The love of God and the love of the world are forever irreconcilable.

The love of God and the love of the world are forever irreconcilable. 1 John 2:15: “Love not the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him,” and powerfully explains why it is not enough to tell people to stop their sin or their love for the world. Sin has a magnetic power that attracts us; and unless a greater power takes hold of our hearts, we remain powerless to change. To command a man into whom the great and ascending influence of the principle of regeneration has not yet entered, to command him to withdraw his love from all things in the world, is to command him to renounce all affections which are in him. his heart. The world is all a natural man. It has neither taste nor desire, which does not designate something placed within the limits of its visible horizon. He loves nothing above that, and he cares for nothing beyond, and to tell him not to love the world is to pronounce a sentence of expulsion on all the inhabitants of his bosom. To measure the extent and the difficulty of such an abandonment, let us just think that it was just as difficult to bring him to dislike wealth, which is only one of the things of the world, as it was to cause him to voluntarily stick to fire on his property. He could do it with painful and bitter reluctance if he saw that the salvation of his life depended on it. But he would gladly do so if he saw that a new property of tenfold value was to arise at the moment of the sinking of the old one. In a word, if the means of disengaging the heart from the positive love of a great and ascending object is to attach it in positive love to another, it is not by exposing the uselessness of the first but by addressing the mind. look at the value and excellence of the latter, that all things old must be abolished and all things must become new. The love of God and the love of the world are two affections, not only in a state of rivalry, but in a state of enmity, and so irreconcilable that they cannot coexist in the same womb. The heart is not thus constituted, and the only means of dispossessing him of an old affection is by the expelling power of a new one. So may we come to see what makes the most effective type of preaching. It is not enough to hold up to the eyes of the world the mirror of one's imperfections. It is not enough to provide a demonstration, however pathetic, of the evanescent character of all its pleasures. It is not enough to walk the path of experience with you and speak to your conscience and your memory of the deception of the heart and the deception of everything the heart is attached to. When he is told to love God supremely, it may frighten another; but that will not astonish the one to whom God has revealed himself in peace, in forgiveness and all the gratuitousness of a reconciliation offered. Tell a man to be holy and how can he achieve such a performance, when his only communion with holiness is a communion of despair? It was the atonement of the cross reconciling the holiness of the lawgiver with the security of the guilty, which opened the way to a sanctifying influence in the heart of the sinner; and he can draw a like impression of the character of God now drawn near and at peace with him. Separate requirement from doctrine; and you either have an impractical justice system or a sterile orthodoxy. Put the requirement and the doctrine together, and the true disciple of Christ can do one, through the other strengthening him. We know no other way to keep the love of the world out of our hearts than to keep the love of God in our hearts, and no other way to keep our hearts in the love of God except to build ourselves. on our most holy faith. This message is from Jesus Christ for all men and women in the field of the Gospel Love one another in Christ Jesus our Lord.