Tag: Do You Love Me

Do you love Me?

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Grace Gems Whiteby Grace Gems

“Every Day!” Author unknown, 1872

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:6-8

“Do you love Me?” John 21:17

Does not Jesus in thus appealing to me, in effect say:

“For you, I left the realms of glory, and the adoration of ten thousand times ten thousand holy ones!

For you, I became incarnate, took on the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.

For you, I obeyed the law, and wrought a perfect righteousness for your justification.

For you, I endured the cross, and despised the shame.

For you, I gave My back to the smiters, and My cheeks to those who plucked off the hair.

For you, I endured the crown of thorns, and gave My hands and My feet to be nailed to the tree.

For you, I shed My blood, and laid down My life!

I loved you with a love of pity and compassion–when you were dead in trespasses and sins!

I opened your eyes, revealed to you your sinfulness and guilt, and awakened your cry for mercy.

I sought you in your wanderings–and found you!

I brought you up out of the horrible pit, and miry clay–and set your feet upon the rock.

I have loved you with an everlasting love–and therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn you!

All this I have done for you–do you love Me?”

“We love Him, because He first loved us!” 1 John 4:19

by Grace Gems

“Do You Love Me?”

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A.W. Tozerby A.W. Tozer

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he said, “You know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” John 21:15

A century ago a hymn was often sung in the churches, the first stanza of which ran like this: ‘Tis a point I long to know, Oft it causes anxious thought, Do I love the Lord, or no! Am I His, or am I not? Those who thus confessed their spiritual anxiety were serious-minded, honest men and women who could open their hearts to each other in this manner without self-consciousness or loss of face. It is an evidence of the essential frivolity of the modern religious mind that this hymn is never sung today, and if mentioned from the pulpit at all it is quoted humorously as proof that those who once sang it were not up on the doctrine of grace. Why ask, “Do I love the Lord, or no?” when any number of personal workers stand by to quote convenient texts from the New Testament to prove that we do? But we had better not be too cocksure. The gravest question any of us face is whether we do or do not love the Lord. Too much hinges on the answer to pass the matter off lightly. And it is a question that no one can answer for another. Not even the Bible can tell the individual man that he loves the Lord; it can only tell him how he can know whether or not he does. It can and does tell us how to test our hearts for love as a man might test ore for the presence of uranium, but we must do the testing.

by A.W. Tozer