“Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.” (Heb. 10:22)
Those whose thoughts are constantly on their love of the Lord Jesus Christ, and on His love for them, who mourn over every sin, small and unintentional as well as those times when they did not take the way out of the temptation, whose lives are perhaps not completely based on the emotion of love, but it is a large part of their existence, stand on the brink continuously of despair if that love, the emotion of it, is not realized.
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9)
And my friends, despair is a great sin against the Living God.
When the temptations of pleasure arrive from our adversary, and they are recognized as sinful by us, and so averted, he does not stop there. The opportunity to blaspheme the name of our Lord can arrive when situations do not go as we planned, when trials and tribulations arrive, when doubts appear in our thoughts, yet if we recognize them as such, those doubts are displaced, and praise for the Lord’s past and continuous care for us flow past our lips from a heart of faith.
“Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15a)
But when those who base their faith on the foundation of the emotion of love cannot, for whatever reason, feel that love they crave, then the temptation to despair arrives, and rarely in the lives of those we speak of here can that despair be removed unless that emotion, that heart that is so easily deceived in this regard, once again can raise that emotion of love from the ashes.
Sinful pleasures can be averted, doubts can be replaced with hope, but despair can remain a nearly constant companion no matter the external situation, it is as a gloomy day in the heart even in the brightest sunshine.
Despair my friends will not accept a conscience free of guilt, it will not accept that our sins, past, present and future were all paid for on the cross by our Savior, if there is no visible present sin in the life of those we speak of here, in their mind they will return to the memories of sins committed, they will question nearly constantly the sincerity of the faith they have incorrectly built their foundation of faith upon.
Faith, true faith in the saving power of the Lord Jesus Christ of our soul, and in His power to keep us has nothing to do with the emotions, it is a fact. Love for Him follows faith, and those who place love before faith will, throughout their lives, find despair a constant companion.
We are saved by grace through faith, not by love, but because of His eternal love for us.
“We love him, because he first loved us.” (1st John 4:19)
The only love that our Father in heaven recognizes and fully accepts is love offered through faith.
“So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (Romans 10:17)
Love follows faith.
Those who do not understand these truths, who will not accept them as such, will not allow themselves to have a conscience free from guilt, they will not fully accept His forgiveness, and so as they continuously search for that uplifting emotional feeling of love, they deny the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ as sufficient to remove all their sins, to fully know they have been forgiven.
Despair is a temptation that Satan will use, and succeed in many times in the lives of those who place love above faith, who wrongly trust their heart above the truths of the Word of God.
“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)
Stand in faith, love will follow, and with it a clear conscience.
