Opening illustration: One morning as I left Maureena for work, I began to wonder, why should I obey God’s laws? The answer played out as I approached a traffic light that had just turned yellow. A driver at the intersection waited to make sure I had fully stopped. Why did I stop? I asked myself. I could have made it.
Two reasons came to mind - survival and surveillance. I could be injured or killed. Or a police officer might see me and give me a ticket. Good reasons, don’t you think? But are these the highest motives? Am I concerned about other drivers?
Obeying God’s commands out of fear would reduce much of the wreckage strewn along life’s highway due to adultery, murder, lying, stealing, and coveting. But there is a higher motive. When Jesus was asked, “Which is the first commandment of all?” He answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart,” and second, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Then He said, “There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:30-31).
Once we put our faith in Christ as our Savior and experience God’s love, our motivation for obeying His commands changes. That means we slow down at God’s “yellow lights,” stop at His “red lights,” and proceed at His “green lights” for the highest reason - love. The absence of obedience just shows our rebellion and UN-love for God.
Let us turn to Mark 12 in God’s Word and see Jesus addressing how to balance the 10 commandments.
Introduction: Wasn’t it Tina Turner who sang, “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” I am not certain about the full meaning of that lyric, nor does it necessarily pique my interest. One thing is sure, she is not singing about Christian love! Jesus repeatedly reproves his followers to love God totally, to love each other unconditionally, and to love one another.
Love has everything to do with the Christian life. Unselfish, unashamed and unrestrained love is the essence of kingdom faithfulness. The Apostle John understood this and wrote, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.” (1 John 4:8-9) Without love, everything else the believer does is of little significance or value. Today’s message will be a clear reminder of love’s priority in our faith.
How to love and obey God?
1. LOVE the Lord your God with all your HEART
Heart speaks to our emotions, the real me on the inside (Exodus 20:3).
First, with “all” heart. In the Bible we are taught that the “heart” represents the very core essence of a human being. Our actions, our motivations, our speech – all come from the very center of who we are. But here Jesus means even more than that. When He says we are to love God with all our heart He is saying we are to love Him with righteous sincerity and honest integrity.
We demonstrate that when we make a solemn promise to someone – perhaps saying something like, “I cross my heart and hope to die.” In other words, we stake our very life on that promise; if we don’t keep it we proclaim that then we forfeit our life. That’s making a promise with uncompromising sincerity.
We don’t want to live passive lives but long for it to be filled with fascination. We want our hearts to be consumed, to be apprehended. God knows this. He has put this desire in every person. Think about the many things people sink their time and energy into. I would think that if we are told to love the Lord with all our hearts that we ought to pursue it’s meaning. What does that mean to love God with all our hearts and how do we go about doing it?
• RECOGNIZE THAT OUR AFFECTIONS DETERMINE OUR DEVOTION
• UNDERSTAND THAT OUR AFFECTIONS FOLLOW WHAT WE TREASURE
• AIM TO MAKE JESUS YOUR GREATEST TREASURE
• SPEND TIME WITH THE LORD AND LET HIS LIGHT SHINE IN YOUR HEART
2. LOVE the Lord your God with all your SOUL
Next, with “all” our soul. What is our soul? Soul speaks to the spirit, the self-conscious life (Psalm 42:1-2).
It’s that mysterious, indescribable part of human beings that makes us unique amongst all God’s creations. It’s that part of us that is spiritually real – and, the Bible teaches, lives on when we die. Our bodies will die, unless Jesus comes back before then. But our souls – well – when we die they go to that place where the souls of the dead wait for the final day and the resurrection to come.
So when Scripture says we are to love God with all our soul that means we are to love Him with all that is spiritual about us. And in the ancient world that means with all that sets humans apart from other creatures – things attributed to our souls like warmth and our feelings and our emotions.
God breathes his spirit into us and we become a living soul. Without that breath from God, what is humankind?
This nefesh that humankind becomes with the breath of God is what gives us life. If this is what animates our bodies and represents our will, then loving God with our soul means loving God with all of who we are, not just with part of who we are. The soul is not a part of us; it is integral to our identity. It's not something that we can break off and see as separate; we can't think of our soul as something that is only a part of who we are.
And so, when we ask ourselves, how do we love God with all of our soul, perhaps we should be asking instead
• How do I love God with all that I am?
• How do I love God with what defines my identity?
• How do I love God with all that I desire or will?
• How do I love God with all that He created me to be?
There's a lot more depth to those questions. They are not quickly or easily answered. But the one idea that stands out to me is that the soul is a gift from God, and it is with that gift that we must love him back. It is the gift of life, and in loving God with our soul, we are loving God with all of our life.
3. LOVE the Lord your God with all your MIND
Then we have the point Jesus adds to the ancient teaching – with all of our mind. This means with our intellect. Mind speaks to our intelligence and thought life (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).
In our culture today there are voices suggesting strongly that people of faith – especially Christians – are weak-minded, by which they mean to imply that faith is not rational. Well, Jesus blows that notion to bits with this statement, commanding us to put our minds into loving God too!
Of course, that then means we’ve got to seek out and study and contemplate and ponder and reflect on God’s revelation of Himself – something the Belgic Confession says can be discovered partially in creation and more completely in His Word. Our minds, then, become a very powerful ally in the exercise of seeking God and learning how and why we should love Him completely and rationally.
The renewed mind plays a vital role in loving Jesus. The Lord said that if we are ever going to understand the Kingdom our minds need to be constantly renewed (Matt. 4:17). In Romans 12:2 Paul states that a major part of being transformed into the image and likeness of Jesus must require our minds being renewed. It’ a big deal. To love God with all our mind is a supernatural possibility. Though the mind is never meant to rule the heart it can be used to affectionately love the Lord. As our mind is renewed the Holy Spirit releases supernatural activity to love Jesus more.
4. LOVE the Lord your God with all your STRENGTH
And the final point Jesus gives us is to love God with all our strength. This means we need to pour physical energy into it. We need to, as the old saying goes, put feet under our faith and “walk the walk” of the Christian life. Strength speaks to our bodily powers, perhaps even the will (Romans 12:1).
If we want to maintain our physical bodies in good condition we know that we have to pour energy into exercising them. Being lethargic “couch potatoes” whose biggest muscle is in the thumb we use to change the channel on our TV remote isn’t going to do it. Our doctors tell us we have to pour energy into exercise to be strong and healthy. It’s the same thing in loving God. We’ve got to put energy into it – a lot of energy – as Jesus says: with all our strength. The imagery of this point is pretty clear – that if we do it, if we exercise our love for God – then it will grow stronger and more solid and secure.
Sinclair Ferguson says, “God is never satisfied with anything less than the devotion of our whole
Life for the whole duration of our lives”
Since Love cannot exist without God, loving God is the only place to begin. Loving God provides us with a foundation from which we can love others. We love God by prioritizing God (heart, soul, mind, strength). If we are prioritizing God, we are prioritizing doing his work here on earth. 1 John 5:3 reminds us, This is love for God: to obey his commands.
To love the Lord with all our strength means to love him “exceedingly” “richly”, “lavishly”, with reckless abandon out of simple devotion.
In more practical terms it means we are to love Him 110%. To go all-out. To give it your best shot. If we fall down, to pick ourselves back up and keep going forward. To love Him with all our might.
• Love Him with what we find our hands to do.
• Love Him with our eyes and what they see.
• Love Him with ears to hear.
• Love Him with our mouth to speak.
What a privilege we have to love the Lord with all our might, with a reckless abandon expressed in a sold out life. Let us do it well.
5. LOVE your NEIGHBOR as YOURSELF
To love others is to do what is good for them without any expectation for something in return. And what is highest good that can happen to someone else? To know/accept the love God, through Jesus. Therefore, we must use this highest good as the lens through which we love our neighbors. Of every action, we must ask: Does this action or inaction draw my neighbors closer to Jesus or does it push them away?
After Jesus answered the man’s question, he left him by saying, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” No matter how well you love God and love people, it will never be enough. You will mess up sometimes. But it’s not how well we love that saves us. It’s about who has loved us first.
God loved us first and our love is a response to what he has already done [1 Jn. 4:10-11]. Jesus is the only reason we even know what love is [1 Jn. 3:16]. The gospel is that God loved us even while we’re still living in sin [Rom. 5:8]. The response is to love God and love others.
Following these commands does not save. Jesus does. It starts with confessing how we have loved poorly and he has loved perfectly. Only then will we have the Holy Spirit in us, enabling us to love as Jesus has loved.
Notice that loving our neighbor would include sharing with the poor and the alien; compassion and absolute honesty and justice in our relationships with others; impartiality; a refusal to be a party to gossip or slander; an absence of malice toward anyone and a refusal to bear a grudge; taking care never to put another’s life at risk and never taking private vengeance upon another. It is also interesting to note that when we have an issue with anyone, we should strive to make it right by going to him or her directly. James calls this the “royal law” (James 2:8). Our Lord taught that we should do to others as we would have them do to us (Matthew 7:12).
Application: To love God is to obey God. Without Jesus, love is either foolish or selfish.
