Love the Lord Your God

“But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?’ And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.’” (Matthew 22:34-40 ESV)

Now, when Jesus said that the greatest commandment in the law is that we shall love the Lord your God… this isn’t human love he was talking about. This is agape love which originates with God and which prefers what God prefers. For the believer in Jesus Christ it means to prefer to live through Christ, to embrace God’s will, to choose his choices, and to obey them in his power and strength. And what God prefers is all that is holy, godly, morally pure, upright, honest, faithful, and obedient to our Lord’s commands.

So love for God isn’t based in human emotion, although it can certainly include that. For human emotions fluctuate, where agape love does not. And human love can depend on the ones we are loving and how they treat us, whereas agape love loves even our enemies and those who treat us despitefully. So love for God loves and serves him even when we are down emotionally, and even when we are sick (sometimes), and despite our circumstances. And agape love serves and obeys our Lord, in practice.

But this doesn’t just stop with “You shall love the Lord your God” but it continues with “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” i.e. with every fiber of us that there is. Love for God should consume us. He should be our everything. So this means that we prefer God and his choices with our entire being, in our hearts, in our souls, and in our minds. Our hearts are surrendered to him. Our souls are committed to him and to his service. And our minds are now centered on him and not on the flesh.

Do we really grasp the seriousness of what this is teaching us? I don’t think that I always do. Sometimes I am thinking of me first. But we really need to get what this means and what it should look like in our lives if we put this into practice in our daily lives, and if we remain consistent. We just can’t go by how we feel. And I understand this fully well, for I have been sick for a week now with what appears to be the flu but the Lord is still having me write daily devotions. And so I trust him with my body.

Anyway, the Christian life is not all about us and what God has done and will do for us. The Christian life is all about us surrendering our lives to the will of God to do his will for our lives in his power and strength. It is all about self-denial and taking up our cross daily and following our Lord in obedience to his commands. And the perspective that we need to keep is that he now owns us and we are his possession and our will should now be to do the will of God and not to please ourselves.

And then we are to love other humans with that same love which prefers what God prefers and which chooses his choices and obeys them in his power. So if we love them, we will not sin against them. We will not deliberately and habitually do evil to them. But we will do for them what is for their good, despite how they treat us in return. So we will pray for them, too. And we will not lie to them just to make them feel good, but we will speak the truth in love to them, as well, which is also for their good.

And so we will care more about them than we care about what they think of us. We will literally lay down our lives for them to tell them the truth of the gospel of our salvation so that they hear the truth that will set them free. And we will not coddle them in their sins if they are professing faith in Jesus Christ while they are still deliberately and habitually sinning against God and against other humans. But we will encourage them toward genuine repentance and obedient walks of faith in our Lord Jesus.

And Jesus Christ said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.” (Luke 9:23-26 ESV)

We need to take this to heart! 

As the Deer 

By Martin J. Nystrom

Based off Psalm 42:1

As the deer panteth for the water

 So my soul longeth after You

 You alone are my heart's desire

 And I long to worship You

You alone are my strength, my shield

 To You alone may my spirit yield

 You alone are my heart's desire

 And I long to worship You

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZv3jzOTE70

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