for our sins of unkindness against Him. A child who loves his father cannot but
2. The next fruit of love is desire of communion. Love desires familiarity and conversation. "My heart and flesh cries out for the living God" (Psalm 84:2). King David being debarred the house of God where was the tabernacle, the visible token of His presence, he breathes after God, and in a holy pathos of desire cries out for the living God. Lovers would be conversing together. If we love God we prize His ordinances, because there we meet with God. He speaks to us in His Word, and we speak to Him in prayer. By this let us examine our love to God. Do we desire intimacy of communion with God? Lovers cannot be long away from each other. Such as love God have a holy affection, they do not know how to be from Him. They can bear the lack of anything but God's presence. They can do without health and friends, they can be happy without a full table, but they cannot be happy without God. "Do not hide your face from me, lest I be like those who go down into the grave" (Psalm 143:7). Lovers have their fainting fits. David was ready to faint away and die, when he had no sight of God. Those who love God cannot be contented with religion, unless they may enjoy God in them; that would be to lick the glass, and not the honey.
What shall we say to those who can be all their lives long without God? They think God is optional: they complain they lack health and trading, but not that they lack God! Wicked men do not know God: and how can they love, who do not know Him?! Nay, which is worse, they do not want to know Him. "They say to God, Depart from us, we do not desire the knowledge of your ways" (Job 21:14). Sinners shun acquaintance with God, they count His presence a burden; and are these lovers of God? Does the woman love her husband, who cannot endure to be in his presence?
3. Another fruit of love is grief. Where there is love to God, there is a grieving for our sins of unkindness against Him. A child who loves his father cannot but weep for offending him. The heart that burns in love melts in tears. Oh! that I should abuse the love of so dear a Saviour! Did not my Lord suffer enough upon the cross, but must I make Him suffer more? Shall I give Him more gall and vinegar to drink? How disloyal and insincere have I been! How I have grieved His Spirit, trampled upon His royal commands, despised His blood! This opens a vein of godly sorrow, and makes the heart bleed afresh. "Peter went out, and wept bitterly" (Matt. 26:75). When Peter thought how dearly Christ loved him; how he was taken up into the mount of transfiguration, where Christ showed him the glory of heaven in a vision; that he should deny Christ after he had received such signal love from Him, this broke his heart with grief: he went out, and wept bitterly.