What does it mean to love God?

Such is the text, and now we come to the exposition. Moses sums up in two brief sentences what the law implies in its first table. First, the unity and immutability of God: "Jehovah our God is one Jehovah" founded upon this, His claim to the undivided allegiance of man, — "Thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." If there be but one God, there is none beside to divide the heart with; and Jehovah claims in the most absolute way the whole of it. The words stand for the inner man, with all his affections, and in their full energy. And this is the reasonable claim of the Creator to the full answer of the heart to Him who created him, and in whose service alone all his faculties find their full occupation, rest, and satisfaction. All freedom apart from this is only slavery. All slavery here is only freedom as he knew well who could say, "To me, to live is Christ," and who in his epistle to the Romans signs himself His "bondsman," — "Paul, bondsman of Jesus Christ." (Rom. 1:1, Greek.) Yet none can insist more earnestly that "we have not received the spirit of bondage." (Rom. 8:15.) To live in love, and serve Him who is love, is indeed the opposite.

Blessed fact! Blessed relationship! But Israel had to be reminded of the conduct suited to such a relationship — conduct which could only flow from a loving heart. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." Here lies the secret of all true practical religion. Without this all is valueless to God. "My son, give me thine heart." Where the heart is given, all will be right. The heart may be compared to the regulator of a watch which acts on the hair-spring, and the hair-spring acts on the main-spring, and the main-spring acts on the hands, as they move round the dial. If your watch goes wrong, it will not do merely to alter the hands, you must touch the regulator. God looks for real heart-work, blessed be His Name! His word to us is, "My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth."

1 John 5:3. Love of God is now expressly stated to be obedience to the commandments of God. In John 14 the Lord said to the disciples, "If ye love Me, keep My commandments. … He that hath My commandments and keeps them, he it is that loves Me. … If any one love Me, he will keep My word" (verses 15, 21, 23). Love is expressed in obedience; the greater the love, the more constant the obedience, the greater the desire to carry out the commands and desires of the heart of God. What God has asked us to do is not grievous to the divine life that He has given to us; nay, verily, it is what the divine nature finds pleasure in. The flesh does not like to obey, for the mind of the flesh is enmity with God, and is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be (Rom. 8:7); but what is born of God delights in all that belongs to God, and God's commandments are for the securing in us of what brings glory to His Name.

“We love because He has first loved us” (JND). This is a spontaneous, essential reaction. No human effort is involved in this at all, no pressing of myself, no stirring up of my emotions by artificial means. Love must be a spontaneous thing, or it is not love at all. “I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake [my] love, till he please” (Song of Solomon 2:7). The roe, or gazelle, is the very picture of timid sensitivity, while the hind, climbing with sure‑footedness to heights above the common level, tells the same story, of avoiding the pressures of danger. Love cannot be produced from our own hearts by a process of stirring them up: this will fail, for our hearts are no fountain of love at all: we must look elsewhere: “we love because He first loved us.” The reception of the love of God is the only source of love toward God or toward others. Let us but believe His love to be what it actually is, and this produces a glad and willing response, unfeignedly, unaffectedly. The law says, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself” (Luke 10:27). But every effort of man to do so only issues in utter defeat: it is against his nature. What is the use of putting all our energy into pumping to draw water from a well that yields only poison gas? Let us forget such a well as our own corrupted hearts, and turn to the living, flowing fountain of the heart of God; and without effort, without human operation, our hearts will become filled with His love.

If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” The natural heart will embrace any subterfuge: man will quite glibly profess to love God, but it is convenient for him that God is out of sight, so that real, serious dealings with Him are avoided. But he must have dealings with his brother. If it is true that God’s love has entered his heart, how can he help loving his brother? If he does not, then he does not love God either: he is a liar. Dreadful designation! It is not simply that the man has been untruthful in a certain instance; but when he takes the hypocritical stand of professed love for God while hating the children of God, this is the very spirit of antichrist, who is a liar, as is his father the devil: it is the character of deceit willingly assumed.

But this does not imply indifference to wrong conduct, disobedience, or fellowshiping evil ways. The apostle carefully guards the true character of love here. Love according to God must be of the right quality. Hence we read, "By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep His commandments" (ver. 2). Our love to one another is not true love unless it is defined and limited by love to God, which is proved by submission to His will — obedience to His injunctions or instructions. In verse 3 the apostle insists that obedience is the mark of loving God. We show our love to Him, not by professing it merely, but by unfeignedly governing ourselves by His instructions; they are by no means irksome if we truly love God.

One of the scribes who was listening perceived this, and he ventured to propound a question that they often debated amongst themselves, concerning the relative importance of the various commandments. The Lord's answer brushed aside all their elaborate arguments and quibbles as to one or other of the ten commandments by going straight to the word contained in Deuteronomy 6:4-5. Here was a commandment which brought within its scope all the other commandments. God demanded that He should be absolutely supreme in the affections of His creatures; if only He were so, all other things would fall into their right place. Here is the great master-commandment which governs everything.

It is good for us to listen to this. The heart has been made deeply susceptible of this affection, and Christ is the offered object of it. He proposes Himself to it. He claims the supreme place in our hearts. "He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me." Whatever passion of the soul be moved, it is God's right to have the highest exercise of it towards Himself. It has not treated Him as God if it have not rendered this to Him. If each of the passions of our souls do not give Him its richest and largest offerings, it is not a worshipping passion.

And I know all now by the Holy Ghost, so that I abound in hope by the power of the Holy Ghost. There are two kinds of happiness. There is the happiness of hope that we have; and what is the other kind? Rest in perfect affection; God loves me as He loves Jesus, and I rest in that. To talk about our love to anyone is no proof of love. The deepest affection may shew itself, but is not loquacious about itself, at least when it confides in its object; nor is the declaration of our great love a proof that all love much, nor complaint of our want of affection a proof that love is wanting, though it may be often that we are thinking too much about it. If there be confidence, the heart rests in the value of the love of the one confided in, and rests in thinking of its object, which is true affection. Supposing a child told me, "I love my mother quite enough," I say, "You are an unfortunate wight; you do not love your mother a bit if you say that." But suppose a child says, If you only knew my mother, her unwearied love, her patience with me, and I often so foolish, forgetting her wishes! I made a noise when she was sick, and yet her love never falters, never wearies; I say, That child loves its mother. When I have a sense of the love that outreaches all my thoughts, and thank and bless and wonder and adore at its greatness, and in the sense of it, my heart thinking of Him - that is love to God. But, if I look into my own heart (I do not speak of judging known failure) and measure my love, and complain of my not loving God, in such case you are under law as to it. The law required it, and necessarily and rightly: but that is law. "Herein is love, not that we loved him, but that he loved us." Hence too, when our loving Him is spoken of in 1 John 4, it is not said we ought to love Him, true as it may be, but we love Him because He first loved us.

If we look at the law, in its two grand divisions, it tells a man to love God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind; and to love his neighbour as himself. This is the sum of the law. This, and not a tittle less, is what the law demands. But where has this demand ever been responded to by any member of Adam's fallen posterity? Where is the man who could say he loves God after such a fashion? "The carnal mind (i.e., the mind which we have by nature) is enmity against God." Man hates God and His ways. God came, in the Person of Christ, and showed Himself to man — showed Himself, not in the overwhelming brightness of His majesty, but in all the charm and sweetness of perfect grace and condescension. What was the result? Man hated God. "Now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father." (John 15:24.) But, it must be said, "Man ought to love God." No doubt, and he deserves death and eternal perdition if he does not. But can the law produce this love in man's heart? Was that its design? By no means, "for the law works wrath." The law finds man in a state of enmity against God; and without ever altering that state — for that was not its province — it commands him to love God with all his heart, and curses him if he does not. It was not the province of the law to alter or improve man's nature; nor yet could it impart any power to carry out its righteous demands. It said "This do, and thou shalt live." It commanded man to love God. It did not reveal what God was to man, even in his guilt and ruin; but it told man what he ought to be toward God. This was dismal work. It was not the unfolding of the powerful attractions of the divine character, producing in man true repentance toward God, melting his icy heart, and elevating his soul in genuine affection and worship. No: it was an inflexible command to love God; and, instead of producing love, it "worked wrath;" not because God ought not to be loved, but because man was a sinner.

The commandment is not that we should love God. That was the commandment given from Sinai, without the revelation of the nature of the One whom man was to love. But by the Son, God has brought our hearts under the power of His love to us, and this love is to go out of our hearts to one another; and we cannot pretend to love God if the brethren are of little importance to us; “for he that loves not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” (1 John 4:20). My brother is one who partakes of the divine nature, and if I see such an one, and love him not, it is a plain proof I do not love God.

I do not doubt our hearts go out to all who profess real faith in Christ, and we ought not to be suspicious, though many such might prove themselves to be reprobate; but there is, I think, such a thing as seeing your brother, that is one who does righteousness (chap. 2:29), and loves his brethren (chap. 4:7). Such is born of God; and if we love God, we will love all such when we see them, and love in the heart of any of us to God finds its expression towards the brethren.