WITHOUT LOVE, CHRISTIANITY IS NOTHING BUT COLD, EMPTY RELIGION

If you have faith in Jesus Christ, God no longer looks upon your sins and failings but He looks at your trust in His Son and He adopts you as His own son or daughter.

Romans 5:1 (NLT)  Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. 

BUT WE HAVE OFTEN SEEN FAITH REDUCED TO A RELIGIOUS FORMULA: 

• YOU SAY A PRAYER, ARE DECLARED TO BE SAVED 

• AND THEN JOIN A CHURCH WHERE YOU LEARN A FORM OF EVANGELICAL RELIGION

• James 2:19 (NKJV)  You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe--and tremble! 

• 1 Corinthians 13:2 (NKJV)   And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, 

• but have not love, I am nothing. 

Without LOVE, Christianity is just empty religion.

1Jn 4:16 (NKJV)  And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. 

God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. 

• The faith that puts us right with God is a decision to trust in the mercy of God who loves you with all of his heart.

1Jn 4:10 (NLT)  This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. 

A Gospel that does not reveal the love of God is not the Good News of Jesus Christ.

• It is not your love which brings you to God but HIS love for you.

Romans 5:7-8 (NLT)  Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good.

• But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. 

What is the good news of Jesus Christ?

Jn 3:16 (NKJV)  For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 

The source of salvation is the Love of God. 

But what is salvation?

• It is a free gift from the God who loves you.

Romans 6:23 (NLT)   For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. 

God loves you but He is serious about sin. 

There is no sin in heaven and your human nature cannot get into God’s home. 

You can only have a home in heaven if your sins are forgiven. 

When Jesus died on the cross, He was intentionally suffering the punishment that you and I deserved for rejecting the God who loves us, for trying to live separated from Him, for not deeply caring about Him.

Jesus died to pay the price for ALL of your sins but your forgiveness is not automatic. 

Jesus died intentionally for you. 

• YOU must intentionally receive His forgiveness and trust in Him to reunite you with God.

God loves you so much that He is willing to accept you as you are. 

• But He is not willing to leave you the way you are. 

A Christian is not just a forgiven sinner. 

If you are really a Christian, you trust God to change you, to fill you with His love and transform you into His own likeness, to make you like Jesus.

Romans 5:5 (NLT)  And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. 

If you have really trusted in Jesus to forgive you and change your human nature, He gives you His own Divine Spirit to live in you and transform you from the inside out.

• If you have never trusted in Jesus, why not ask Him to come into your life now? 

• If you have believed but never seriously changed why not ask Him to fill you with His love and transform your whole life NOW?