If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
1 John 2:15
As someone who preaches strongly on the gospel of grace, one of the most common questions I get asked is this:
Pastor Joseph Prince, are you saying that everything is just by grace and we can live any way we want with total disregard for God? Are you saying that we don’t have to serve Him?
Well, ask yourself this: When someone genuinely encounters the Father’s love, favor, and blessings in a way that is totally undeserving, how do you think they will live?
Take a moment to put yourself in the shoes of the prodigal son in Luke 15. After all the wrongs you have committed against your father, he gives you a lavish reception. He filled him with hugs and kisses.
You just went from starving to being clothed with a fresh clean robe. Equally, by wearing the ring of your father, authorizing you to make payments in his name. And as if that is not enough, your father has invited all the neighbors. He even killed a choice calf, and they are having a homecoming barbecue party with music. This included dancing in your honor.
Now, does this make you want to rebel against your father again by leaving home and going back to the filthy pigpen, wallowing in the mud and feeding on things that will never satisfy you? Of course not!
There is a great misunderstanding that believers who struggle with and indulge in sin, and who are still in love with the world, do so because they don’t love God enough. Believers are told to love God more. Thinking that if people love God more, they would love sin and the world less.
How to test your love for the world
But God opened my eyes one day to the real reason believers are still entangled with sin and the world. I’ve never heard anyone preach this before, so this is fresh from heaven. The apostle John tells us, “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15).
Notice that it is the love of the Father, not the love for the Father. So people who love the world and are trapped by worldly pursuits are actually people who don’t know him. Or don’t believe in their hearts the love of the Father for them.
Rather than messages of “You’ve got to love God more!” what we really need is more preaching that is all about the love of the Father. It will never be about our love for Him, but His love for us.
Beloved, when people come to truly know and believe the Father’s love for them and have it burning in their hearts, they will no longer want to go out and live like the devil. There is just something powerfully transformative about grace.
That’s what right believing in the Father’s love brings. If you’ve tasted and savored grace from your heavenly Father, you never want to live in the wilderness of sin. You will won’t to be away from the Father’s embrace, ever again.
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