Love Without Obedience Is Not Love

Some of these unusual manifestations have been compared with unusual manifestations that accompanied the ministry of John Wesley, George Whitfield, Jonathan Edwards, and Charles Finney. Undoubtedly, there were unusual manifestations in the ministries of those four men, and I've studied some of them myself.

But I think the differences are greater than the similarities with the present situation. Let me point out to you three differences.

First of all, all those men majored on the strong preaching of God's Word. They hardly did anything until they had preached the Word of God, or apart from preaching the Word of God. Finney himself commented somewhere about his ministry, “I usually spoke an hour or two.” I don't know how many contemporary Christians in the West would listen to a two-hour sermon. But Finney gave the word in its purity and in its power.

Second difference: all those men made a strong call for repentance. That was their primary demand on the people to whom they ministered. Some people call what we are seeing today a refreshing. But in Acts 3:19, Peter says that refreshing must be preceded by repentance. Any refreshing that bypasses repentance is not scriptural.

The third difference is that in the ministry of those men, there is no record so far as I know that any of them laid hands on people. I'm not saying that it is unscriptural to lay hands on people, but there is a difference. There is a situation in which people receive directly for themselves from the preached word, and another situation in which people have hands laid on them by others.

If I could take a simple example, it's like rain. If you're out in the open and the rain falls upon you, you've received your rain direct from heaven. But on the other hand, if rain is caught and stored in some kind of a cistern, then you are not receiving that rain direct from heaven. You have to take into account the cistern and the pipes through which you receive the rain.

This is very vivid for me because my first wife, Lydia, and I lived in Kenya for five years in a house where our water came from rain caught on the roof and channeled in the concrete cisterns. Although the water came from heaven, we quickly learned by experience that if it stayed for any length of time in the cistern, worms developed in it, and consequently, we always had to boil our drinking water.

There was nothing wrong with the rain as it came down, but something happened in the channel through which the rain came to us, and it was no longer pure. I think this can be true of laying on of hands. It is a channel which is not always pure.

Recently, some ministers have moved from actually laying on hands to some other action of the hands, such as waving or pointing. However, this does not change the fact that something is being transmitted through the hands. Otherwise, there's no reason to use the hands at all. The important question, therefore, still remains: are those hands pure channels through which only the Holy Spirit can flow?

For instance, Ruth and I were in a meeting fairly recently where ministers deeply involved in the current move were speaking. We were sitting about two rows behind a woman who was having a terrible experience. She was like somebody continually trying to burp or trying to vomit, and she just went on and on and on. Eventually, I said to Ruth, “I think we ought to try to help her.”

So, although it was not a meeting for which we were responsible, we went over quietly and started to talk to her. We discovered very quickly that she was speaking in a tongue, but for both of us, it was evident that it was a false tongue. It was not a Holy Spirit tongue. We challenged her to confess that Jesus is Lord, and she was not willing or able to say that. So I conclude that she had a false spirit.

Later on, the people who were with her came over and talked to us and asked us what they should do about it. I asked them, “How did it happen?” And they said, “Well, she went to a church that's involved in this move, and somebody laid hands on her, and this is the way she has been since then.” “But,” they said, “she's convinced it's from God. We can't help her.” That's just an example of rain that came through a cistern that was not pure.

Also, in the present move, there's a great deal of emphasis on love. I agree that love is the greatest thing, but the trouble is that people are not always clear about the nature of love as it's described in the New Testament.

First of all, love in us is expressed by obedience to the Lord. Any kind of love that does not result in obedience is unscriptural love. In John 14:15, Jesus said to his disciples,

“If you love Me, keep My commandments.”

Or in a perhaps better text,

“you will keep My commandments.”

In other words, what is the evidence that you love Him? The evidence is keeping His commandments.

Then in verse 21, the first part, Jesus says,

“He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me.”

And in 1 John 5:3, it says,

“For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.”

Therefore, any kind of love that does not result in obedience to the will of God revealed in His word is not scriptural love. It's a counterfeit, a substitute for the real thing.

Then we need to consider the way that God expresses His love toward us. True, God is our Father, and He loves us. But as a Father, if necessary, He's prepared to discipline us. In the messages to the seven churches depicted in Revelation, I would say that Laodicea is probably the one that corresponds most closely to the contemporary church in the West. And to that church, the Lord said,

“As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent.”

So God's love is not sloppy. It is not sentimental. It is right down to earth. If we are straying from His ways and if we are disobedient, His love is expressed in rebuking us and chastening us, and He commands us to repent. Once again, we have the problem of trying to get what God promises but bypassing the basic condition of repentance, which is a deception.

I recently read the following comment by a British Bible teacher: “Some Christians take the text ‘God is love’ and turn it around to mean ‘love is God.’” In other words, nothing can be wrong if it is rooted in love. However, any love that comes between us and God is an illegitimate love. Likewise, any love that diverts us from obedience to God's word is illegitimate.