No Love For God Is Possible Except...

When the law is the law of God's love, faith is presumed in its commandments. 

• This surely can be seen in the preface of the law, I am the LORD your God. 
• It is only by faith that He is known as our God. 

In the same manner the summary of the law states, you shall love the LORD your God. 

• The fact is that no love for God is possible except when we know Him as our God, since we can love Him only in His love. 
• When He is not made known to us in His love, we can only flee from Him. 
• Only by faith is He revealed to us in His love. 

Thus in the requirement of the law faith is presumed. 

• The law is the law of love, but behind its requirement is the demand to have faith.

However, that does not take away that God places the command to love Him before all people. 

• But He also comes to all people with the demand to have faith.
• That pagans cannot come to faith because they do not have the Word revelation, is their fault. 
• In the beginning God gave His Word to man, but the nations have despised this revelation. 
• Thus, they all fall under the judgment of the law of love that presumes faith. 

But we cannot understand the claim of the law, unless we have known the love of God through faith. 

• That love is now made known to us only in the cross of Christ, in being led out of our house of bondage. 
• And only when we see something of that, can the demand of the law come to us. 

There is but one revelation of God’s love that comes to us, holds on to us, and at the same time by the law of that love judges us. 

• When we see God in the cross of Christ, we are bound to God for good, wish to be with Him, while at the same time we tremble at the judgment of His love. 
• He draws us and He casts us off. 
• In this way alone do we face the judgment of His law of love. 

Thus also in this part of the misery nothing can happen to us outside of Christ, in Whom the revelation of God is centered. 

• In His cross the gift of God’s love is ours, 
• but in His cross as nowhere else there is also a demonstration of the demand of the law of love and of the holiness of that demand.
• If indeed God has so loved us that He gave His own Son for us in this way, how holy and great must then be the demand of that love! 

We mean to say with all of this that God is known to us only through faith, and that only by faith the claim of that love pervades our understanding. 

• If there is doubt, there really cannot be a very deep sense of guilt.
• Faith and a feeling of guilt are present together, or they are both not present. 
• We cannot speak of a love for God when there is no faith.

Sometimes people want to speak of a certain love for God, while they deny faith. 

• I do not know how I must love, when I do not believe in God.
• When I see Him by faith, He draws me and yet puts me in the judgment of His love; 
• and thus I come to the turning point of the feeling of guilt. 

From where do you know your sins and misery? 

• From the law of God. 

What does God’s law require of us? 

• Christ teaches us this in a summary in Matthew 22. 
• You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. 
• This is the great and first commandment. 

Adapted Excerpt from The True Faith by Simon Gerrit De Graaf (1889-1955)