All You Need is Love?

Love, love, love…

Looking back, I seem to have heard more sermons about the love of God than upon any other theme since the good Lord saved me over fifteen years ago.

Nevertheless, over the last few years, I’ve become increasingly concerned that the love preached about in many Protestant pulpits has next to nothing to do with the biblical God.

Whatever do I mean?

A good example was Bishop Michael Curry’s charismatic message delivered a couple of weeks ago at the long-awaited Royal Wedding.

His chosen topic, of course, was love. But it was sure not the love of the biblical God.

As David Robertson pointed out, you know something’s off when the general public, renowned atheists and even LGTBI activists jump on the bandwagon to heap their honour upon a preacher.

What most got up Robertson’s nose, however, was not that non-believers and ‘liberal Christians’ (‘Christians’ who don’t believe a single word of what the Bible says) sang Curry’s praises to the skies; but that well-intentioned evangelicals were wholly unable to exercise any discernment regarding the content of the Bishop’s address.

I share my dear brother’s concern. My nose was also radically gotten up, especially when I compare this Curry-mania to the North Atlantic press reaction to Franklin Graham’s eulogy at his father Billy’s funeral service some three months ago.

Graham had no time for a free-for-all, everything-goes, universalistic kind of love applauded by sinners and devils alike.

He preached of God’s saving love as mediated exclusively through the death and resurrection of Christ, stating that only by means of repentance and faith in the blessed Son of God can anyone experience the redemptive love of the Almighty.

Thus Graham urged his hearers earnestly to come to Christ.

Not a bit of wonder there was barely a speck of media coverage granted to his sermon!

Love has become the watchword of our new millennium. Hollywood spurts it out. Oprah extols it. Pro-abortion politicians like Leo Varadker lay claim to it. But such love is the love of the anti-Christ.

As evangelical Protestants, we must be careful not to sell our birthright realizing that any type of love that does not promote obedience to God is not biblical love. Don’t believe me. That’s what the Bible says...

• “If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).
• “And this is love, that we walk after His commandments” (2 John 6).

May the Most High give us a good dose of courage to speak out against angels of light; and to keep preaching the old fashioned Gospel of Christ-shaped love!

After all, all we need is love.

Franklin Graham-type love; not Curry-flavoured love...