The NXR Podcast - QUESTIONS - Is Love For God More Important Than Having Good Theology？

00:00:00.000 hey everyone and welcome to questions i'm sitting here with pastor joel today how you doing i'm

00:00:09.220 doing great excited to be here awesome so questions is a show dedicated to you we are taking your

00:00:15.180 questions that you send in to us on our website at right response ministries.com and all of our

00:00:20.340 social media platforms on facebook and twitter and instagram and youtube we compile them all

00:00:25.660 together. And then we try to get to them on this particular podcast. So we're excited to

00:00:30.360 answer your questions. And today we have a question from Shannon in San Diego. She says this,

00:00:38.340 Pastor Joel, what would you say to someone who affirms the importance of passion and love for God,

00:00:43.920 but neglects the importance of theology? What would you say to Shannon today?

00:00:48.200 Great question. Ultimately, I think that just arises from the average person in the American

00:00:54.140 evangelical church today because I think we've been poorly discipled. I think that not all,

00:01:00.300 we have heroes in the faith, but many of those who are professing Christians, and many of them

00:01:07.360 are true, genuine Christians of the generation that preceded us, they had an aversion towards

00:01:14.580 doctrine. They really just, they bought into the lie that if we want unity in the church, 0.91

00:01:21.720 then it's going to have to come at the expense of doctrine. That's really unity is going to have to

00:01:28.560 come at the expense of truth. Now they recognize we can't throw out all truth or we lose the

00:01:32.920 Christian faith altogether. And so ultimately what happened is within the realm of theological

00:01:38.560 triage, right? They decided, well, primary doctrinal truths, right? Cardinal truth, like

00:01:45.380 the divinity of Christ, the Trinity, you know, salvation being by grace alone, through faith

00:01:51.640 alone, and Christ alone. These are truths that we can't compromise, that we can't get rid of,

00:01:56.680 but there are a lot of other doctrines, more secondary and tertiary doctrines that just,

00:02:03.200 they cause quarrels, they cause division. So one of the reigning mantras in the church for

00:02:08.460 several decades now has been doctrine divides. And so there's been kind of a swerving away from

00:02:16.200 doctrine. And those who get excited about doctrine are often condemned and accused by

00:02:22.260 professing Christians as being divisive, caring more about knowledge than love. And so I would

00:02:30.400 say, Shannon, that that's a false dichotomy. Really, it has its roots in a Gnostic heresy

00:02:37.860 that wants to somehow divorce and sever the mind from the heart. The reality is that we cannot

00:02:47.380 love what or who we do not know. So I say in our church all the time, and this is really the heart

00:02:55.280 of this ministry, Right Response Ministries, is that in order to have a right that is a proper

00:03:02.380 and appropriate response to who God is and what He has done, we have to know who God is. We have

00:03:08.660 to know what He's done. So I've said this time and time again, that a right knowledge of God

00:03:15.320 is an absolute prerequisite for rightly loving God. I'll say it again. A right knowledge of God

00:03:22.160 is an absolute prerequisite for rightly loving God, right? I could possess some of the fringe

00:03:28.740 attributes that appear to be like love for someone who's a stranger or an acquaintance. I can possess

00:03:33.920 an intrigue, an infatuation, an interest, but I'll never possess a genuine, rich, and robust

00:03:41.400 love for a person that I do not possess a genuine, rich, and robust knowledge about. So again, I say

00:03:49.620 that a right knowledge of God is an absolute prerequisite for rightly loving God. And when we

00:03:56.120 speak of right knowledge of God, we're speaking ultimately of doctrine. We're speaking of theology.

00:04:00.400 And I think there's three primary categories. There's a million different topics that we could

00:04:06.480 discuss, but all of them pretty much fall into three big headlines, if you will. So the first

00:04:12.580 is that we have to have a right knowledge. We have to have right theology about who God is.

00:04:17.200 Secondly, we have to have right theology, right knowledge about what God has done.

00:04:21.820 And then lastly, we have to have a right theology, a right knowledge of what God requires.

00:04:27.240 And this is where we get into man's response to God, a right response.

00:04:32.020 So in terms of who God is, starting with the first category, and I'll go briefly and finish

00:04:36.240 up here.

00:04:36.700 But at this point, we're speaking of the character of God.

00:04:39.660 We're speaking of the nature of God.

00:04:41.000 See, we cannot worship God for who we wish he was.

00:04:43.940 we cannot attribute to God those characteristics that you and I might personally prefer. But rather,

00:04:50.720 if we're to truly love God, we must be true worshipers of God. And if you'll remember,

00:04:55.540 what does Jesus say about those who are true worshipers of God? Well, in the Gospel of John

00:04:59.460 chapter 4, he's speaking with the Samaritan woman by the well, and he says that the true

00:05:05.020 worshipers of God, they worship him in spirit, and in that context, spirit is actually referring to

00:05:10.980 zeal. They worship him with zeal, with passion, which has to do with your question, Shannon.

00:05:17.420 The true worshipers of God worship him in spirit, in zeal, in passion, but they also worship him

00:05:23.780 in truth. There is both passion and doctrine. There's zeal and wisdom, knowledge. So in order

00:05:34.760 to truly love God, we have to truly worship God. And in order to be a true worshiper of God,

00:05:39.360 we have to have both spirit and truth. We have to have zeal and passion for God, but a zeal and

00:05:46.260 passion that come from a foundation of rightly knowing who God is. So that's the first category,

00:05:53.600 a right knowledge of the character of God. Who is God? Secondly, what has God done? So we must know

00:05:59.720 both the character of God, but also the work of God. We need to understand God's work in creation,

00:06:04.960 but we also need to understand God's work in salvation. What is the merciful work of God

00:06:10.880 on behalf of wretched sinners like you and I through the personal work of his son, Jesus Christ?

00:06:18.440 We'll never properly love God unless we understand what God has done for us through Jesus.

00:06:24.300 Our love for God ultimately is simply a response to God's love for us. We get this from 1 John

00:06:30.620 chapter 419. We love because he first loved us. But how has he loved us? What is the depth of his

00:06:40.320 love, the width of his love, the length of his love, the height of his love? How has God so loved me

00:06:47.460 through his son Jesus Christ? Even while we are yet sinners, Christ died for us. So we have to

00:06:54.740 understand God's work in creation, but also even more importantly than that, we have to understand

00:06:59.480 his work in salvation. We have to know who God is, but also what God has done. The character of God,

00:07:05.700 but also the work of God. And then lastly, this third category is that we must rightly know the

00:07:12.140 requirements of God. We must know his precepts, his commandments, his rules and statutes.

00:07:20.000 I've used this illustration time and time again in our church where, Michael, you're a member,

00:07:24.360 And so I hope I don't bore you to death, but I think it's helpful.

00:07:28.320 So I'll use it now.

00:07:30.140 If you're married, Shannon, then you know that if your spouse has frequently and clearly

00:07:36.120 communicated to you the ways in which they feel most loved by you, and assuming that

00:07:41.720 these ways are ethical and moral, there's nothing sinful about them.

00:07:46.360 If you pay little to no regard for what they've said, and you just deliberately choose to

00:07:51.680 go on loving your spouse on your own terms and in your own ways that are outside of or even

00:07:57.860 contradictory to the ways that your spouse has said they feel most loved, then eventually you

00:08:04.440 have to begin to beg the question, do you actually love your spouse? Well, so it is with God. So it is

00:08:10.700 with God. If God has, in fact, on the pages of scripture, gone to great lengths to communicate

00:08:16.760 to us in his commandments what he requires obey me like this worship me like this ultimately what

00:08:25.620 we're saying is love me like this if God has said love me like this and you and I don't have

00:08:34.960 diligent study so that we might possess a right knowledge of how God requires us to love him

00:08:42.840 and then we go on loving him in our own ways at worst this is arrogance but even at the very best

00:08:51.000 this is ignorance it's apathy we haven't done the hard work to diligently come to know God by

00:08:57.860 studying his word so that we might properly respond in love for God so my point in all of

00:09:04.180 this is that your question comes I believe from the American evangelical church that in many ways

00:09:10.420 tragically has been poorly discipled by people who hate doctrine and who have created a false

00:09:16.080 dichotomy between the head and the heart, between knowledge of God and love for God. But the reality

00:09:21.500 is that these two things can never be divorced. You cannot love a person that you do not know.

00:09:27.600 Wow. Well, thank you for answering that, Pastor Joel. And thank you, Shannon, for sending us

00:09:32.160 in that question. Please write us at rightresponseministries.com and on all of our

00:09:37.980 social media platforms. We'd love to get to one of your questions in future episodes. We'll see

00:09:42.820 you next time on questions. As a special thank you for your gift of any amount, we'll be happy

00:09:48.340 to send you a free digital book from our store. To access this offer, visit rightresponseministries.com

00:09:54.680 slash offer. We highly recommend Pastor Joel's book, Am I Truly Saved? If you or someone you

00:10:00.600 know has wrestled with doubts about the love of God, this would be a great resource. As a reminder

00:10:05.940 to get this offer, go to rightresponseministries.com slash offer. And thank you for your generous

00:10:11.420 support.

The NXR Podcast - March 25, 2020

QUESTIONS - Is Love For God More Important Than Having Good Theology？

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript