"Loving God"
& The Obedience of Faith
When the Pharisees heard that [Jesus] had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment."
[Matthew 22.34-38]
God's commands show us what it's like to live as a genuine human being; His ways are those ways in which He has designed us to walk as Him image-bearers. Jesus shows us the ultimate vocation of the human being: to love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. Here we find what it means to "be human": we are designed to love God.
But what does it mean to love God?
And how do we go about doing it?
Those are the pivotal questions.
The first is important because in our western culture, we have a skewed perception of love. Culture and media raises us to see love primarily in the context of feelings; this explains, in large part, the pandemic of failed marriages with couples who "fell out of love with one another" and justified (at least to themselves) breaking covenant vows. Love, in the biblical sense of the word, has nothing to do with feelings. "Feelings" are physiological, produced by fluctuations of serotonin, dopamine, and other chemicals in the brain; and "good feelings" can come and go like the tides. That euphoric "feeling" of love which we crave isn't something originating in the heart but in the brain; neuroscience research has shown this to be the case. The whole concept of love being rooted in feelings originates from the Middle Ages, when tales of heroic knights, burning with passion for damsels in distress, overwhelmed Europe and tore the fabric of what it means to love and "be in love."
Biblical love, both towards God and towards others, transcends the physiological composition of our brains. If we interpret loving God through the lens of our culture's conception of love, we can very easily start thinking that if we love God, we have warm and fuzzy feelings towards Him. While there's such a thing as having joy in Christ, and even experiencing warm and fuzzy feelings towards God, equating these with what it means to love God produces two terrible dilemmas.
First, it can prompt a devoted Christian to question his love for God dependent upon the physiological state of his brain. The Bible is filled with stories of people who often had negative feelings towards God: Jeremiah raged against God, Job couldn't make sense of his life, the prophet Elijah languished under God's apparent absence, and David's emotional spectrum looked something akin to a Rorschach test in a dimly-lit room. Furthermore, because we are subject to deterioration, decay, and disease because of the Fall, mental illnesses with physiological causes can prevent some people from experiencing joy, contentment, and even love itself. All of God's people, sturdy in their love for Him, can be afflicted by mental illness, and we all experience times of negative feelings towards God. The way we feel is never a good litmus test for determining whether or not we love God.
The second problem with equating love for God with feelings is that it can offer false assurance to those who have positive feelings towards God (or their conception of God) but who don't love Him in the biblical sense. Self-delusion is rampant, and the Bible tells us that the devil blinds the minds of unbelievers; often He does this by telling people they are A-OK when they are anything but, obscuring the need for genuine faith and repentance.
Loving God isn't about our "feelings" towards Him; loving God is about devotion to Him, regardless of feelings. Biblical faith is the coupling of two things: the intellectual assent to the truth of the gospel and allegiance to Christ. The Greek word for "faith" in the New Testament is used throughout contemporary Greek literature to denote one's loyalty and allegiance to someone else. When the New Testament writers spoke of faith in Christ and faith in God, they weren't just talking about believing a body of facts to be true; rather, they were talking about a commitment of the entire person to serve, obey, and worship the Living God and His Son, Jesus Christ. This sheds light on Romans 10.9-10, where Paul says that we will be saved if we believe "in our hearts" the truth of the gospel (intellectual assent) and confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord. The confession we make in modern-day baptisms isn't the same sort of confession talked about in Romans 10; whereas our confessions are creedal in nature, the confessions of the early church Christians were revolutionary in nature.
Get this: in Roman antiquity, there was only one Lord, and that was Caesar. Even to speculate the possibility of another Caesar was political treason, and that was a fast-track to exile or the executioner's block. In Judaism, there was only one Lord, and he was God, and to call anyone else Lord was blasphemous and worthy of having rocks thrown at you until you were dead. To confess Jesus as Lord wasn't just enough to get you kicked out of the synagogue: it was enough to find yourself cast out of civilization proper (as the Apostle John experienced on the scrubby island of Patmos), or even enough to find yourself nailed to a cross! Thus the Greek scholar A.T. Robertson notes, "Lighthearted men today can say 'Lord Jesus' in a flippant or even in an irreverent way, but no Jew or Gentile then said it who did not mean it." The only person who would make a public confession of Christ was the person who had sworn allegiance to Christ, no matter come what may.
To have faith in Christ is to be devoted to Him.
To love God is to swear your allegiance to Him.
It makes sense, doesn't it? What's the primal temptation in the Garden of Eden? Become like God. Our greatest "black mark" isn't that we lie or steal sometimes; it's that we have bucked against God's authority and sought to set ourselves against Him. We have tried to usurp His throne. The gospel illuminates our noxious rebellion and our insufferable treachery, showing us what we deserve for the hostile, insurrectionist sort of people we've become; and the gospel shows us, in the life of Christ, what it means to be human again: it means to submit ourselves to God as Creator and Judge, and to throw off the yoke of our arrogant, megalomaniacal hardheartedness and put around our necks the yoke of our Creator and Redeemer. In the Garden, we set our teeth against God by rebelling against Him; through the cross of Christ, we can kneel down before Him and, strengthened and empowered by God's grace, begin to love Him again.
Devotion to God, if genuine, will manifest itself in obedience. This is what the Apostle James is getting at in James 2.18: I by my works will show you my faith. If we are truly devoted to God--if we genuinely love God--then we will seek to obey Him. Period! When Christ answers the Pharisees in Matthew 22, telling them that the Greatest Commandment is to Love God, he was quoting a classic line from the Hebrew Bible. In Deuteronomy 6.5, this line--You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might--is wedged between two exhortations to obey God's commands, and throughout the Old Testament, we see that loving God is intimately connected to obeying Him.
You shall therefore love the LORD your God, and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always.
[Deuteronomy 11.1]
Only be very careful to observe the commandments and the law that Moses the servant of the LORD commanded you, to love the LORD your God, and to walk in all his ways and to keep his commandments and to cling to him and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.
[Joshua 22.5]
There are more examples from the Old Testament, but some people think we shouldn't pay attention to these. "We live in the Age of Grace," they say, "and therefore obedience is optional." This kind of thinking, this cheap grace, is foreign to the New Testament. Such a view on faith and grace is untenable in the light of scripture (which is probably why those who hold it tend not to read their bibles). Even if we were to look solely at one New Testament writer (the Apostle John), we would see he is shockingly straightforward on the matter:
And by this we know that we have come to know [Jesus], if we keep his commandments. Whoever says 'I know him' but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
[1 John 2.3-6]
Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world--the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches--comes not from the Father but from the world.
[1 John 2.15-16]
Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that [Jesus] appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning.
[1 John 3.4-8b]
And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it.
[2 John 6]
For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.
[1 John 5.3]
The Apostle John uses exaggerated language to hone in the point that obedience and love of God are intimately connected. This isn't to say they are the same thing; it's to say that you can't love God without obedience. The Apostle Paul coined a unique phrase that we see in the beginning and end of his letter to the Romans: the obedience of faith; and it is precisely this "obedient faithfulness" which Paul sought to cultivate in peoples' lives through the gospel.
If you don't pursue obedience to God, you don't love Him.
If you don't strive to honor and please Him, you don't belong to Him.
Here is the litmus test of love for God: Do you seek to obey Him?
These are harsh words, and it'd be comforting if John were making this up. "This is just his approach," one might say. But John is carrying forward what he learned from Christ. In the dimly-lit Upper Room on the eve of his crucifixion, Jesus told his disciples lots of things, not least of all the connection between loving him and obeying him.
Whoever has my commandment and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.
[John 14.21]
If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him... Whoever does not love me does not keep my words...
[John 14.23-24]
If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.
[John 15.10]
You are my friends if you do what I command you.
[John 15.14]
You can't claim to be a "friend of Jesus" if you disregard his teachings.
You can't claim to love God if you make no effort to obey His commands.
You can't claim devotion to God if your heart is focused on worldly things.
Many people claim to be devoted to God, but their unrelenting disobedience shows that such devotion is a sham. While they may have convinced themselves that they're wholly devoted, their relentless opposition to God's commands, and their own determination to live however they please, reveals the delusion. If a person really loves God, she will seek to obey God; when a person thrives in continual and unrepentant disobedience, he shows that he doesn't really love God.
We must be clear about one thing: loving God does not demand perfect obedience. When we submit ourselves to God, we will strive to obey Him. But this side of heaven, our obedience won't be perfect. That's just the way it is. Sometimes our growth in obedience will be three steps forward and two steps back; our growth in obedience will never be an unbroken upward journey. The Apostle Paul, who obeyed Christ to such an extent that he could say "Imitate me, as I imitate Christ," continued throughout his life to wrestle with the desires of the flesh and the pull of the world. He's honest about his struggles in Philippians 3.12-14, where he writes, Not that I... am already made perfect, but I press on to make [perfection] my own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining toward what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Paul knew his own stumblings well, and he strove for obedience from a heart devoted to God. James, the brother of Jesus, is adamant: We ALL stumble in MANY ways. (John 3.2) The Apostle John, whose straight talk about the connection between loving God and obeying Him, didn't have a glamorized view of human beings: If we say we have no sin, he says, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in is. (1 Jn 1.8) The key here is that the person devoted to God will live a life marked by increasing obedience as he grows in his devotion to God as well as in his God-given ability to obey Him.
The Peruvian missionary Paul Washer captures this titanic, lifelong struggle of the Christian: "[Regardless] of the progress a believer has made in [growing in obedience to God], even the most mature one will find the Christian life to be a great struggle against sin with frequent battles, great victories, and discouraging defeats. On this side of heaven, no believer will ever make a complete break with sin to be immune from its deception and free from all moral failure. Although true believers will grow in their forsaking of sin, sin will still be a repetitive malady in their lives. Although it may become less frequent or pronounced, sin will never be eradicated completely until the believer's ultimate glorification in heaven." He continues, "Though we struggle against sin and run for holiness, as one who runs for the prize; though we discipline our body and make it our slave; and though we walk in this world with the greatest care and wisdom, we will find that we are not yet perfected and still in need of repentance and grace... For this reason, believers should not despair about the battle they wage or their frequent need of repentance as they struggle against sin. The reality of such a struggle is a mark of true conversion. The false convert--the hypocrite--knows of no such battle. It is important to remember that God does not promise His presence to the one who is perfect, but to the one whose life is marked by a broken and contrite spirit and who trembles at His Word."
There's a remarkable story found in 2 Kings 5 that gives us hope in our pursuit of obedience. In this story, the commander of a foreign army is stricken with leprosy. He seeks healing from Elisha, a prophet of God, and in his healing, he devotes himself to God. His devotion is imperfect, as we will see, but God accepts it anyways. In verses 15-19, we find the foreign army commander, a man by the name of Naaman, presenting himself Healthy & Whole before the prophet Elisha. He confesses that "there is no God who exists in the entire world like the God of Israel." After twice trying to give a gift to Elisha, and being refused by the prophet both times, Naaman swears, "I will no longer give burnt offerings or sacrifices to other gods. The God of Israel is my only God now." He then adds, perhaps gloomily and with a note of dejection, "May the God of Israel forgive me when I walk into the temple of Rimmon, the storm god of Aram, to worship there beside my master. I am his first officer, and so I must be by his side wherever he goes, even when he worships. May the God of Israel forgive me for bowing down in that place." Elisha's reply is remarkable: "Go, and be at peace!"
Many of us would look at Naaman and tell him, "Absolutely not! If you are already planning on making concessions to your devotion, you've got another thing coming!" It's an unfortunate reality that many of us are the "glass half empty" sorta people: we pinpoint the flaws in peoples' faith, noticing their blemishes and scars far more than their sacrifices and struggles. Thankfully, the God of Israel is a "glass half full" kind of God: he jumps on the first breath of devotion, on the first murmuring of our hearts toward Him, and He is more eager to forgive us than we are to procure forgiveness. David attests to God's extravagant grace and mercy in Psalm 103:
The LORD is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always accuse,
nor will He keep His anger forever.
He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear Him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far he removes our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion for those who fear Him.
For He knows how we were made;
he remembers that we are dust.
[Psalm 103.8-13]
Those who love God are devoted to Him, and their devotion manifests itself in their striving to obey Him. It's easy to become self-deluded, believing that we love Him when we don't. We must examine our lives: Are we living for OUR glory or for GOD'S glory? Do we seek the pleasures of the world, or do we seek after God? Do we strive to obey Him, repenting when we fail, and relying on His grace to carry us onward? If we have been living a lie, we must end the charades and bow down before God in faith and repentance, submitting ourselves wholly to Him and Him alone. We who love God, and who are well aware of our sins, must take heart: our God is a "glass half full" God, gracious and merciful; He knows we are made of dust, and He doesn't condemn us for our imperfections.
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