No Greater Love
1 Corinthians 13:6
Love...rejoices with the truth.
John 15:12-14
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.
What is the greater love? To avoid conflict or hurt feelings by demonstrating tolerance to those without knowledge of forgiveness of sin and salvation in Christ Jesus? Or to give your life in service to the lost by sharing the truth of the Gospel?
1 Peter 3:15
Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect...
It isn't disrespectful to point out differences in belief or doctrine that are in conflict with God's Word.
1 John 5:13
I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
If you've found the cure for the fatal disease of sin, how can you not share that knowledge with others?
Acts 20:26-27,31b
I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God. I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.
William Gurnall The Christian in Complete Armour
The most are more offended with the talk of hell, than troubled for that sinful state that shall bring them there. But alas! when then shall we show our love to the souls of sinners if not now, seeing that in hell there remain no more offices of love to be done for them.
Richard Baxter The Reformed Pastor
O sirs, surely if you had all conversed with neighbour Death as oft as I have done, and as often received the sentence in yourselves, you would have an unquiet conscience, if not a reformed life, as to your ministerial diligence and fidelity: and you would have something within you that would frequently ask you such questions as these: “Is this all thy compassion for lost sinners? Wilt thou do no more to seek and to save them? Shall they die and be in hell before thou wilt speak to them one serious word to prevent it? Shall they there curse thee for ever that thou didst no more in time to save them?”
Charlotte (Lottie) Moon, S. Baptist missionary to Tungchow, China
“How many there are...who imagine that because Jesus paid it all, they need pay nothing, forgetting that the prime object of their salvation was that they should follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ in bringing back a lost world to God.”
Lottie died of starvation (and likely Pellagra) aboard the SS Manchuria in the Port of Kobe, Japan, Dec. 24, 1912 after leaving China for the U.S.
Leonard Ravenhill
We ought to weep because we have no tears for the lost. We ought to blush that we are unashamed. We ought to get down before God and repent that we have no broken heart. A wet-eyed preacher can never preach a dry-eyed sermon.
C.T. Studd
Too long have we been waiting for one another to begin! The time for waiting is past! Should such men as we fear? Before the whole world, aye, before the sleepy, lukewarm, faithless, namby-pamby Christian world, we will dare to trust our God…and we will do it with His joy unspeakable singing aloud in our hearts. We will a thousand times sooner die trusting only in our God than live trusting in man. And when we come to this position the battle is already won, and the end of the glorious campaign in sight. We will have the real Holiness of God, not the sickly stuff of talk and dainty words and pretty thoughts; we will have a Masculine Holiness, one of daring faith and works for Jesus Christ.
J. Gresham Machen, What Is Faith?
The door of the household of faith is open wide for all men to come in. Christ died to open that door, and the pity is that we try to close it by our failure to spread the invitation throughout all the world. As Christians we ought certainly to love all our fellow-men everywhere, including those who have not yet come to Christ; but if we really love them, we shall show our love not by trying to make them content with a cold natural religion, but by bringing them in, through the proclamation of the gospel, into the warmth and joy of the household of faith.
Jim Elliot (murdered Jan. 8, 1956 by the Huaorani of the Ecuadorian headwaters of the Amazon that he sought to reach for Christ)
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Christian Unity : An Exposition of Ephesians 4:1 to 16
https://archive.org/details/christianunityex0000lloy/mode/2up
“Speaking the Truth in Love”
Today many teach that you must not say that one view is right and the other wrong; you must not criticize, for to criticize is to deny the spirit of Christ and to be entirely devoid of love. "Speaking the truth in love" has come to mean that you more or less praise everything, but above all, that you never criticize any view strongly, because, after all, there is a certain amount of right and truth in everything.
We must, therefore, ask the question, Is this a right and true interpretation of Paul's statement? Is this what is meant by "speaking the truth in love"?
I answer immediately that it cannot be, for the reason that the Apostle Paul does not simply tell us here to speak lovingly. What he says is "speaking truth" or "holding truth". We are not told by the Apostle to cultivate a vague, loving spirit, but to hold the truth in love. The very word truth, in and of itself, makes the modern popular exposition of the statement obviously and patently wrong.
Furthermore, and this is where the context is so important if the phrase merely denotes a loving spirit, how is that connected to what the Apostle has said in verse 14? If "speaking the truth in love", " holding the truth in love", means that we are to smile upon all views and doctrinal standpoints, and never criticize and condemn and reject any views, how do we avoid being "children tossed to and fro and carried away by every wind of doctrine"? This supposed "loving spirit" makes it impossible to use such terms as "sleight of men", "cunning craftiness", and "lying in wait to deceive".
The very text itself and especially the context, make that interpretation completely impossible; indeed, it is a denial of the Apostle's statement. We must not hesitate to say so plainly.
To put life, or "spirit" or niceness, or anything else, before truth is to deny essential New Testament teaching; and in addition is to contradict directly the Apostle's solemn warning in verse 14. It is to set up ourselves, and the modern mind, and the modern man as the authority rather than the 'called apostle' Paul and all others whom the Lord has set in the Church to warn us against and save us from, this attitude which so dislikes discrimination and judgment.
Life In Christ Studies in 1 John
1 John 4:16b "God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him."
There is only one way I know to realize the love of God, and that is to realize the truth about myself...that (you and I) are a hopeless, damned sinner, that you can do nothing about yourself. You can never put yourself right, you can never make yourself fit to stand in the presence of God. You must realize that you are altogether lost and undone and heading straight for hell, and that is where you would arrive, were it not that God in His infinite, everlasting love sent His only begotten Son not only into the world, but to the cruel death of the cross, so that you might be forgiven, that you might be saved.
Have you realized that the love of God is already in you? It is when we come to the end of self and are utterly undone and then realize what God has done for us that we begin to realize that the love of God is in us.
A.W. Tozer
The Next Chapter After the Last on Luke 10:37 Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."
The testimony of the true follower of Christ might well be something like this: The multitudes that are so dear to Christ shall not be less dear to me. If I cannot prevent their moral suicide, I shall at least baptize them with my human tears. I want no blessing that I cannot share. I seek no spirituality that I must win at the cost of forgetting that men and women are lost and without hope. If in spite of all I can do they will sin against light and bring upon themselves the displeasure of a holy God, then I must not let them go their sad way unwept. I scorn a happiness that I must purchase with ignorance. I reject a heaven that I must enter by shutting my eyes to the sufferings of my fellow men. I choose a broken heart rather than any happiness that ignores the tragedy of human life and human death. Though I, through the grace of God in Christ, no longer lie under Adam's sin, I would still feel a bond of compassion for all of Adam's tragic race, and I am determined that I shall go down to the grave or up into God's heaven mourning for the lost and the perishing. And thus will I do as God enables me. Amen
The Size of the Soul, “The Only Way to the Father”
It is more than a little strange that persons who modestly decline to risk an opinion on matters that do not touch them at all closely, such as philosophy or science for instance, are often ready and eager to pronounce with finality on religion which above all else is vital to their welfare for this world and that which is to come. This follows the popular notion that everyone is capable of discovering for himself the true way to heaven and that one man’s belief is as good as another’s in any kind of weather. A second tenet in this creed is that no one has the right to question the belief of anyone else or to try to influence him in any way in religious matters. This leads naturally to the third tenet which is that we should practice complete tolerance toward every expression of religious belief, however base or ill-founded it may be, and accept it as someone’s way of worshiping God even if it isn’t ours.
All this has about it a certain savor of charity and slips well off the lips of politicians, who are forced to try to please everyone, and liberal ministers who find it profitable to do so. But the man who has knelt before the burning bush or heard the sound of thunder on the mount can never bring himself to sell out his soul in that manner. The man who has walked beside the sea and has heard the voice of Jesus saying “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6), can ever get the consent of his heart thus to trifle with religion. He has been smitten with the love of God and the wonder of the cross and he can never again be tolerant in things that touch his soul and the souls of his fellow men. He will live beside, be patient with, minister to, pray for and love any religionist of whatever color or creed from a cardinal to a medicine man from the long grass, but never will he compromise the truth to stay on good terms with anyone.
J.I. Packer A Quest for Godliness
It is often said, quite fairly, that any Christian who seriously thinks that without Christ men are lost, and who seriously loves his neighbor, will not be able to rest for the thought that all around him people are going to hell, but will lay himself out unstintingly to convert others as his prime task in life...
Adrian Rogers
It is better to be divided by Truth, than to be united in error. It is better to speak the Truth that hurts and then heals, than to speak a lie that will comfort and then kill. It is better to be hated for telling the Truth, than to be loved for telling a lie. It is better to stand alone with the Truth, than to be wrong with a multitude. Better to ultimately die with the Truth, than to live with a lie.
David Platt Radical (Highly recommended)
The question is not “Can we find God’s will?” The question is “Will we obey God’s will?”
Will we refuse to sit back and wait for some tingly feeling to go down our spines before we rise up and do what we have already been commanded to do? Will we risk everything – our comfort, our possessions, our safety, our security, our very lives – to make the gospel known among unreached peoples?
Real success is found in radical sacrifice. Ultimate satisfaction is found not in making much of ourselves but in making much of God. The purpose of our lives transcends the country and culture in which we live. Meaning is found in community, not individualism; joy is found in generosity, not materialism; and truth is found in Christ, not universalism. Ultimately, Jesus is a reward worth risking everything to know, experience, and enjoy.
Atheist Penn Jillette in ‘Listening to Young Atheists: Lessons for a Stronger Christianity,’ The Atlantic, June 5, 2013.
If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell and people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life or whatever, and you think that it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward … How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?
Do you KNOW that you have received forgiveness of sin, was dead but are now alive, and have been adopted into the family of God?
Will you tell someone that Good News?
Corrie ten Boom
When I enter that beautiful city
And the saints all around me appear,
I hope that someone will tell me:
"It was you who invited me here."