don’t think we should ignore the dozens of warnings against sin and its effects, specifically its devastating effect on our heart! Sin hardens our heart (Heb. 3:13). Just as those construction workers became wilder and more extreme in the debauchery and unfaithfulness, the believer whose heart becomes hard finds himself or herself doing things they would never have imagined. Their unfaithfulness to God gets more and more extreme. Unfaithfulness to God is always a continuum of unfaithfulness to the people in our lives and to our righteous nature.
The Bible says WE LOVE HIM because He first loved us (1 Jn. 4:19). If we aren’t responding to the love of God by falling in love with Him something is desperately wrong in our own heart! Intellectual knowledge of God’s unconditional love that doesn’t grow into a loving relationship will grow into an abusive one. We will attempt to take advantage of His love or treat it with contempt. We will treat it as cheap and meaningless!
Love does no harm... (Ro. 13:10). If God’s love is being perfected in me, i.e. accomplishing the goal, it will change how I treat myself, God, and others. I will work no harm toward people around me, toward God, or toward myself. If I believe and am experiencing the love of God my faith will abound, my righteousness will break forth in the way I treat others, and I will fall more deeply in love with Him.
