Preaching, above All: you can only preach what you love

Reflections on Lewis Allen, The Preacher’s Catechism, Q1 “Preaching, above All” (ch. 1)

Above everything else, those of us who are called to preach need to know that God is love (1 John 4:8). The church’s great news to a dying world is that there is a living God, whose love for his creation is inexhaustible. Could we ever love and serve anyone else before him?

Further on in the same chapter, Allen makes it personal:

You can only preach what you love. You can only truly love if you know and are daily fed by the love of God.

Why this comes first

Allen isn’t saying “make sure you mention God’s love.” He’s saying the preacher has to be someone who is loved, and keeps being fed by that love, before he’s someone who explains it. Lloyd-Jones says something similar after a whole book about method:

The chief thing is the love of God, the love of souls, a knowledge of the Truth, and the Holy Spirit within you. These are the things that make the preacher.
(Preaching and Preachers)

Keller pins down where that happens. It isn’t at the lectern. It’s in private:

If your heart isn’t regularly engaged in praise and repentance, if you aren’t constantly astonished at God’s grace in your solitude, there’s no way it can happen in public.
(Preaching, ch. 6 “Preaching Christ to the Heart”)

What I’ve noticed in myself

I know from my years lecturing that students can tell the difference between a teacher who has mastered a subject and one who still loves it. A congregation can tell too. My background is in design, so structure and framing come naturally to me, and I’m grateful for that. But we can see the risk: a well-built sermon can run on craft alone for a long time before anyone notices, including me. Allen’s question isn’t about craft. It’s about what’s feeding me.

Chapell names the trap on the other side. He warns against sermons that urge believers to strive to “be” something in order to be loved by God (Christ-Centered Preaching, “The Deadly Be’s”). I can do that to myself as easily as to a congregation.