Today’s Scripture: Isaiah 1:18

“Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”

Jesus said, “he who is forgiven little, loves little” (Luke 7:47). In the context of that statement he essentially said the converse is also true: Those who are forgiven much, love much. The extent to which we realize and acknowledge our own sinfulness, and the extent to which we realize the total forgiveness and cleansing from those sins, will determine the measure of our love to God.

Charles Hodge said, “The great difficulty with many Christians is that they cannot persuade themselves that Christ (or God) loves them; and the reason they cannot feel confident of the love of God, is, that they know they do not deserve his love, on the contrary, that they are in the highest degree unlovely. How can the infinitely pure God love those who are defiled with sin, who are proud, selfish, discontented, ungrateful, disobedient? This, indeed, is hard to believe.”

But when our sense of guilt is taken away because our consciences are cleansed by the blood of Christ, we’re freed up to love him with all our hearts and souls and minds. We’re motivated in a positive sense to love him in this wholehearted way. Our love will be spontaneous in an outpouring of gratitude to him and fervent desire to obey him.

So if we want to grow in our love for God and in the acceptable obedience that flows out of that love, we must keep coming back to the cross and the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ. That is why it is so important that we keep the Gospel before us every day. Because we sin every day, and our consciences condemn us every day, we need the Gospel every day.

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