A Christian's Most Important Priority

It has been said that the only constant thing in life is change. For me, the latest change in my life is the fact that I have accepted the call to pastor Pawnee Baptist Church. And in good pastor fashion, I had to come up with my first sermon series. For me, there was no question what that should be. If we (that is, my new church family and I) were going to get off started in the right direction, we would need to be on the same page regarding our Christian priorities.

Of course, there’s no question as to what the number one priority should be. It comes from Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and it is what Jesus called the Greatest Commandment – “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” It is called the “Shema” (Hebrew word for “Hear”) because it starts with “Hear O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” The Shema was probably the most important scripture for the committed Jew. It was the center of the Jewish prayer book and was typically the first scripture that a Jewish child would memorize. Jews would write the scripture on the wall of their homes and bind it on their wrists. And because Jesus called it the Greatest Commandment, it should be, by far, the most important priority in the life of the Christian.

A few years ago, I was reading the Shema passage in Deuteronomy after having studied Jesus’ reference to it in Matthew 22 and realized that I did not have the Shema on the walls of my own home. Of course I rectified that immediately – not out of a sense of some legalistic requirement to keep the rules and regulations of the Mosaic Law, but because I need to be reminded every time I sit down on my couch that my number one priority must always be to Love God with every ounce of my being.

The thing is, though, being reminded to Love God doesn’t actually make it happen. I can be reminded all day long to Love God, but if I really don’t know how to Love God, then I never will.

Believe it or not, the secret to actually loving God is found in the Shema itself; but if we are not careful, we might actually misread and misunderstand it. The Shema tells us to love God with our heart, then our soul, then with all our might. The problem with that is what we call in biblical interpretation as “cultural distance.”

The meaning of heart, soul, and might to the ancient Jew is not the same as what we would consider them to be today. Think about it, what comes to mind when you think of your heart – not the muscle that pumps your blood, but the other heart. Of course, we think about Valentines hearts and sweethearts because when we think about the heart we think of emotions and passion. At the same time, when we think about our soul, we think of our inner self, our volition, and our will.

Based on this understanding, if we are to love the LORD our God with our heart, we would begin with our passions and emotions. We would strive to create within ourselves some sense of passion for God. To do this, we would try to seek out spiritual experiences that move us at the emotional level. In truth, this is how so many people seek out God every day. There are even churches whose worship styles are designed specifically to create the kind of emotional experiences we are talking about. They believe that such an emotional experience helps develop the believer’s actual love for God.

The thing is, we cannot always maintain that level of passion based on experiences – and we shouldn’t even try because that is not how the ancient Jews understood the Shema. To the ancient Jew, the understanding of the concepts of heart and soul were completely reversed from how we understand them. The heart was the seat of the volition and will whereas the soul was the seat of passions and desires. In other words, if our pattern for knowing how to Love God is the Shema, then there is a good chance we are going about it completely backwards. Because of our cultural understanding of heart and soul, we are seeking to love God the wrong way.

If we are to truly learn how to Love God, then we must begin first with our will. It is a choice. We decide to commit ourselves unconditionally to the prospect of Loving God and we dedicate ourselves to finding out what it means to know Him. After all, isn’t that how true unconditional love between humans is fostered? First you get to know the person better and then true love starts to grow? The same is true with our love for God. As we grow to know Him personally, an amazing thing happens – we begin to develop a passion for God that is not dependent upon experience or emotion, but rather on a personal relationship with a creator-God who first loved us before we ever loved Him.

So if you really want to be faithful to the most important Christian priority, make a simple choice. Decide to get to know God more personally and see if a deep passion for God does not develop as well.