You should have seen the blank faces staring back at me, nearly 30 of them. I might as well have asked the class, “Quick! what’s the cube root of 1,117?”
We had been discussing the first and greatest commandment: “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’” Jesus provided a bonus answer, not demanded by his questioner: “The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
Here's how the question came about: after an hour’s discussion of the text in Mark 12: 28-31, I wanted to end the class on a practical note, so I asked, “OK, then. We have discovered the two most important legacies of the Old Testament. So tell me: how do we demonstrate our love for God?” The room fell silent. Not even the crickets dared make a sound.
I drove home from class wondering, “could it be that difficult? Has Jesus left us no clue regarding how to show our love for God?”
Perhaps the students in my little class had never considered the question. Could that be? I teach a college religion course in a small southern town where “everyone” goes to church. Has there been no Sunday school class, no Bible study, no sermon ever addressed at the question, how do we love God? This question is more than a meditation for the coming week. It is the question of our lives. It is the question of our purpose and being. Have you ever asked yourself this question?
If the entire Old Testament narrative can be reduced to just under 50 words, what answer can we give? What answer must we give? What answers can involve our emotion, personality, intellect and physicality? What answers can include the Creator, whom we cannot see, and our neighbor, whom we can? What answers can give direction to child and grandparent alike? What answers are required of us?
I’m asking because I’ve begun to wonder if we have given ourselves to this question. Perhaps you have given it some thought. Perhaps you will now. Either way, I’ll check the comments below nearly every hour, all week long, curious to know how you express your love for God. We need each other’s answers--what are yours?
Total surrender and sacrifice of everything you are to Christ is the simple answer. Salvation cost Jesus His life and it costs us the same. I believe that it was Bonhoeffer that wrote on "Cheap Grace." Too many people today want cheap grace. They want salvation and no sacrifice or surrender. How bad do you want a true fellowship with God? How bad do you want God to share His secret's with you? 2 Corinthians 12 I want it bad and to have that fellowship with the creator I have to trust God so that He will trust me. I have to understand the pain that He allows in my life and I have to welcome the trial that He puts in my life realizing that they are there to conform me into His image and that He might be exalted through the way I handle life's problems. God will give me the Grace I need when I need it to endure the pain He puts in my life. If we did not have the trials and tribulations then we would not experience New Grace. Yesterday's manna is not good for today. I need New Manna daily. I need a New Song to Sing. A New Experience with the Creator daily and many times that New Grace and New Song comes out of the aggravation, frustration and pains of life. God thank you for the pain and the valleys that you have put in my life for it is in them that I am learning to Love you and Appreciate you and to Understand the Love that you have for me and the Love that I need for others. Thank you for your articles I love them and look forward to you jarring my thinking.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the compliment, Mark, and your comments highlight one of the challenges of this question, how to love God. There are so many possibilities that perhaps we will have trouble giving it full expression.
ReplyDeleteHow do we show anyone that we love them...one is to do things that make them happy...to try and be close to them...to love God doesn't necessarily have to be different...take what you do know of love and apply it to Him...I love love... (:
ReplyDeleteI like your answer for two reasons: first it starts practically, "take what you do know of love and apply it to Him." I've been married for 27 years, and looking back I'd have to say I knew almost nothing of love. But we had to start somewhere, and we've learned along the way. The second reason I like your answer is you treat the Father like a Person, recognizing that we desires our attention our our "close-ness." these things make Him happy, because He, too has a heart.
ReplyDeleteThis is love: not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. That Paul's answer to the question, I think, but I am not quite sure that it helps. What I interpollate from the two messages, however, is that we show love for God by passing along his unmerited love to others. We don't waint for anyone to love us. We just love them and do what we can to make their lives better.
ReplyDeleteIt's always wise to consult the Biblical witness, Rebecca. And like you, I find that sometimes it helps, and sometimes it can muddy the water. To be sure, we cannot go wrong trying to imitate his love as we understand it. If we fail, at least we fail in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteWe love God by loving others. We love God by studying his word and applying it to our lives. We love God by submitting to His will and not our own. And we love God when we get out there and serve others...a light in the middle of darkness. It sounds so easy, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteThanks for your list, Lisden, and thanks for dropping by. Just a thought--is this a list of how we serve him, or how we love him? Is there a difference?
ReplyDeleteI don't believe there is a difference. What we spend our time doing shows where our heart is. Good question, though...I need to think about this one a bit more.
ReplyDeleteThe first step in loving God is accepting Jesus. After that, loving God is one of the most practical things we do. Loving God is being a responsible adult, a good parent, being honest and upright, enjoying the life that he has given you and being grateful for it. It is sometimes no more than just going to work thankful that you have a job. In many ways, the ways that we love God are also the ways that we honor him. We listen to him when he speaks to us and act upon his commands with willingness. Loving God is including him in your daily activities; just bringing him along and inviting him to participate in all of the aspects of your life.
ReplyDeleteI think the gospels themselves answer that question. Everything that Jesus did can be summed up in his exercise of those statements, as Scot McKnight calls the Jesus Creed.
ReplyDeletePractically speaking, this summer we had a surplus in our garden. Our first thought of what to do with it was to take it to the local food bank where it could be either distributed to those who need or be cooked into meals for the local Meals on wheels service.
There are also three little girls in our neighborhood that come from rough situations...broken families, poverty, etc. My wife have a basic policy that our home is a place of welcome, love, and general peace for thses girl.
Love God by Loving your neighbor and giving glory to God for the blessings of harvest, hearth, and home
Thanks, Bonnie. Much of what you said reminds me of Brother Lawrence's classic little book, "The Practice of the Presence of God."
ReplyDeleteHi Robert, I hear you. Scot McKnight has been so helpful in bringing this to our attention recently. I suspect one of the reasons Jesus offered the second half of the equation ("love your neighbor") is because we can start there immediately.
ReplyDeleteI love the "practically speaking" part of your answer. Love's not much good unless it's practical, is it?
To quote DCTalk..."Love is verb"
ReplyDeleteHow do we show our love to God? I believe in order for us to answer that question we must go to the source of our authority, Gods word. " He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I love him and will disclose Myself to him." John 14:21 NASB. We can sum it all up in one word, Obedience.
ReplyDeleteWow, way to cut to the chase Ray! One of the reasons why it may be hard to know how to love God is it's hard to let God love us. I often find that I need to start by receiving his love so that I can understand how to return it. I generally find that worship is a good place to begin as well.
ReplyDeleteI send God flowers on a day that isn't his birthday or Valentine's Day. That's Love.
ReplyDeleteHi Jason: I like your appeal to the authority of scripture, and in fact I had this verse in my mind as I wrote the post. I'm with you that far. But I wonder about the little word, "all" in your last sentence. Does obedience really constitute all of our love for God?
ReplyDeleteI agree that those who love him will try their best to obey--and succeed more than we might think possible. Yet I question whether obedience alone constitutes all of our love for God. That seems to me to encompass only our will, but not our heart, soul, or physicality. What do you think?
I'm glad I'm not the only one who has trouble receiving His love, so thanks for sharing that. It's true that we love because he first loved us--and I don't think that's a one-time thing: Paul prayed that his friends in Ephesus would come to know the height, length, width, and depth, or God's love--and that's after the believers there were well established in their faith. The fires of our passion can only be lit first by his fire for us. And yes- worship would be a great place to feel the burn.
ReplyDeleteYou are one smooth operator, Joe. Imaging the Almighty looking at the card, saying, "What? For me?!? And it's not even Valentine's Day!" I'm just curious--what kind of delivery charge did the florist add on?
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion.... The way that we love God is to be transformed by his love and not conformed to this world... When we accept him as our Lord and Savior he should become the single most important thing in our lives... How do you love your "true love"? You spend time with him/her.. You want what he/she wants and you want to please him/her in every way you can... It is the same with our Lord.. we should all be spending time with him in study, prayer and reading his Word. Praying unceasingly and representing ourselves as belonging to HIM! With our friends, family or strangers, it should be transparent in our lives that he is the one we belong to. Helping our neighbors and serving others is just another way of showing our love OF him to others, but it is not loving Him in itself.. Our thoughts, words, actions and lives should revolve around representing His life through ours.
ReplyDeleteI like your question: "How do you love your 'true love'?" Yet, I wouldn't rule out serving others as a way of loving him: "In as much as you did it to the least of these, my brethren, you did it to me . . ."
ReplyDeleteThe only way to love people is to know and believe that God loves u first.
ReplyDeleteLove is defined in the passage below
1John 4:10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Man is so bankrupt and has nothing to give without receiving God's love first
The characteristics of love are stated 1Cor 13
He's the author, for sure, Rachel, and as you quoted 1 John 4:11 we certainly ought to love one another--as the Father empowers us. I remain curious as to what hat looks like in practical terms.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever tried reading 1 Corinthians 13 as the model for how we should love God? Toward *Him* we should be patient and kind, toward him we should believe all things, bear all things, endure all things . . .
I am glad to see that you commented on the post I made. Does obedience really make up all of our love for God? The little word, "all " in my last sentence, wasn't saying that obedience constitute all of our love for God. Although it does some up the scricpture that was posted. As I look at obedience, I see it as a measureing stick for our love for God. As God looks at our love for Him, He see it through the lens of our obedience.
ReplyDeleteSince the beginning, God has always measured our love by obedience. It was God that created the earth and all that it contained. It was His providence, that in the mist of this beautiful garden stood the forbidden tree. God only had one command for man, "Do not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil." It was only this one command that our Lord used to judge / measure Adams love for Him. It was through Adams one act of disobedience that showed God the distrust of Adams heart, soul, and physicality. When Adam disobeyed God, he didn't just sin in his heart, Adam sinned in the whole nature of man; heart, soul, and body. It is the same for obedience, when we are obedient, we are not just obedient in the heart, we are obedient with everything that we are. It is out of that love, passion, and desire that we are obedient. We are obedient not because we have a relationship as that of a slave but as one with my Father.
Is man's obedience always proof of his love for God?
NO!!!!. We see it all through the scricptures with the scribes and pharisee's. The rich young ruler also thought he was doing good until he came in contact with the incarnate Word of God. So we know that our obedience shouldn't be like the Scribe's and pharisee's with only obedience of physicality, but that which encompasses our whole being, heart and soul.
What do you think?
Free delivery, surprisingly. Makes sense, though. The streets are paved with gold so i'm guessing the flower runner just collects the bits of road rubbish.
ReplyDelete