In preaching on John 17:24, Robert Traill gives some clear and helpful advice on increasing our love for the Lord. Christ’s heart is set on having His people where He is. Surely, we ought to love Him in return. Most of those who lay claim to the name of Christian, think they make some conscience of loving Christ. They think it to be an entirely just debt and duty to Him and are ready to say with Paul, “If any man love, not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be Anathema, Maranatha” (1 Corinthians 16:22). But just as the love that Christ bears to His people, is not so well known and believed as it ought to be; so the love His people owe to Him, is not as well paid as it ought to be. Previously, we have considered 9 Ways to Demonstrate Your Love for Christ. In the following updated extract, Traill shows us five ways to increase in love for Christ.
1. Consider Christ and His Love
Take a serious view of the lover, the beloved, and of the love, He bears to them. Consider Christ who loves, His people whom He loves, and the love He bears to them. These three must be seen by the eye of faith in the light of God’s Word. The glory and greatness of the One who loves, the vileness of those whom He loves and the greatness of the love He bears to them. When this is considered two thoughts will rise in the heart.
(a) His love is great
How marvellous, that such a person as He is should love such people as we are and in such a way.
(b) Our love should also be great
How great our love should be to Him in return. What is the cause of this usual and fad remark, Worldly sinners reckon it an easy thing to believe that Christ loves them, though they never tasted of His special love. Yet many sincere Christians find it difficult to believe Christ’s love to them. Even though they dare not deny they have sometimes tasted that He is gracious (1 Peter 3:3). They find it hardest to believe it at the times when they see either the divine dignity of Christ or their wretchedness (these usually go together).
It is because this love of Christ is so mysterious and wonderful, (as the lover Himself is Isaiah 9:6). We find it difficult therefore to think that Christ loves any except those who are like Him in some way. We fail to recognise aright that Christ can and does love those who are not like Him. He loves them so as to make them like Him by His love. His love always has this blessed effect in everyone on whom it rests.
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Love your friends, families, and neighbors by avoiding the tepid “you do you” response when you see them making poor choices. Instead of sanctioning their subjective whims, point them to the objective, higher wisdom of God. Remind them that it might at first feel like a constraint, but in the end God’s wisdom will bring “healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones” (Proverbs 3:8).

The Age of Authenticity
The slang phrase “you do you” may seem innocuous enough. Picture a large group of twenty-somethings sharing a dinner at a pizza restaurant, trying to decide whether to place one order of pizzas to share or let each individual order separately. Even if a quorum lands on a couple of pizzas that sound good to everyone, invariably a dissenter or two will protest, preferring something else on the menu. Rather than reason together to achieve full consensus (a possibly arduous, painfully long process—they’re hungry!), they simply release the dissenter to order separately: Suit yourself, man. You do you!
We’ve all been there—whether in placing dinner orders or deciding how to spend free time on a family vacation. Consensus is hard, especially in an individualistic culture where “have it your way” consumerism is the air we breathe. Sometimes it’s just easier to say, You do you, I’ll do me, and let each person go their separate way, like the modern family whose every member sits at the dinner table glued to their own personal device. They’re alone together; sharing the same space but living in different worlds.

Helping believers navigate today’s media-saturated culture, Brett McCracken presents a biblical case for wisdom. Using the illustration of a Wisdom Pyramid, he points readers to more lasting and reliable sources of wisdom—not for their own glorification, but ultimately for God’s.

Beyond these situational contexts, however, “you do you” has taken on a bigger cultural meaning. Defined in various places as “the act of doing what one believes is the right decision, being oneself” (Urban Dictionary) or as a phrase “used to say that someone should do what they think is best, what they enjoy most, or what suits their personality” (Cambridge Dictionary), “You do you” has become a symbolic phrase that perfectly captures the spirit of what Charles Taylor calls the “Age of Authenticity.”1
If on the surface it evokes the “virtues” of rugged individualism and personal empowerment, the deeper implications of “you do you” are rather foreboding. For in a fallen world where the “heart is deceitful, above all things, and desperately sick” (Jer. 17:9), do we really want to encourage one another to just do whatever we think is best? Whatever is “right in our own eyes”? Read the book of Judges—or countless other historical accounts of self-made morality—and you’ll quickly see this never ends well.
Biblical wisdom exposes many problematic dimensions of the “you do you” mentality, but here are just three.
1. “You do you” weakens community and fosters foolishness.
As the pizza-restaurant-ordering example above illustrates, community can be complicated. In an age when convenience and efficiency are high values, community can feel like an inconvenience that slows you down. “You do you” is an anthem of liberation from the constraints of community. The old saying is wise: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” But in today’s world, going fast trumps going far. Thus, “you do you” prevails over “let’s do this together.”
This is to our detriment. Community is not only a gift for our sustainability (“going far”), but it’s also a gift for our survival, both in a literal sense—what infant would long survive without its family?—and in a spiritual sense. Whether we’re deciding on a college to attend or a job offer to take, a person to marry or a financial decision to make, we “go it alone” to our folly. We should want people in our lives to speak hard truths when necessary, redirect our errant paths, and grab us from the brink of self-imposed disaster. God puts people into our lives not to rubber stamp our every whim and fancy, but to point us to truth and offer wise advice—not to shrug and say “you do you” while we walk off a ledge, but to boldly say, “you should do,” even if it’s hard for us to hear.

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We see Jonah’s disobedience and the Lord restoring him afterwards. We should be ever grateful that the Lord’s mercies are new every morning (Lam 3:22–23), and as John says, “We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 Jn 2:1).  Our God is not only merciful and gracious to us in our times of sin and failure, but He is greater than all our seasons of sin, and he still brings about all that He intended to do in our lives. This is, of course, not a justification to sin. We are still morally responsible to the Lord for our sins. Yet the Lord is sovereign over everything, even our moral failures, He is hindered by nothing and no one, and He will bring about all He intends for our lives.

A few weeks ago I finished preaching through the book of Jonah at our church. This was a book with which most Christians are familiar. Most likely, we know of this book because of the account of Jonah being swallowed by the big fish. We probably learned this in Sunday school when we were children and have taught this to our own children. It is truly an extraordinary account, as no other endured the discipline of the Lord as Jonah did. But as we worked through this astonishing book, I gained a whole new appreciation for its message.
The main theme of the book is that of mercy. God is showing mercy and compassion to Nineveh, and the Lord teaches Jonah about the extent of His unfathomable mercy. The Lord not only demonstrated mercy to Nineveh, the great enemy of Israel, but also to others, including Jonah himself. Have we truly considered the great mercy of God toward Jonah? The account that was presented to us in this book was greatly encouraging to our hearts as a church.
But I must confess that I had not truly considered the rebellion of Jonah in that first chapter until I recently preached through it. The book begins with the Lord commanding Jonah to go to Nineveh and cry out against it because of their wickedness. This is the capitol of the great empire of Assyria. This is the same empire that will attack the Northern Kingdom of Israel perhaps a generation later and deport them out of the land. It will be this same empire that will try to take the Southern Kingdom of Israel in the years to come. This is Israel’s enemy without question.
We know what Jonah did thereafter. He travels to Joppa (50miles or so), and boards a ship that was going to Tarshish instead. The text tells us that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord. Now, Jonah is not ignorant of the reality of God’s omniscience or power. Obviously, he cannot flee from the presence of the holy, infinite God. What does this mean then? As some commentators have pointed out, he was abandoning his calling as God’s prophet! He was basically saying, “If Nineveh is where I have to go, then you can take back your calling because I’m not going.” Think of this—he is a true prophet of the Lord. The Lord has truly spoken to this man, and instead of being humbled by this privilege, as we think we ourselves would have been if God spoke to us this way, he rebels against the Lord and refuses to go.
There could be a few reasons Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh. Perhaps he didn’t like Gentiles (probably not the reason). Maybe he was afraid to go to the city because they were enemies and he might be killed. He could have refused based on what his own people would have said about him because he preached to their enemies.
The view that I hold is that Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh because he knew that God would be merciful to them. God implies this in chapter four and verse two. Why else would the Lord send him? The Lord commanded Jonah to go to the city and cry out against it because, as the Lord said, “Their wickedness has come up before Me” (1:2). Doesn’t the Lord pass over the wicked and leave them to their just punishment? Why then did the Lord send Jonah there if His intention was to judge them anyway? He could have left them to their sins. The Lord sending Jonah to Nineveh was, perhaps, to use Jonah as the instrument of His mercy that they would repent of their wickedness, and Jonah wanted no part of this.
Consider the rebellion and arrogance of Jonah who, again, is a true prophet of the Lord and one of God’s own people.
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