Deeper: My Love for Jesus

As promised, copies of Deeper are now stocked on the Discipleship Resource bookshelf outside the Family Life Center. They are available for a suggested donation of $10, but if you want one, take it regardless of your ability to pay.

I heard Joey Turner say once that when someone is struggling with sin, his real problem is that he doesn’t love Jesus enough.

He’s right.

When I struggle with some besetting sin, it’s not just that I love my sin too much (though that is also true) but that I love Jesus too little. The fact that I am insufficiently enamored with Jesus makes it easy to lie to myself and first wander and then plunge into sin.

In his book Deeper, Dane Ortlund argues that the secret to spiritual growth does not lie in doing more or trying harder; growing in Christ means growing deeper in our love for Him. So it comes as no surprise that the first chapter in the book is simply entitled “Jesus.”

Ortlund tries to show that we cannot move forward spiritually when our view of Jesus is weak and vague: I’m not disregarding the real discipleship already at play in your life and the true discoveries of the depths of Jesus Christ you have already made. But let me ask you to open yourself up to the possibility that one reason you see modest growth and ongoing sin in your life—if that is indeed the case—is that the Jesus you are following is a junior varsity Jesus, an unwittingly reduced Jesus, an unsurprising and predictable Jesus.

What does this mean?

Every happily married man knows this one thing: “I married out of my league.” (I know I did.) Every happily married man is continually in awe that his wife chose him.

That is the mindset Ortlund is talking about. Growing in Jesus is not about improving my behavior or sharpening my doctrine or experiencing deeper passions (as essential as all that is). In fact, behavior modification and doctrinal study and spiritual emotions that don’t deepen my love for Jesus are spiritually toxic.

Before everything else, growing in Jesus is growing in awe-filled affection for Him.

For the disciple, everything else is a means to that end. Family life, professional life, relationships with neighbors, private thoughts, public ministry, spiritual disciplines… everything else revolves around that one essential: learning to love Jesus more deeply.

So how can I deepen my love for Jesus?

There are obvious answers we shouldn’t overlook: If I want to know and love Jesus more, I should spend time with Him in His Word and in prayer.

But the truth is that there is no simple formula for deepening my love for Jesus.

Why? Because most of this kind of growth takes shape in my inner life – in my affections, my imagination, my ambitions, my priorities – and since my heart is notoriously sin-addled and deceptive, this will be a life-long struggle.

But there is good news: we have an excellent Teacher in this school of discipleship.

Jesus told us that His Spirit has undertaken the task of bending the trajectory of our lives toward holiness, and He who began this good work in us will carry it on to completion on that Day (Phil 1:6).

Until that Day, let’s persevere in learning to love Jesus more deeply.

Persevere,                                                                                              Paul Pyle      
Pastor of Discipleship