Evan writes in to ask Pastor John, "I have a follow-up question from episode number 326. I have trouble distinguishing the difference between loving God and loving theology, or loving God and just loving loving God. Can you give some practical tips to make sure I am truly loving God and not just loving the theology about Him?" Pastor John, how would you make this distinction tangible for Evan?

Well, my first response to Evan is that the fact that you care about that, that you even can articulate it that way, is a very good sign, and I'm encouraged that God has done enough in your life so that you're not blindly going on loving loving God without really loving God, because you know the difference between the two.

But as I thought about this, at least four practical tests for you and anybody, really all of us, to test whether we are just fascinated with theology about God or whether we really love God. Test number one, is your love for God and your vision of God through the theology changing your life at the practical root?

What you do, what you love to do, what you're entertained by, what your preferences are, the way you treat people, are you patient, are you killing sin by the Spirit, are you bearing the fruits of the Spirit? In other words, holiness of life is the mark of authentic faith in and through good theology.

You can have a good theology and be a rotten person, and so it's the person who gets changed by authentic faith through right theology. James said, "Faith without works is dead." And so if we're not being changed from the inside out, then probably we're playing games. Number two, test number two, do you love to bear witness to the truth of the gospel as good news to people who need it, or do you only like to discuss it with people who already know it?

In other words, the essence of biblical truth is news. Gospel means news, good news. And a lot of people seem to never get around to the newsishness of it. They're always analyzing it, and you want to shake them and say, "Hey, this is news! This is news! The King has come!

Sins are forgiven! Hell and death and sin are overcome! Heaven is open! God is willing to be our friend! There's news in all the worlds!" If you have no inclination to tell anybody that as news, you've got a problem. I mean, something's deeply, deeply wrong. It's as though you're listening to the news at night, and you're just analyzing the grammar, grammar, grammar, grammar, grammar, and you don't ever hear anything coming out of the news that strikes you as either bad or good news.

And Jesus said, "Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed." So we don't want to be around people and have no inclination to speak news into their lives. That's number two. Test number two. Test number three. Do you take risks with your life for the sake of the gospel?

Your money, your career, your relationships? We know what we value by what we take risks for. Hebrews 10:34, "You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one." So the test of whether you really love your better possession is whether you're accepting the plundering of your property and taking risks to go visit people in prison.

Here's the last test, number four. How does your theology serve you when you're suffering or dying? Ideas about God aren't going to cut it in those moments. Your fears will slice through that in a minute, and you will be terrified that ideas aren't going to save you. We show what is at the root of our commitments by how those commitments serve us in suffering.

Paul said, "We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death." And then he added, "That was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead." So my question is, test number four, when the doctor--interesting, I just got a call today from a doctor following up on the hospitalization I had a while back.

They did a second CT scan on my belly, and when I saw the number on the cell phone, I thought, "Okay." I didn't know whether he'd call or not, and he called, and he said, "Not a problem. Clear CT scan." So now at that moment, am I finding that the God who raises the dead is a sweet and all-sufficient rock, or am I panicking and realizing I've been playing games all my life?

So I'll just give you a word for each test. Holiness, news, risk, and suffering. Those are our four possibilities, Evan, for how you might test yourself. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you, Evan, for the question. If you have a question for Pastor John, especially a follow-up from an episode you may have heard in the past, please email those questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.

If you're in the app, you can just send us an email from right there. Tomorrow we will look at a question from a listener named Josh who asks, "Can I believe the whole Bible and still not be one of the elect?" That's a frightening question, but it's a question that's very common in the Ask Pastor John mailbag.

We'll be back tomorrow to hear Pastor John's answer. Until then, I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.