If you're not a Christian, what's the message to you?

If you don't love like this, that's a sin. And if you're a sinner, you need a Savior. And Jesus Christ will come in and forgive your sin of lovelessness. Jesus will cleanse your life, and he'll plant his love in your heart, and then he'll teach you how to love the way he wants you to love. For some of you, this is a call to salvation. For some of you, it's an exhortation to let the love that's there flow.

Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. As thoughts turn this weekend to flowers and greeting cards and heart-shaped boxes of candy, it's fitting to consider a question asked through the ages, what is love? John MacArthur looks at that issue from a distinctly biblical perspective today as we continue his series called Love No Matter What. But before we get to

the lesson, this is a special day for our ministry. Today marks the 57th anniversary of Grace to You.

It was in 1969 that John MacArthur began his pastorate at Grace Community Church in Los Angeles,

and so we connect our origin to that date.

A few years ago, we asked John about the consistent nature of his Bible teaching, how the way he

prepared his sermons never changed over the decades. And here's what John had to say about that.

I guess that's called being a creature of habit.

I started out, committed to expositing scripture, digging into the text, and letting the text proclaim what God intended it to proclaim.

And I've been doing that ever since.

I've heard you say this repeatedly, that the secret

to you think, the secret to your preaching ministry is keep your seat in the chair until you're

finished with preparation. Yeah, preparation is everything to me. When I look at myself, I see myself

sort of bound up in the New Testament word for herald. That's a Greek word that is used

to describe a preacher. And if you know anything about a herald, a herald would walk into the

village and give the king's message. Right. And once I understood that as a young guy that I was a

herald, I didn't invent the message. It wasn't my message. I wasn't the authority. I wasn't

the source. I understood what preaching was. I come from the king. The king has something to say, and I am the messenger, and that's it. In order for me to understand what the king wants to say, I have to go to the revelation that the king has given us and proclaim his message faithful in its intent when it was originally

inspired. So that's always been my passion. And friend, it's that passion of Johns, his commitment

to teach the Bible clearly and accurately, and really to let scripture speak for itself,

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