How do you love a person you cannot see? What do you give to someone who has it all? Why is it so important to love the Creator of the galaxies? What does it mean to love God? Jesus taught us that the greatest commandment given to mankind is to love the Lord with all our mind, heart, and strength, and yet what it means to love God can be a profound mystery.

Maurice Roberts explains the biblical meaning of love for God and shows how such love moves us to do many things, from thirsting for God to praying for our neighbor’s salvation. He shows that love for God is like a sweet fire that must lift all our hearts, all our souls, all our minds, and all our strength in a holy flame toward God.

Table of Contents

The Nature of Love to God

The Evidence of Love for God in our Lives

The Importance of Love to God as a Christian Duty

The Expression of our Love to God in our own Day

About the Author 

Maurice Roberts is an author, international conference speaker, and emeritus minister in the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) denomination.

Endorsement 

“Our culture has it so right and so wrong: love is all we need and resides at the very heart of all that is beautiful and good and true, but in the final analysis, this love is meant for God and is designed to be lavished on Him. Maurice Roberts’s succinct and biblical discussion of these great truths about love is robustly biblical, immensely practical, and at once deeply satisfying and soul-searching.” — Michael A. G. Haykin, professor of church history and biblical spirituality and director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Cultivating Biblical Godliness Series  

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones once said, “The world today is looking for, and desperately needs, true Christians. I am never tired of saying that what the Church needs to do is not to organize evangelistic campaigns and attract outside people, but to begin herself to live the Christian life. If she did that, men and women would be crowding into our buildings. They would say, ‘What is the secret of this?’”

Many people who are new to the church need instruction in the most basic aspects of godly living. Even where churches are engaged heavily in discipleship, visitors and members often have gaps in their understanding and practice. One of the greatest needs of our time is for the Spirit of God to cultivate biblical godliness in us in order to put the glory of Christ on display through us, all to the glory of God the Father.

For these reasons, Joel Beeke and Ryan McGraw are coediting a series of booklets titled Cultivating Biblical Godliness. These booklets treat matters that are vital to Christian experience, and each contribution aims to address a wide variety of people and circumstances at a fundamental and introductory level. This includes teaching people what to believe in order to practice personal holiness as well as specific directions on how to cultivate biblical godliness in relation to issues that are common to God’s people.

The distinctive feature of this series is its experiential tone. While some booklet series aim to enlighten the mind, these booklets aim to warm the affections as well. The goal is to promote communion with the triune God and to transform the entire person in thought, speech, and behavior. To this end, we intend to include a wide range of authors whom the Spirit has blessed to skillfully stir up the church to personal holiness and affection to Christ through their preaching and writing ministries.

We need a Christianity that puts the transformative power of God in the gospel on display through developing a communion with God that is visible to the world. Our prayer is that through this series, the Lord would revive His church by producing Christians who are full of love for Christ, who deny themselves in order to follow Him at great personal cost, and who know the joys of walking with the triune God. This is the kind of Christianity that we need. This is the kind of Christianity that the triune God has used to turn the world upside down. May He  be pleased to do so again.