When Jesus was asked, what is the greatest commandment of all, without hesitation He replied, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment” (Matthew 22:37-38). But what does that really mean? What is it to love God?
When we talk about loving God – we can no longer use the same concepts that we use when we speak of loving each other. God is in a class of His own. God is our eternal, self-sufficient Creator. How does one love Someone like that? Well, we must start by noting what is not applicable when we speak of loving God.
1. Loving God is not meeting His needs
In Psalm 50:11-12, God says, “I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof.” God has no needs. To act as if you loving Him somehow fulfils Him, somehow makes Him better, somehow completes a void inside God, is unbiblical. It demotes God, and it exalts man.
Many people like to think that God truly makes so much of us because we are intrinsically so valuable to Him, that when we love Him, it shores up a deficiency in God. This is not the case. Were no human to ever love God, He would not lose one iota of the satisfaction that He had in Himself before He created us. True, when humans come to love and know Him, He takes pleasure in this, and it delights Him. But I do not love God the way I love other humans.
Other humans need love, and when humans are not loved, they develop all sorts of emotional and spiritual problems. When we talk about loving God, we must get rid of this idea of almost having compassion on God, as if He so craves my attention that I ought to love Him to make Him feel better. In fact, as we’ll see, loving Him makes me feel better, because it is the highest point that I can reach in my existence.
2. Loving God is not serving Him
Now this takes some explanation. Acts 17:25 says: “Nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.” Love for God is not doing things for Him, as if He could not do them Himself. It is not an endless labouring for God, with no real purpose – or hoping God somehow takes note of our toil.
See, those who love God will serve Him, but not all who serve Him love Him. Many serve God the way convicts at the rock quarry – they just hammer away. None of it seems really sensible – it’s just a daily grind, a slog, where they hope it all adds up to love for God. Or worse, it’s a conscious, dedicated service of God that really believes, ‘Apart from my service, God would lack. I have to do this because God needs the help. God needs workers. God needs soldiers.’
If you think that loving God is serving Him in this way, you’re wrong. When this is your attitude, you demote God. You make Him out to be an impotent God who needs human labour to accomplish His ends. The Biblical view is that God is an omnipotent God who uses humans only so that they can get to know Him better. This is the fundamental thought we need to understand – loving God cannot be adding anything to Him.
It seems in Christianity we always go to extremes. We’ve had the extremes on one end, with the ‘health and wealth Gospel’ that makes God out to be a vending machine for my carnal wants. But then reacting to that extreme, we’ve had the other side that says, ‘We don’t come to get, we come to give. We give, we serve, we labour for God, and we don’t care at all how we feel about it.’
While this is better than the health and wealth gospel, it’s not much better, because it also demotes God. It makes Him out to be, at best, an overseer requiring millions of dedicated labourers, who will selflessly get nothing, and give it all. And secretly it exalts man – it makes us out to be very noble, selfless people who toil for God without thought of gaining anything.
But the Biblical balance is the following: to truly love God, we must see that are here to receive. We can add nothing to God. Loving Him is not a process of making Him feel better about Himself, it is a process of us increasingly delighting in Him. It is not wanting things from God or delighting in His gifts above Him, it is delighting in Him.
From this place, a place of being filled and satisfied in God, we go out and give. We serve, we labour, we sacrifice, we give it all. But not from lean and empty hearts, that secretly feel that God is indebted to them. Rather, from bursting-full hearts, overflowing with joy – that serve from joy and thanksgiving.
So if loving God is not giving to Him in the sense of meeting His needs; and if it’s not serving Him in the sense of doing for Him as if He could not do it Himself – what is it? Well, think of the goal here. We know all that God does, and therefore all He commands of us goes toward the same goal: to glorify Him and show He is First.
What that means is that the first command – the command to love God – is the highest and greatest way of fulfilling our design instructions of glorifying Him. So, let’s bring these two thoughts together: if God is perfect – absolutely infinitely perfect, so that I cannot give Him anything, I cannot improve His state one bit, I cannot provide Him with any benefit – and yet loving Him is what glorifies Him – here is where we will find the definition of loving God.
Love for God from a human standpoint comes in two main forms: seeking and finding. Seeking is the “not-yet” stage of love. It doesn’t mean there is no relationship, or that there is no love. It means, at that point, love is in a stage of waiting, trusting, depending, hoping, leaning, looking to – it is seeking out the love. When I seek God, I glorify Him as reliable, trustworthy, truthful.
Finding is the consummation experience of love. It is when the seeking stage is rewarded by gaining what we were hoping, trusting, desiring. I receive the joy, the pleasure, the happiness, the satisfaction, the fulfilment of knowing and experiencing God personally. And the finding is the ‘top layer’ of rejoicing, and treasuring. When I ‘find’ God in this way and am delighted, I glorify Him as desirable.
In both states, I the human, am the humble seeker, and God is the wonderful goal. God gets the glory, I get the help or the joy. He is lifted up as the most satisfying One in the universe – my heart is satisfied. He is lifted up as the Strongest of all, I receive His strength. Can you see how, in this sense, love to God is receiving?
Certainly, my satisfied heart returns praise, adoration, obedience and thanksgiving. But to do so apart from this kind of love really robs God of glory. It means we serve God out of dull duty. And what that says is that God is not great enough to motivate our hearts, and we need to rely on the habit of duty.
These two are never static. They feed off each other. Seeking leads to finding. Finding causes us to seek some more. That causes more finding. This is spiritual growth. So the love of God is delight and dependence. It’s satisfaction and submission. It’s treasuring and trusting. It’s enjoying and entrusting. It’s happiness and hoping. Consider some examples of this in the Song of Solomon.
By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, ‘Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?’ It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother’s house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me.
Song of Solomon 3:1-4
The bride-to-be – representing us, sought him – representing Christ. She rises, she inconveniences herself in diligent search. After “but a little,” she finds him. Throughout this book, there is a pursuit and a finding, a pursuing and a finding. This is what keeps marriage exciting. It is to be a lifelong seeking and finding.
Our problem is we think that dating or courting is seeking, and the wedding day is finding. But God intended marriage to be a picture of our love relationship with Christ. You say, ‘Okay, I understand. I see what my love for God will be – it will be either seeking Him in trust, dependence, waiting, hoping, confessing, leaning, looking, obeying – or it will be finding in praise, joy, thanksgiving, pleasure, happiness, wonder, awe. But how does this happen?’
- Stage 1: God first calls us to seek Him.
Psalm 27 reminds us that God always initiates, and Jesus said, “No man can come unto me except the Father draw him” (John 6:44). A move toward God starts with God. He is the author and the finisher of our faith. Philippians 2:13 tells us God works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. God is the initiator. He approaches our soul to begin the pursuit. He says in Psalm 27:8, “Seek ye My face.”
- Stage 2: We must respond with all our heart.
David then responds in Psalm 27:8 with “Thy face LORD, will I seek.” When God comes to us in any way, calling on us to begin the pursuit, we must wholeheartedly respond in order to come to that place of finding. If we respond with all of our heart, God gives the power and energy. He then allows our seeking to become finding. But less than a wholehearted response may result in the situation the bride found elsewhere in Song of Solomon:
I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, ‘Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.’ I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them? My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him. I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock. I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer. The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me.
Song of Solomon 5:2-7
What happened there? He initiated, but her response was slothful, and he withdrew himself. When she realised that, she sought him, and could not find him. It was too little, too late.
God makes it clear He rewards the wholehearted seeker: “And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13) and “But without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).
Diligent, wholehearted seeking this is the kind of seeking that God will reward with finding. See, it is not that seeking hard twists God’s arm. It is simply what God has put into place. He has said, ‘If you want to know My love, I want your pursuit to be with all your heart.’ Why does God make this the condition for love? I think for two reasons:
1. God’s value
Humans who think that meaning and real life is found in power, pleasure, fame or fortune go after those things with a vengeance. They work long hours. They make great sacrifices. They endure hardship and physical discipline. They even commit acts of crime and sin against each other in the pursuit of joy and meaning.
Is it fair, then, for Christians to expect the truly satisfying nature of God to be found without them applying much effort? Would it be just for the riches for God to be accessible to the half-hearted, casual, and even indifferent seeker? If God is the most precious treasure of all, should we expect there to be no effort in uncovering all He is? Would it be just for man to put in wholehearted efforts for what does not satisfy, and then be casual about God – who does satisfy?
God is not elusive in the sense that He diabolically avoids us, but He will only manifest Himself to the hungry heart. Why should He reward the lazy Christian with the treasure of Himself, when so many of His other children put in 100%? God likens Himself to a great treasure, worth all the whole-hearted pursuits of mankind put together.
2) Human satisfaction from earnest pursuit and hard labour
God has built the human heart to enjoy the pursuit itself. Humans enjoy putting in a wholehearted effort into things they pursue. Sometimes, they enjoy the pursuit just as much as the reward.
People often climb steep mountains and sweat and labour for the thrill of reaching the top. Or take fishing, where people spend hours to catch something you can buy in the shop. Clearly, the pursuit is part of the joy. God knows that. He knows, if we get this Christian life right, we will have as much joy in waiting, trusting, depending, seeking, learning – as much joy in the ‘not-yet’ stage – as we will in the finding stage.
Also consider: The greater the longing and the search, the more glorified the object of the pursuit, and the more satisfying the experience upon finding. What would glorify my wife more – a story on how I had tried for months to go out with her, or a story on how I kind of half-heartedly asked her out when I could find nothing else to do.
This is why God says, ‘Seek me, but seek me with all your heart.’ And this is what we mean by a single-minded passion – to love God with all your heart, soul and mind. It works like this: God first initiates the pursuit by seeking us out and encouraging us to seek Him. We then do so, applying all our hearts to do so.
- Stage 3: God reveals Himself to us
What will that finding be, exactly? What will it mean when I find God? It means you come to a deeper knowledge of His Person, of His ways, of His will, of His purposes. You enter into a deeper experiential knowledge of God. See, in this relationship, God does not have to come to know me. He already knows all there is to know about me. I’m like a bottle of water, and He knows every drop. But He is like the ocean. I’ll never come to a point when I have known Him completely, because He is infinite.
That is why all through eternity, we will continue to learn of Him, and know Him, and love Him more. When you come to know Him better, your heart rejoices. There is joy, there is delight, pleasure, happiness, and fulfilment, because God in His character is the deepest possible satisfaction a human can experience. Do you think God would make man so that He would find His greatest pleasure in something other than God? Of course not! But we spend all our lives looking for joy and meaning in God’s gifts instead of God Himself.
Now let’s take these thoughts and apply them to the different things in the Christian life. Too often in the Christian life, we have all these various irons in the fire and not quite sure how they all relate. But we can tie them all together if we see it all as part of the love-relationship – as seeking and finding God in these things. If you want to love God, here are some things you will love.
1. You will love His presence
When you love someone, the most primary thing that you want is to be with them. You want to be in their presence. So, we understand that God is present everywhere, and He permanently indwells believers by His Spirit, and has promised to never leave us or forsake us. But I am talking about seeking the fullness of His presence.
Where is this found? In the Word and in prayer. The Word is His voice, prayer is ours. In a mingling of those two – prayerful reading, Word-filled prayer – we enter into His presence.
Of course, reading the Word has many other benefits. So does prayer. But it’s think about the fact that being in the Word and prayer is truly where we say, ‘I love to be with you, God. I want to know You, Your ways, Your will, Your purposes, Your very heart. I want to have my heart warmed as I seek You here.’ Prayer and the Word is where the Holy Spirit fills and controls us. Compare Colossians 3:16 and Ephesians 5:18, and you’ll see that a Word-saturated Christian is a Spirit-filled Christian.
Let’s take our definition so far. God initiates: He stirs in you the desire to come and pray or read. You then respond with all your heart. You search in the Word, you pray fervently. You wait on Him and depend on Him to illuminate you. You seek, and you keep knocking. And then, you find. What do you find? God is pleased to reveal Himself to you in the Word and in prayer.
Here, you’ll have a fresh way of seeing Him – a promise, a command, something new of His ways, purposes, plans, will, character – that rejoices your heart. Once the Spirit turns on the light, your heart is warmed. Speed-reading and drive-through praying are not acts of whole-hearted seeking that will be rewarded with finding. Rather, seek Him, His very presence. Finding it is the sweetest experience a human can know.
2. You will love His Righteousness
Why do we obey God? Why do we seek to live a holy life? The answer is really simple. The more you act like Him, the more you know who He is. Holiness is the environment in which you come to know Him best. When you do things the way He does them, when you think the way He thinks, when you treat others the way He does, when your words, thoughts and deeds are like His – do you know what is happening? You are coming to a greater and greater experience of who He is.
Unhappiness is being unlike Christ. So I seek Him by seeking to be like Him. With all my heart, I diligently pursue obedience of His commands. I learn them, meditate on them, desire to do them. As I apply my whole heart to do them, as I seek Him wholeheartedly in this – I find Him. He gives me the power to obey, and I see Him ever clearer. As He changes me to be more like Him, I see Him ever clearer.
Hebrews 12:14 says “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” and Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). If you seek holiness as an end in itself, you have missed the point. It is part of our pursuit of God. I seek Him in His character, and by obedience I want to know more of His ways, His will, His attitudes.
3. You will love His Body – the church
God’s Body is the church, and Christians are those who know Him. One way of loving God is loving the local expression of His Body. We could spend hours on why God established the local church. But just read 1 John and you will find God says, essentially, ‘Don’t claim to love the invisible God when you can’t stand your visible brother or sister in Christ.’ Other Christians are imperfect portraits of Christ. If I really love Him – I will seek Him in them.
Loving God means we seek to serve other believers. I will pray for them, help them, comfort them, warn them, teach them, encourage them, meet their needs. I will love them as Christ loved me – that’s the command. Wholeheartedly do I seek to build and bless the local church. Why? Because I am seeking Him in His Body. That’s why Jesus said: “Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40).
I am ministering to Jesus as I minister to His Body. And as I seek Him in the local church with all my heart – I find Him. How? He reveals Himself to me as I see Him using my spiritual gifts. I see Him as He reveals Himself to me through other believers, and His work in their lives. He reveals Himself to me even in the corporate prayer and worship. He reveals Himself to me in the preaching and in the ministries of the church.
4. You will love His world
God’s purposes go beyond me and my family, and my neighbourhood. They encompass the world. God so loved the world. That means that I will see every person I come in contact with as ministry. It means loving my neighbour as myself. Treating them as I would want to be treated. But take that statement to its logical conclusion. Do you want to go to heaven? Then desire that for your neighbour. Give them the Gospel.
Seek God in His mission to save the lost and to bring the lost sheep home. Don’t seek it casually or you’ll see nothing. Labour together with God with your whole heart.
And there – we have covered the aspects of the Christian life as it relates to a love relationship. Why do I pray and read the Bible – because I love Him and am seeking His presence. Why do I seek to live a holy life and obey all of His commands? Because I love His character – and holiness is the best experience of who He is. When I am like Him, I know Him.
Why do I seek to love and serve other Christians, and be involved in ministry? Because I love His body. He manifests Himself in other Christians. I see Him working in their lives. I see His power at work in and through me, as I minister to them. When the body is edified, I am edified and I come to know Him better.
Why do I seek to love my neighbour as myself, evangelise and treat all people as ministry? Because as I do that, I am seeking God. I am joining with His heart, His mission. He reveals Himself to me as I do that.
To summarise, the first command is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind. You cannot give anything to God. Love for Him is delighting and depending. It is seeking and finding. You seek with all your heart, and God is pleased to reveal to You Himself. Then you can delight with all your heart – which glorifies God as the most desirable One of all.