Deuteronomy 6:4-5. 4“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
This prayer, known as the Shema (the Hebrew word “hear”) was and is the center of all Jewish life. It is prayed daily at both the morning and evening prayer service. It is recited on the holy day of Yom Kippur. It is spoken over the dying. It’s like the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord’s Prayer all rolled up into one. It’s a big deal.
But it’s not just a big deal for Jews. Jesus, our Savior, said that the Shema is the greatest commandment in all of scripture, coupling it with love your neighbor as yourself. This command is at the heart of both the Jewish and the Christian faith.
So why is loving God so important? Because God is love. God created from love. God created us to love and be loved as he loves. Loving God is the meaning of our lives. To stop loving God is to stop being alive. Sin is by definition a failure to love God.
Love God seems so obvious though. Why do we need this command? Why the need to repeat it over and over again? Why do we need to be told day after day to love the one true God?
The answer is because we naturally resist loving God. In fact, in our natural state, apart from Christ, we hate God. We are his born enemies. God is the one person standing in the way of our self-determination and our self-rule. But if God really wants to change us, if he wants us to stop being so rebellious, why doesn’t he say, Submit to the Lord your God with all your heart? Or, Obey the Lord your God with all your heart?
Because he loves us.
God always wants our love first, before our obedience. Anyone can be beaten into submission and obedience. Anyone can choose to obey for their own good. But because God loves us with everything that he is, he wants us to love him with everything that we are.
Yes, love, like obedience, is an action (love with all your might), but love is also a feeling, a desire (love with all your heart), and an attitude (love with all your soul). Consider this: If loving with all that we are is what we were created for, then it wouldn’t it be unloving of God to NOT demand that we love him? It’s the same as if God commanded us to breathe air. Of course we need to breathe air to live, so the command to breathe is not burdensome, it is life giving. Our soul is made to love God; we need to love God like we need to breathe. And so, like breathing, the command to love God is life giving.
Except there’s one little problem (a big problem actually). We can’t do it.
Probably as soon as you read the Shema and its command to love God you felt it in your gut. You knew what we all know – you can’t command love. Forcing someone to love you immediately destroys love. Surely God must know this.
Don’t worry, he does. God knows that we can’t just manufacture love for him just because he told us to. This is why God didn’t just command us to love him. He first loved us. He initiated. He pursued. He gave. He demonstrated. He died. All from love.
To live is Christ means God has poured his unconditional and eternal love into our hearts by pouring Christ’s sacrificial life into our hearts. When we know and trust that we are loved infinitely we are transformed into the lovers that God seeks. Not just obeyers, but wholehearted lovers.
You: Do you struggle to trust that you are loved by God?
You in Christ: God cannot love you more and he cannot love you less. How does this capture your heart today?
Christ in you: Christ’s life in you empowers your love. Who can you choose to love today?
To Live is Christ 