Pacesetters Bible School Newsletter

²⁸And one of the scribes heard them debating, and when he saw that Jesus had answered them well, he came and asked him, “Which is the first commandment of all?” ²⁹Jesus answered, “First is, ‘Hear, Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord, ³⁰ and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ ³¹And the second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no greater commandment than these.” ³²And the scribe said to him, “Excellent, teacher, you’re really right when you say that he is one, and there is none other than him, ³³ and ‘loving him with all your heart and with all your understanding and with all your strength’ and ‘loving your neighbor as yourself’ is better than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.” ³⁴And when Jesus saw that he answered thoughtfully, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And nobody dared to ask him questions any more. — Mark 12:28-34

A gentleman approached me. “Why do you talk so much about love?” he asked. “There’s a great deal more to being a good Christian than just love!”

Another time a lady approached me. “I just want to spend time in God’s presence,” she said. “I just want to love God. I could spend time indefinitely here in church, worshiping and loving God. That’s what I believe I’m called to do.”

I can illustrate my message today with these two portions of conversations. Each of these represents many conversations I’ve had over the years and together they represent the attitude of many believers. Both represent a limited understanding of what it means to love God. Jesus tried to correct our understandings of what love for God actually means.

Loving God, or at least the claim to love God, has been displayed in many ways. For some people, love for God is displayed through religious rituals. You will notice that the scribe who asked this question pointed out that possibility, even while indicating that love was more important when he said that love for God and for one’s neighbor was more important than sacrifices and offerings. For many in the time of Jesus love for God was shown through the sacrifices and offerings of the temple.

I have encountered whole church congregations who have the same attitude. They are very busy. Church activities take up everyone’s time. The bulletin is full of announcements. It’s hard to find space on the calendar. But if you look at the things they are doing, you will have a hard time finding anything that is not simply designed to preserve their church as it is. Nothing reaches out to anyone else. The “stuff” of church becomes the one and only manifestation of love for God.

Now please notice that I’m not saying these activities are bad in themselves. The church needs to preserve itself. But is this an adequate manifestation of love for God?

Others believe the best way to manifest love for God is through church buildings and facilities. Stained glass windows, beautiful pulpits and pews, nice banners and altar cloths. Now again, please note carefully that none of these things are bad. They can be extremely important elements of worship. Having a nice church building is not a bad thing, when it is kept in balance. But is your beautiful church and its furnishings an adequate manifestation of love for God?

Some have even thought to manifest love for God through violence against unbelievers, surely behavior that Jesus would not approve. Yet love for God has been claimed as the motivation for war, persecution, and even torture.

The passage Jesus is quoting here is from Deuteronomy 6:4-5. One of the things Jesus could count on was that his audience would be generally acquainted with the source of this passage. Jesus could invoke a large context for this passage in the minds of his audience by only quoting a little bit of that. Deuteronomy 6:4-5 does not include the portion about loving your neighbor as your self. It simply calls on the Israelites to love God with everything they are and have, and then ties the definition of that love to keeping God’s commands, which do include loving one’s neighbor (Leviticus 19:18).

Now Deuteronomy is an interesting book. It’s title means “second law,” and the title is apt, because most of it is a speech by Moses on the border of the promised land. Moses wanted to remind the Israelites of the things God had done for them, of what they owed God, and of what God commanded them. In fact, if you continue reading the passage with verse 6, Moses tells the people to remember these commands and take them to heart.

In other words, loving God with one’s whole heart, soul, and strength is not something that is accomplished solely through religious ritual, or by spending a particular time in a particular place in God’s presence. Loving God involves incorporating all that God commands. Now as modern Christians we are not so well acquainted with the material that went before this, but it includes the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. Much of that material then gets repeated in Deuteronomy. Those four books combine extended stories of how God works with people, and how he loved his people first, laws about worship and ritual, laws about dealing with one’s neighbors, and laws about what one owes to God.

In other words, “loving God with heart, soul, and strength” was not an isolated, simple command to do whatever makes me feel good about my love for God. It didn’t merely command me to have good feelings toward God. The command to love God was a command to start with an attitude and build a way of life around that attitude. In fact, I would suggest that there is nowhere in scripture where one can completely separate love for God from living in community with other human beings.

What’s more, I can suggest some scripture that teaches precisely the opposite. In the first epistle of John, chapter 4, there is an extended discussion of God’s love for us.

The whole chapter is worth reading many times, but I will begin in the middle of verse 16:

God is love, and the anyone who remains in love remains in God and God remains in him. ¹⁷In this way love is made perfect among us, so that we can have boldness in the day of judgment, because we are in this world in that same way as he is. ¹⁸There is no fear in love, but perfect love throws fear out, because fear involves punishment. The one who is fearful has not been made perfect in love. ¹⁹We love, because he loved us first. ²⁰If anyone says “I love God,” but hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For how can one who doesn’t love his brother or sister, whom he has seen, love God, whom he has not seen? ²¹And we have this commandment from him that the one who loves God should also love his brother. — 1 John 4:16-21

Notice first in verse 20 that the starting point of our love for God is God’s love for us. One of the key elements of Christianity is that God seeks us first. We should always be very clear on this. We don’t earn our way to God; God reaches us. In Deuteronomy 6, if you look forward to verse 20, you will see the instructions Moses gives about answering your children’s question. These instructions are not “because I say so,” or “because God is great and will burn you in hell if you don’t.” No! God’s instructions (verse 21) start with the fact that the Israelites were slaves, that they were helpless, and that God reached out and saved them by manifesting his power.

Is this the way you would answer your children’s question about attending church? Would you say, “I was a slave to sin, and Jesus reached out and saved me, and he told me it was good to spend time in his presence and to learn about his will for me?” I don’t know about you, but I have frequently heard this expressed as a duty, and even an onerous duty. I have expressed it myself as a duty, and in one sense, it is a duty. But it is also a privilege and a response to the love that God has shown.

Proverbs 1:7 tells us that the fear of the Lord is the foundation of knowledge—I’m using phrasing there from the Revised English Bible. Reverence and awe for God stands at the foundation of leading a good life, a righteous life. It’s the foundation of knowledge and wisdom. But too often we try to separate the two. We love and reverence God in one compartment, and we live our lives and deal with our children, our neighbors, our co-workers, and our fellow church members in another.

Jesus made sure we couldn’t justify such a mistake. He included Leviticus 19:18, “love your neighbor as yourself,” as the key element of all of those requirements. John, in his epistle, then tells us that if anyone claims to love God but then hates his neighbor, he’s a liar. Based on that passage, we have had a large number of liars in the history of Christianity! So many of us have tried to be pious, to have very visible love for God, whilst not being able to tolerate people God has made.

You see, loving God involves two elements. First, we value and affirm God as the creator of the universe. That is the beginning of wisdom. We often forget that by affirming God as creator we also affirm that we can, using our God-given minds, discover meaning in the universe, or perhaps even create meaning where none is apparent. We can learn because God is one and God is consistent. Our worship is an expression of this value.

Second, however, we put that value into action. We value, that is we love, God’s creation. We love our fellow human beings. We steward the resources that God has provided for us. We look to God’s commands to find the way of life that is appropriate to us as persons created in God’s image.

The two elements should reinforce one another. As I live a life driven by love for God, I also come to appreciate more and more the gifts God has given. Worship of God drives service, and service drives worship for God. There was never any excuse for seeing the two as mutually exclusive alternatives.

To the gentleman who asked me if there wasn’t much more than love to Christianity I would say, “No, there isn’t, but love is much more than you’re assuming it is.” To the lady who wants to spend all her time in God’s presence, I would say, “Being in God’s presence will drive you to service.”

I’d suggest reading all of Deuteronomy 6 and absorbing some of the appreciation for God’s salvation and God’s law that is there. My challenge as you do so is to expand your concept of what it means to love God until it takes over everything in your life!

 

 The Meaning of Loving God [14:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download