Do you love God?
Of course you do, right? We all love God, do we not? Well, maybe not all of us, but certainly in our American culture most of us would at least claim that we love God wouldn’t we? Deuteronomy 6:5 says that we are to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, and strength. This command is an important part of the Jewish Shema (Shema is the Hebrew word for “hear,” which is the beginning of Deuteronomy 6:4 – “Hear O Israel…”) and represents Israel’s commitment to Yahweh. However, in Matthew 22:34-28, Jesus identified this as the most important command of scripture – effectively providing the means by which we accomplish not only the first of the ten commandments – You shall not have any other god’s before me – but all of the other commandments as well. Exactly what does it mean, though, to love God with all of our heart, soul, and strength.
You might be surprised to find out that it may not mean exactly what you think. First and foremost, the first of the three items is the heart. It comes first and therefore holds the pre-imminent place in this command. In American culture, we think of the heart as the seat of emotions and desires. The implication, therefore, is that our emotions and desires should be leading the way in our love for God. That, however, would be inaccurate. In Jewish – particularly ancient Jewish – culture, the heart was not the seat of the emotions. Instead, the heart was the seat of the will and the intellect. The original readers of Deuteronomy 6:5, therefore, would have understood that first and foremost our love for God is an act of the will and an act of the mind. We choose to love (and obey and follow) God. It is first and foremost a matter of volition, not a matter of emotion. Joshua emphasized this same point in Joshua 24:15 when he said to choose whom you would serve. In Jewish culture, the heart was more than just the will, it was also the conscious mind. To love God with our hearts, then, meant not only to choose God, but also to get to know him intellectually. Of course, we can never really know an infinite and holy God because we are finite and sinful. However, one of the primary ways we can demonstrate our love for God is by consciously and actively studying and learning about him – growing in knowledge and understanding of him like Peter suggests in 2 Peter 3:18.
What role, then, do our emotions play? Certainly we can be very emotional when we worship – and shouldn’t we be? The answer, of course, is that yes we should. In fact, whereas the American culture equates the heart with emotions and desires, the Jewish culture actually equated the soul with one’s emotions and desires. Therefore, although not the pre-imminent place in this particular commandment, Deuteronomy 6:5 clearly intends for you and I to love God with our emotions and desires. In what way, though? Emotions are tricky. Sometimes my emotions feel like loving God, but honestly sometimes they do not. How can I love God with my emotions when I cannot even trust my emotions from one minute to the next. The answer comes when we differentiate the reactive aspects of our emotions with the proactive aspects of our emotions. Although as a Christian who has self-control as part of his/her fruit of the Spirit, we should always be able to control our actions, but from moment to moment, it is unlikely than any of us can always control what we feel. That is the reactive component of our emotions. The proactive component of our emotions, however, is always under our control as it represents our deepest and most intense desires. We should – at all times and in all ways – desire God. We should desire the things of God – to know his truth and to experience his will on earth, which is how Jesus taught us to pray. We should desire the presence of God in our lives. Psalm 42:1 and Psalm 63:1 both speak of our soul longing for God as if we were desperate for a drink of water. We should desire to be like God – not in an idolatrous, sinful way the way that Lucifer did and the way we do every time we choose our own will over the will of God - but a deep desire to grow and be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ – who himself was the earthly representation of God (Col 1:19; Hebrews 1:3). To this we have been commanded – Be Holy for I am Holy (1 Peter 4:16). To love the lord our God with all our soul is to desire him above all else.
If we do these things, what else is left? Wouldn’t our entire lives be consumed with God? Probably, but is that necessarily a bad thing? Nothing we do in our lives could not be done or experienced better if it were done or experienced from the perspective of God. Of course if we do these things, what else is left? What does it mean, therefore, to love God with all of our strength? The Hebrew literally means with the exceeding abundance. In other words – with everything and anything else you may have left. If there is any doubt that loving God with all our heart and soul does not capture every aspect of our being and every breath of life we have, we have this final element to remove that doubt. In fact, the apostle John actually tells us in 1 John 2:15 that to the extent we bear any love for the world (the world system and the things in it, not the people of the world), then clearly we have no love for God (i.e., the love of the Father is not in us). As overwhelming as it may seem in the self-centered, materialistic, post-modern culture in which we are immersed on a daily basis, there is literally no aspect of our life that should not be viewed, experienced, or even performed unless it is done through the perspective of Almighty God. That is why Paul says in Colossians that we are to do everything for the glory of God (Col 3:17, 23-24).
So, the question must be asked again… do you love God?
