Loving God
Devotions:
“And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he: And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. And no man after that durst ask him any question.”
Mark 12:29-34 KJV
This is the full requirement of the law. This is the essence of the law, to love God and our fellow man. But we could not keep the law. The Israelites could not keep the this commandment. We cannot generate love. We can easily love those who love us but we cannot originate that love. This is why humans kill each other, they objectify each other, that is men treat women as objects to fulfill their passions instead of seeing them and treating them as human created in God's image.
God is the origin of all true love. Love does not focus on itself but on the needs of others. Love gives and seeks to bless even the unloveable. But without God we cannot love, we have no capacity to create love.
“Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”
John 14:23 KJV
We read Jesus' words hear and we know that we do not perfectly keep His words so we condemn ourselves and try harder to obey Him and keep His word only to fail again. but this is approaching everything backwards. We are not keep His word because we do not love Him and unless that is solved we will never keep His word. What is the solution?
“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
We love him, because he first loved us.”
1 John 4:10, 19 KJV
When we understand and believe the love that God has for us as demonstrated in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, the more it creates love in us for God and for our fellow man. We are transformed by His love for us. If we are lacking in the obedience part then we need to focus on God's love for us and come into His presence to experience and receive revelation of that love.
“But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8 KJV