How do you drive out affections for sinful pleasures that have dominated your life? Many would respond by saying, “You just stop feeding that lust” or “You just have to convince yourself of all the reasons why _________ is bad for you.” But these are incomplete answers at best. Yes, “love not the world or the things that are in the world” is part of the biblical answer, but there is more. You have to drive out a love for the world and a love for sin with a love for God that flows from God. Love for God must expel love for sin, the flesh, and this world.
Thomas Chalmers, one of the most gifted preachers of the Puritan era, understood this when he preached his most well-known sermon The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. New affections are part of conversion. But we must tend and feed those new affections regularly or we will find our first love in danger of dying out.
Do you love God more today than ever before? That is a diagnostic question that will help you gauge the state of your affections toward God.
But be careful that you don’t substitute other things for these new affections–such as religious activity (even being active in ministry), a love for correct theology (though that is certainly important), a set of rules to keep godly rather than a a love that keeps you godly. These three things may divert your love for the world but they won’t drive it out. Only an intense love for God Himself will expunge love for the world.
How do you “fire up” affection for God? How do you return to your “first love”? The same way you discovered the glories of Christ–by grace! Sinclair Ferguson points out, “Only when grace is still ‘amazing’–when we return to Christ and the cross where God’s love for us was demonstrated for us (Romans 5:8)–does it retain its power in us. Only as we retain a sense of our own profound sinfulness can we retain a sense of the graciousness of grace.”
So as Revelation 2:5 exhorts us, let us “remember the height from which we have fallen, repent, and return to our first love.”
