“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 23:37-40
Continuing my mini series on what’s my purpose, let’s look at loving. Considering the ten commandments (Exodus 20:1-17), the first five commandments can be summarised as “Love the Lord your God with all your soul and with all your mind” and the remaining five can be summarised as “Love your neighbour as yourself”, just as Jesus said. No where is there a commandment to love yourself.
So it is quite clear our first and primary purpose is to love God. Why? Does he need our Love? I would say most definitely not, God is love (1 John 4:8), God loved us first (1 John 4:19) and God was never lonely, he is part of a Trinity of love. So, if loving God with all your soul and with all your mind is not for God’s benefit, then what?
Well, God is worthy of being loved, he is worthy of our praise and worthy of our obedience ( 2 Samuel 22:4, 1 Chron 16:25, Psalm 18:3, Psalm 48:1, Psalm 96:4, Psalm 145:3, Revelation 4:11). Yes God answers prayers, yes God provides lavishly, yes God does great things. But, none of that is the ultimate reason to love Him, God is worthy of being loved in His own right. He is love (1 John 4:8). So this is quite an easy command to obey, most of the time. Even when we are going through times of testing, we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28). Having said this, we must not forget He is the judge of all (Psalm 50:6, Hebrews 12:23, 2 Timothy 4:9….), He is a jealous God (Exodus 20:5), He is holy (Isaiah 6:3) and hates sin (Psalm 5:4). Finally “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10).
Loving God means that we honour him and therefore we obey him much more readily “This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome,” (1 John 5:2-3). We can love God with confidence, because he is holy, righteous and the rock that we can stand on, because He is never wrong, and his commands are not burdensome.
Once we start to love God with all our hearts and all our souls and all our minds, surely this must change us, helping us to become more of the image of God that we were talking about in my last Blog. Surely then it becomes so much easier to love our neighbours as ourselves. Because “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.” (1 John 4:20).
Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.
1 Peter 4:8-10
There has been war and strife since Cain killed Abel, and God even instructed the Hebrews to flee whilst the Egyptians got drowned, he also instructed the Hebrews to take possession of the land of Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey and to wipe out all who live there. Which they didn’t completely do, and this became a cause for more war. Jesus Also warned us of wars and strife that had to happen (Luke 21:5-38). So we can’t fully say “Love Conquers all”, since sin has entered the world, God has permitted war, strife and suffering.
Along side this, the last five commandments (Exodus 20:7-17) show us that loving our neighbour as ourselves reduces family arguments, cuts down on murder, lessens sexual sin, curtails theft and the need to lie cheat and envy. These are some of the things that lead to personal and global wars and strife. How much better would the world be if we all loved our neighbour! But, if for no other reason, we should love our neighbour as ourselves because Jesus said it was the right thing to do.
Acknowledgements to my friend Geoff Hill for his insights into God’s character, worthiness, righteousness and holiness.