LOVING THE SAINTS

FATHER, Your SPIRIT asks: do I love others from the first day I believed until now (Heb 6:11) (1 John 3:14)?

“For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints…” (Heb 6:10 ESV).

“It is important that you love the brethren from the standpoint of your own assurance of salvation” Martyn Lloyd-Jones (ref#189, Nov 14^th).

“The evidence…which we allude is love to the saints….even the faint and imperfect manifestation of it by one saint to another will constitute valid evidence of his relationship to God and of his inheritance of life eternal” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, Dec 6^th).

“Your attachment to Jesus, so inconstant, so wavering, and so cold, may often have raised anxious fear and a perplexing doubt.  But your love to the people of God has been like an anchor to your soul.  This you have not questioned, and you could not doubt. You loved them because they were the people of God; you felt an attachment to them because they were the disciples of Christ.  What does this prove, but your love to God, your affection to Jesus, and your own participation in the same divine nature” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, April 5^th).

“…a very good and a very subtle test of whether we are children of God is whether we really love and like God’s people and whether we like to be amongst them” Martyn Lloyd-Jones (ref#211, p29).