Reading Classics Together: The Discipline of Grace, Chapter 7

Obeying the Great Commandment

This week’s reading for Tim Challies Reading Classics Together program was the seventh chapter of Jerry Bridges’ book The Discipline of Grace. This chapter is about the great commandment, the command to love God with heart, soul and mind, and how to keep it. How is it that we can genuinely love God?

I’m going to focus on one point in this week’s reading: the place of the gospel in obeying this commandment to love God. Bridges writes,

Scripture … says, “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Our love to God can only be a response to His love for us. If I do not believe God loves me, I cannot love Him.

One of the things that can keep us from loving God is a guilty conscience. A tender conscience is a good thing when it makes us aware of our sins, but it can also

load us down with guilt, and when we are under that burden and sense of condemnation, it is difficult to love God or believe that He loves us.

This is where the gospel comes in.

[W]e must continually take those sins that our consciences accuse us of to the Cross and plead the cleansing blood of Jesus. It is only the blood of Christ that cleanses our consciences so that we may no longer feel guilty….

It’s only when we are free of the sense of guilt that we can love God with heart, soul, and mind. It’s then that

we are motivatied in a positive sense to love Him in this wholehearted way. Our love will be spontaneous in an ourpouring of gratitude to Him and fervent desire to obey Him.

It’s the gospel that provides us with the motive (the “only enduring motive”) to love God.

Next week’s reading is chapter 8, Dependent Discipline.