The first and most important commandment is this, declared Jesus: "The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength" (Mark 12:29-30). The most fundamental duty and the greatest privilege of every human being is to love God!
Many times the Scriptures describe this love by analogy to the love of a wife and husband—it is a love of both commitment and passion. A husband and wife may be drawn together by the emotion of love, but they also make a commitment to be true to each other. The commitment sustains them when emotions wane and serves to rekindle and nourish the feelings of love. Similarly, love for God is a choice we make, as well as an emotion graciously kindled by Him in our hearts.
The marriage analogy also help us to see that our love for God is to be exclusive: "The Lord our God, the Lord is one." It is also all-absorbing: "with all you heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." We are to love God, and Him alone, with all that we are—our feelings, thoughts and actions. All other loves must be subordinate to our love for God.
On the one hand, this love for God excludes all base and self-serving loves. That is why the apostle John can write, "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (1 John 2:15). On the other hand, it ennobles every legitimate but lesser love. Thus the husband and wife who love God will love each other more selflessly than if they left God our of their lives.
Just as the lover finds delight in the beloved, so when we love God we find our satisfaction and delight in him: "My soul thirsts for God, for the living God" (Psa 42:2). He, and He alone, satisfies the human heart because He is all-loving. Indeed, our love of Him springs from the deepest gratitude for his boundless love for us: "We love because He first loved us" (1 John 4:19).
The Biblical story of God's love reaches its climax in the cross of Christ: "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son" (John 3:16). Christ did not die for us because we were lovable. He died to make us lovely because He is loving (Eph 5:25-29). Declared James Denney, "I would like to go into every church in the land and, holding up the crucifix, cry to the congregation, 'God loves like that.'"
We delight in God, but we also respect and obey him. We desire and pray that what He wants will be done in our lives. We seek to please the One we love by joyful obedience to his instructions: "If you love me, you will obey what I command" (John 14:15; cf. Deut 11:1). And what is His command to those who love Him? "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Mark 12:31; cf. Lev 19:18).
We are freed to love others when we accept God's love for us by trusting in Christ as our Savior. We no longer have to be preoccupied with our own self-esteem, because God loves us and has made us His children (1 John 3:1)! What greater status could we have? We no longer need selfishly to look out for our own interests, for our Father has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you" (Heb 13:5).
Many Christians, however, still struggle with pride and selfish desires. God's love is growing in their hearts, but it is hindered by the weeds of remaining selfishness. "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will" (Romans 12:1-2).
It is our part to yield our self-will to God and to trust in the goodness of his will for us. Then His Spirit transforms our hearts, filling them with his love.
When we have allowed God to pull out the weed of self-will, then we are able to grow in His love without inward hindrance. As we walk with Him our lives are filled with the fruit of the Spirit: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control" (Gal 5:22-23). We develop a growing sensitivity to the needs of others, and our service for them springs from an ever-deepening joy. We are also to overcome fear and anxiety, because our God is in charge and He is taking care of us, bringing good from every circumstance (1 John 4:18; Romans 8:28)!
Oswald Chambers testified of this love: "Glory be to God, the last aching abyss of the human heart is filled to overflowing with the love of God. Love is the beginning, love is the middle and love is the end. After He comes in, all you see is 'Jesus only, Jesus ever.' When you know what God has done for you, the power and the tyranny of sin is gone and the radiant, unspeakable emancipation of the indwelling Christ has come."
