One of the teachers of religious law was standing there listening to the debate. He realized that Jesus had answered well, so he asked, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The LORD our God is the one and only LORD. And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’. No other commandment is greater than these.” Mark 12:28-31 (NLT)
If asked what is the greatest commandment in the Bible, most Christians can answer with “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.” I have heard these verses more times that I can count during my Christian life. For most of my Christian life I did not take this commandment very seriously. It seemed to be a “no-brainer”. As long as I went to church some, thought pleasant thoughts about God and offered some prayers of thanks occasionally, I thought I was good. Recently I have realized that this, at least for me, is the hardest commandment to obey. The two words that make it hard are love and all. We will look at love in this blog and all in a later blog.
Just give me the rules
For most of my Christian life, I tried to please God through following the behavior rules. Don’t lie. Don’t steal. Don’t commit adultery. I wanted the behavior checklist. Just tell me what I have to do and not do. If we are honest with ourselves, there is safety in just following the rules. We can keep God at a distance and keep Him from disturbing our fairly comfortable lives. We can follow the rules on our own power. We compare ourselves to other Christians and take comfort in “At least I am not doing what they are doing.” For most of us the rules are a fairly comfortable measuring stick.
God loves you personally and intimately
While going through Henry Blackaby’s Experiencing God study, my eyes were opened to a deeper and more powerful understanding of these verses. I realized that God loves me deeply, intimately and personally. “Love God” in this verse means exactly that: to love God intimately the same way I love my spouse, children and grandchildren. I am not to love the idea of God. I am to love God.
When we get caught up in the do’s and don’ts, we miss the best part of Christianity. God loves each and everyone of us as individuals. It’s easy to think of God’s love as being general for the world. God keeps the gears in motion. He keeps the universe from falling apart. But the Bible makes it clear that God knows and loves each one of us as an individual with all our faults and shortcomings.
You (God) made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous – how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. Psalm 139:13-16 (NLT)
God knew you before you were born. God has numbered the hairs on your head (Luke 12:6-7). Never doubt that God loves you for you, not for following the rules. You can’t do anything to make God love you more. And, perhaps more importantly, you can’t do anything to make God love you less. No matter what dark stains you see in the mirror, God loves you. No matter how much you have lost your way in life, God is there waiting for you to come back.
Get off the performance treadmill
This is the good news of Christianity. If you haven’t settled this in your heart, you need to before you will make much progress in your Christian life. If you are still on the performance treadmill, trying to earn God’s love through your actions; you need to get off of it and relax in the sure and certain knowledge that God loves you.
If you can’t accept God’s love because you feel too unworthy, just remember the example of Paul who tried his hardest to stamp out the early Christian church. He caused some of the first believers in Jesus to be killed. He sent whole families of early believers to prison. Paul says this of himself:
For I am the least of the apostles. In fact, I’m not even worthy to be called an apostle after the way I persecuted God’s church. 1 Corinthians 15:9 (NLT)
Paul also made it clear that he was not earning God’s love through his behavior.
And I (Paul) know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. Romans 7:18-19 (NLT)
If God could forgive Paul and use him in such powerful ways to grow the church, God can forgive and use you. You just have to His free gift of love given through the sacrifice of Jesus, His Son.
God wants us to love Him back
This is the astounding good news of Christianity, God loves us and wants us to love Him back. We were created to have a love relationship with God. Often, we make the Christian life too complicated. If we truly follow the words of Jesus and “love the Lord our God with all our hearts, all our soul, all our strength, and all our mind” then everything else falls into place.
God takes the initiative in this relationship. We don’t earn His love. God pursues us. His love is always available to us.
God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. Ephesians 2:8-10 (NLT)
So how do we for an intimate, personal love relationship with God? Just like we do with our human relationships. We invest time in the relationship. Human relationships that we don’t invest time in wither and die. Is it a burden to spend time with people that you truly love? Personally, I can’t get enough time with my three grandchildren. I love them and enjoy any time that I get with them.
If you are married, was it a chore to date your spouse? Did you marry them so you could spend less time with them?
If we truly want to experience God’s power in our lives, we have to invest in the relationship and love God back. Why do we think we can ignore God, give Him some of our leftover time, and still fully experience His life-changing power? We can’t have it both ways. God sets the conditions of this relationship, not us.
What is God getting from you: first fruits or leftovers? How much quality time do you invest in the relationship? How important is your relationship with God? I’ll explore this in another blog where we will examine the challenge of ALL in the verses we started with.
If you would like to explore this topic in more detail, please check out my book, More Than Words.
Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. I welcome any comments.
Larry
Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004,2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.