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Is Obedience Without Affection Still Love? · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Welcome back to the podcast. On this Monday, we're going to start the
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  week with a doozy of a question. Do we love God only by obeying
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  him? Or do we also love Him verbally by using affectional language about Him
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  and to him? A hugely important question today that gets at the very heart
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  of what we call Christian hedonism. The question is from an anonymous listener,
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  Pastor John. Hello to you. My pastor recently admitted that he does not
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  love God or Christ emotionally. He said he loves God or loves Christ by
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  keeping his commandments. Obedience is love, he claims, returning often to second
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  John one to six. This is love that we walk according to his commandments,
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  and to first John five to three, for this is the love of
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  God that we keep his commandments. I've known many other Christians in my life
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  who seem to have no place for emotional or affectional language for God. They
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  like to relate to Him merely in similar categories of obedience. Is this healthy?
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  How important is it to cultivate affectional language for God as God? And
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  what would you say to those who are uneasy with such language for their relationship
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  with God and only ever use this obedience language. Okay, I hear three
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  questions. Number one, is it healthy to relate to God only in categories
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  of obedience but not affections? Answer? No, it's not healthy. It's
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  confusing it best, deadly at worst. I'll come back to that. Number
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  two, how important is it to cultivate affectional language for God? Answer?
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  It's very important. However, language is not the ultimate issue. The reality
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  of our heart's affections for God is the ultimate issue. The language of affections
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  is important only because the heart reality is important. Number three, what would
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  you say to those who are uneasy with affectional language for their relationship with God
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  and only use this obedience language. I would say, get over your uneasiness
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  with affectional language, because the Bible is full of it, full of it
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  toward Man and God. You're uneasy with the Bible, that's your problem.
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  And I would say, if your heart is really emotionally dead towards God,
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  repent and cry out for life. Now we need to be careful here with
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  our words, because it may be that this pastor is not denying that he
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  has real and strong affections for God. He's just denying that he should call
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  them love. Maybe love he is saying love for God is something else,
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  namely, love is obedience. Now, if that's what he's saying, then
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  he may be a good Christian and just biblically confused. In other words,
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  his heart may be right, but he is naming things in unbiblical ways,
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  and probably he's confusing his people in the process. Sounds like it from this
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  question. On the other hand, this is more scary. It may be
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  that he really doesn't have any affections for God, and in that case he
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  needs to be born again. If there is not even a mustard seed of
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  delight in God, thankfulness to God, hope God, satisfaction in God,
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  desire for God, if none of those emotions is in his heart for God
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  and Christ, he's not a Christian. So let me try to address both
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  of those kinds of people at the same time. The first kind is the
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  Christian who is confused about the affections that he genuinely has for God and simply
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  doesn't know whether to call them love or not. And secondly, the person
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  who thinks he's a Christian when he has no emotions in his heart for God
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  and Christ at all, he's just dead emotionally toward God. Now, here's
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  the main thing to say about the confusion of claiming to love God with obedience
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  but not with heart affections. That's like affirming fruit but denying apples. I've
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  said this so many times. Affirming obedience and denying affections is like affirming fruit
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  and denying apples. Because obedience means doing what God commands, and God commands
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  affections. It's confusing. It's contradictory to say I obey God, but I
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  don't have any of the affections that God commands me to have. That's just
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  really confusing and contradictory. For example, Psal'm thirty seven four says delight yourself
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  in the Lord. Now that's a command. So a pastor who says he's
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  obedient to God's commands would be obedient to the command to delight himself in the
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  Lord. Now, he might not call it love, though I think he
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  should. But he might not, And I'll show it in a minute why
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  I think think he should. That's not a deadly problem. To get your
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  language confused is not a deadly problem. Not to have any delight in the
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  Lord is a deadly problem. But for now, whether he calls delight in
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  the Lord love or not, he is commanded to have delight, and it
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  is simply confusing and contradictory to say he obeys God but does not relate to
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  God with his emotions, because those emotions are commanded, and if he doesn't
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  have them, he's disobedient to the command. We can add to Psalm thirty
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  seven to four the command in Psalm thirty two eleven be glad in the Lord
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  and Philippines three to one rejoice in the Lord, and many others. And
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  not only are affections for God commanded, but that way of feeling in the
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  heart is held out to us as an example, not just a command,
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  but an example of how godly people relate to God. For example, in
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  Psalm forty three four, I go to the altar of God to God my
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  exceeding joy or Psalm eighty four to two. My soul longs, yes faints
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  for the courts of the Lord. My heart and flesh sing for joy to
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  the Living God or Psalm sixty three. Oh God, you are my God.
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  Earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. You are Your
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  steadfast love is better than life. My soul will be satisfied as with fat
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  and rich food when I remember you upon my bed. And not only are
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  affections for God commanded and given as examples of how godly people relate to God,
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  but we are taught to pray for those affections. This is what we
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  ought to do if we don't have them Psalm ninety, verse fourteen. Satisfy
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  us in the morning with your steadfast love. This is a cry to God
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  to give us the affections for Him that we ought to have and may not
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  at the moment have. And on top of all that, Jesus warns against
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  outward obedience, where the heart feels nothing Matthew fifteen eight. This people honors
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  me with their lips or lips are moving, that's outward obedience. But their
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  heart, he says, is far from me. In vain do they worship
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  me so in vain? That's a big, terrible, horrible statement. Without
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  heart, Without heart, our outward obedience is nothing. So I conclude that
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  it is confusing and contradictory to say that you obey God's commands but that you
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  don't pursue the very affections for God that he has commanded. Now one last
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  thing, why should we use the word love for these affections for God?
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  Now? Not saying that love for God is only affections. The Bible talks
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  about love in a very broad way. But I am saying that love for
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  God is not less than affections for God. Now why would I say that?
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  And I'll give just one reason Because of Matthew ten thirty seven. Jesus
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  said this, whoever loves loves father or mother more than me is not worthy
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  of me. And whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy
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  of me. Now, in that sentence, love for Jesus cannot mean obedience
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  to Jesus' commands. Cannot because he's comparing love for Jesus with love for our
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  children. Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
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  Love for our children does not mean obedience to our children. So the
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  point is we must love Jesus with the kind of love we have for our
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  most precious family members, only more so, and that is an affectional love.
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  So I hope the pastor who said I love God by keeping his commandments,
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  not with my affections, will realize that God commands that we feel affections
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  for God, and I hope that this is just a confusion of language and
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  not a case of real deadness of heart. Pointed words, fitting words,
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  Thank you, Pastor John, and related here. We have covered depression,
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  spiritual deadness, and desertion on the podcast many times over the years. When
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  God feels distant and our hearts feel dead towards him, when we can't obey
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  this commandment to love Him with our hearts, then what do we do next?
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  How do we respond to such deadness inside of us? If you're asking
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  those kind of questions right now, I took the answers to those questions over
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  the many years of this podcast, and I wrote a digest of what Pastor
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  John has said, and that's in a new book, Ask Pastor John seven
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  hundred and fifty Bible Answers to Life's Most Important Questions. That's the name of
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  it, and Ask Pastor John seven hundred and fifty Bible Answers to Life's most
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  Important Questions includes this question. And we'll be talking about that book soon,
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  but when you get it, see pages three ninety five to four oh nine
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  to find my digestive episodes on this topic of spiritual deadness. When the affections
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  inside of us are dull. Thanks for joining us today. I'm your host,
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  Tony Ranky Pastor John, and I will see you tune