When a person hears the law preached, he gets a picture of a God who is full of wrath and ready to punish him. This scene offers no hope or help. The law with its penalty can never produce holiness or obedience in the sinner. No motive in the law can ever inspire love from a selfish mind. When the mind looks at the law, it feels the influence of hope and fear. This only confirms selfishness and promotes further selfish efforts. Legal motives alone will only cause pride and harden the sinner in his rebellion.

When a person sees the penalty with no way of escape, his mind pushes him away from God, not to Him. He thinks God is his enemy who is ready to pour out His anger and wrath for his disobedience.

God is not a vengeful enemy but a grieved and offended father. He is very desirous and anxious that all men should come to Him and live. The gospel shows God making great sacrifices to bring sinners to Himself out of His pure love.

Six facts intended to break up selfishness and lead the heart to love are:

1. Man has chosen to be purely selfish.
2. The plan of salvation was initiated by the love of God.
3. Salvation itself is a gift from God.
4. No matter how much a person has sinned against God, He still loves him with an unselfish love.
5. Simple faith in God and His plan is all that is required.
6. God freely makes available the love that fulfills all the law.

Divine love can have no beginning, but from a birth of the divine nature within a person. It is only by a new birth that God's love can enter and possess a person. No one can reach God with his own selfish love or have union with Him by it. The love that God requires you to have comes from Him alone. The Holy Spirit must be first a gift to us. God's love is also a gift to us and born in us. I John 4:7b "Love is of God, and he that loves is born of God, and knows God."

The gospel sets aside the influences of hope and fear. God presents a whole new set of motives. The character of God and His free love gives the most humbling view of Him that can be presented to a person's mind. The gospel reveals God's true character that produces love and confidence. God uses the law to bring a sinner to Christ. The law can strip off and remove forever the sinner's self-righteous hope and effort. The law alone can never save nor sanctify anyone.

Under the gospel, we can see that no matter what we have done or how great our sins are, God reaches out to save us. This is the truth we need to understand for it alone will melt and break our heart. This truth strikes a death blow to selfishness and wins us over to a genuine trust, confidence and holy love.

God does not want to condemn or punish the sinner for his horrible sins. He offers salvation as a gift through faith. The sinner, when he has seen these facts, will be humbled by God's unselfish love. When the sinner's selfishness is crushed, the law has done its work. He sees that all his selfish efforts have accomplished nothing. This takes place when the sinner sees all his sin in the light of God's love. His next step is a total surrender to the God of love.

God shows his love by the fact of Christ's death. He died for us while we were sinners. God hates sin, yet loves the sinner. When the sinner sees and understands that it was his own sin that killed and crucified Christ, then God's love will excite and move him.

A heart belief in God's great love is necessary for saving faith. No sinner can repent or have faith if he does not really understand that God truly loves him. You must realize that God has set His love on you. Let His love melt and soften away stubbornness and rebellion. If the love of God fails to break up a person's selfishness and unbelief, then it is hopeless for him. Nothing else can be done. God's love only can set a person free from selfishness.

It is the love of God that we are to focus on and dwell in. It will crush all selfishness and sin consciousness. Many are deceived. They only have a mental image of God's love. They remain unchanged in their selfish state. Do not be fooled. If the love of God has not set you free from the power of sin, then you are not saved. If you have this love, you will keep the commandments.

John 14:21 "He that has my commandments, and keeps them, he it is that loves me: and he that loves me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him."

This is not some kind of mind game with the mind trying to focus in on the character of God. It is also not some type of meditation or discipline a person practices. It is the natural result of receiving the grace of God. A believer's heart is full of love because he has received God's love and grace. He naturally loves Him. Without receiving God's grace, the unaided mind can never love God correctly. The keeping of the law is a natural flow of having God's love.

A person does not keep the commands to prove his love, but because he does love God and His commands. The keeping of the law is natural. If a person tries to do anything to prove his love, then he does not have God's love. The cause of the obedience is receiving God's grace and love. Nothing a man does without receiving grace will cause him to love God or keep the commandments.

A fruit tree naturally bears fruit. The fruit of love is the result of God's love. Without it there is no true fruit.

John 15:4,5 "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can you, except you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches: He that abides in me, and I in him, the same brings forth much fruit: for without me you can do nothing."

Some find it hard to repent and submit to God. They do not receive nor accept the fact of God's love by simple faith. If they would let His love come into their heart, it would break their selfishness and bring their heart into submission and fill it with love. Salvation is impossible without the truth of this love brought home to a person's heart.

Many people try to win God's love by doing good deeds. They try to change their outward conduct rather than their hearts. They may do many religious duties and works. These only drive him away from God. The sinner does almost everything and anything except to come to Christ in faith.

No one can ever attract or win God's compassion and grace. He gives love freely. All a sinner needs to do is reach out in faith and receive all that he needs. The sinner must be driven away from any legal and selfish efforts. He must recognize his selfishness and all self originated decisions are sin. He must realize that Christ died to set him free from his selfishness. God will freely give you all grace and everything you need for complete freedom from all sin.

Romans 8:32 "He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?"

The preaching of the law is necessary so the sinner sees the law, his guilt and his helplessness to save himself. Then, the love of God and free grace should be proclaimed. This will effectually crush his selfishness and free him to love God. It is the goodness of God that leads to repentance. Romans 2:4b "The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance."

The law is useful to convict men, but it never breaks and humbles the heart. The gospel alone does that. Under legal preaching one may be very zealous but he will never be a brokenhearted Christian. A person is only humbled in proportion to the degree of clearness that he sees the love of God.

Any attempt to convert and sanctify any mind without the motives of the gospel is unscriptural. All this does is confirms one in his selfishness. No one can save himself. A person must see that he is entirely dependent on the free grace of God. Salvation and sanctification is a gift to be taken by faith and not a reward for something a person can do. These facts alone melt the influence of selfishness and lead a person to holy action.

You have two types of wrong preaching:

1. All law and not enough grace and love of the gospel. This only leaves the hearer confirmed in his selfishness, under the influence of hope and fear.

2. All love and grace but not enough law. This can leave the hearer thinking he is a Christian already, when he is not. He may have never seen his guilt or realized the nature of his sin, or why he deserves hell. He has never repented, loved God or fulfilled the law. The secret is to have enough of both.

Some people are always looking at their own sins, weaknesses and shortcomings. Their mind is dark and their heart is hard. They constantly are caught up in self analysis. They neglect that they have to take hold of Christ by faith and throw themselves upon Him for all to be right. They ignore the truth of God's love. A right understanding of the nature and reality of the love of God is essential to true Christianity. It is the love of God that draws a person into deep communion with Him. The awareness of God's love must become an ever present reality before any person can ever be established in grace.

I pray this prayer with Paul in Eph. 3:16-20. "That God would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God. Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, Unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen."

Study questions.

1. What idea of God does one get when looking at only the law? Why?

2. What are six facts that are intended to break selfishness?

3. Under the law, a person is motivated by what? Why?

4. How does God use the law?

5. When does God reach out with love? Why?

6. What sets a sinner free from selfish motives? Why?

7. If a person's heart is full of love, what will it do? Why?

8. Can the motives of the law save anyone? Why?

9. Why does the law need to be preached at all?

10. What must a sinner see to have his selfishness crushed? Why?

11. What are two types of wrong preaching? Why are they wrong?

12. What kind of preaching is needed? Why?

13. Do you see how great God's love is toward you?

14. Has your selfishness been crushed by the love of God?

15. Can anyone ever earn God's love? Why?

16. Do you live each day in the reality of God's love?