Category Archives: Love

Purifying Your Heart with the Gospel

13 Monday May 2013

Posted by in Love, Moralism, Religion, The Gospel

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Here’s how you know you’ve purified your heart with the gospel. You love other Christians without deceit, without hypocrisy, without envy, and without slander of any kind. That’s how you know. Let me put it a couple of ways. The reason love is the acid test of whether or not you believe the gospel is it is very possible to have both doctrinal purity and moral scrupulosity for other motivations and out of other forces besides the gospel.

It’s quite possible to be moral out of tradition, out of nostalgia, out of loyalty to your family, out of temperament, out of fastidiousness of conscience. There are all kinds of ways in which you could look at a person who’s very moral, and a person could say, ‘Well that proves that person is a Christian. That person really understands the message of Christianity.’ What Peter is saying here, and what the Bible says is no. A loving spirit is a far better acid test of whether you understand the gospel than moral scrupulosity.

- Tim Keller

 

Love and Truth

18 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by in Love, The Reason for God

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Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God’s saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us. The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent. The conviction and repentance moves us to cling to and rest in God’s mercy and grace.

- Tim Keller

Justice and Love

08 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by in Justice, Love

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Most people love those who love them, yet God loves and seeks the good even of people who are his enemies. But because God is good and loving, he cannot tolerate evil. The opposite of love is not anger, but indifference. ‘The more you love your son, the more you hate in him the liar, the drunkard, the traitor,’ (E. Gifford). To imagine God’s situation, imagine a judge who also is a father, who sits at the trial of his guilty son. A judge knows he cannot let his son go, for without justice no society can survive. How much less can a loving God merely ignore or suspend justice for us – who are loved, yet guilty of rebellion against his loving authority? 

- Tim Keller

The Only Secure Love

06 Wednesday Mar 2013

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God does not love us because we are serviceable; He loves us simply because He loves us. This is the only kind of love we can ever be secure in, of course, since it is the only kind of love we cannot possibly lose.

- Tim Keller

Running Through You Like Lightning

13 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Christian Life, Love

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The call to love your brothers and sisters, to love one another as Christ has loved you, is so hard. It’s so silly to think all we have to do is hold up the ethic of love, love your neighbor, to the world and it will become a better place.

You must be born again. The life of God has to be running through you like lightning. You’ll never do it otherwise.

 - Tim Keller

Fully Known and Truly Loved

14 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by in Love

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To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.

- Tim Keller


Christmas Love

25 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by in Incarnation, Love, Suffering

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C. S. Lewis put it like this,

‘Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.’

There is no way to have a real relationship without becoming vulnerable to hurt. And Christmas tells us that God became breakable and fragile. God became someone we could hurt. Why? To get us back. And if you believe this and take it into your life, you’re blessed. As you take in the truth of what he did for you—how loved and affirmed you are—you’ll be able to let down your defenses in your own relationships with other people. You won’t always need to guard your honor. You’ll be able to let down the barriers down. You’ll be able to move into intimate relationships with other people.

What is in the package of Christmas? His vulnerability for intimacy with us, which gives us the vulnerability to be intimate with the people around us. If you believe in Christmas—that God became a human being—you have an ability to face suffering, a resource for suffering that others don’t have.

- Tim Keller


Grace Greater Than All Your Sin

17 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by in Forgiveness, Grace, Love

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God’s love and forgiveness can pardon and restore any and every kind of sin or wrongdoing. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done. It doesn’t matter if you’ve deliberately oppressed or even murdered people, or how much you’ve abused yourself…
There is no evil that the Father’s love cannot pardon and cover, there is no sin that is a match for his grace.

- Tim Keller