So I read the Bible and looked for answers. As many of you pointed out, there are passages that tell us we love God by obeying his commandments, and the commandments are summed up in loving your neighbour as yourself. So I thought, ok, I am going to do just that. It is easier for me to understand, at least I thought so at that time. For a few years I did follow this second commandment, to love neighbour "as myself". It is not just helping people, but I truly care for others' benefit over my own, offer people as much as I can give, think for them like they are part of my own life, that what they experienced and how they feel is the same as what I experienced and how I feel.
As I consider what you've written here, Paul's words in
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 come to mind. In the passage, Paul makes it pretty clear that one can say, know, and do good and right things without love being a part of any of it. Implicit in his words is that
love for God and right living are not synonymous. One can speak with the tongues of men and of angels without love being in one's speech. One can prophesy, understand all mysteries, possess all knowledge, and demonstrate enormous faith in God and yet be devoid of love for Him. One can give away all they own to the poor and die a martyr's death in flames and do so without love for God in one's heart. Isn't that shocking?! It is possible to die as a martyr for the faith without really loving God! And Paul indicates that such a death "profits nothing"! Yikes! I used to be the sort of person Paul described in
1 Corinthians 13:1-3. I was a "good" Christian, attending church twice on Sundays, every Wednesday evening for prayer meeting, and again on Friday for Youth events. I taught Sunday School classes, I tithed, I prayed, I never swore, or drank alcohol, or partied with drugs as so many of my schoolmates did. I was clean as a whistle and almost entirely empty of a love for God. Oh, there were some weak, faltering flickers of affection for Him, that, provoked by a powerful sermon, might burst into momentary hot flames of sentimental emotion, but my day-to-day obedience to God's commands had really nothing to do with loving Him. And, as Paul pointed out to the Corinthians, all of my obedience was, consequently, spiritually
useless.
I am not alone, of course, in how I once was. Many Christians are trying to make up for a lack of a heart's desire, a deep passion, for God with obedience. Even if they don't have any daily personal fellowship with God, no joyful, intimate interactions with Him, no delight in being moment-by-moment in His presence, they will still be obedient. Surely, dutiful, perhaps even fearful, obedience to God is still acceptable to Him simply because such obedience is moral and right. But, Paul is very clear in his words to the Corinthian believers that the Christian life lived apart from a motive of love for God
is of no spiritual value whatever. Preach all the sermons you like with all the charisma, and eloquence, and truth you can infuse into them, but if those sermons don't come from a heart of love for God, you'll be nothing more than a clanging cymbal or noisy gong. Become a virtual encyclopedia of Christian knowledge, understand all the subtleties of Christian philosophy, theology and doctrine, tower above all others in the measure of your faith in God, but if you don't love Him, you're
nothing. Give away all of your money and your possessions to the poor and sacrifice yourself to the flames of martyrdom, refusing to recant your fidelity to the Christian faith no matter the cost, but without a love for God motivating your sacrifices, they profit you
nothing. And still, in spite of Paul's words here, in spite of Christ's words making the First and Great Commandment, not obedience to God, but wholehearted love for Him (
Matthew 22:36-38), the majority of Christians persist in trying to live for God without such love.
Until I, not long ago, read a verse and was shocked by that.
Psalms 18:1
I love you, O LORD, my strength.
Nothing special, it seems. But I meditated on it and I found myself think differently than what David thinks. David loves God, not just His people, not just His commandments, not just His words, not just the things of God, but God Himself, the one and the only living God. To think that I was not even following the first commandment for years was so shocking to me that I trembled and asked God for forgiveness.
A terrible but
absolutely vital revelation! Oh, that more Christians would see what you have in this regard!
I start to know what it means to love God. It is a personal relationship with God, that I can share the joy and sorrow with God. I can live in God and God in me. I can feel the same as how God feels, and God feels the same as how I feel. I can trust God with all my life, and, eventually, God will trust me and make me a vessel for honour and give me His power to do His will on behave of Him. I can love God like any other people, and to be precise, more than any other people, since the Spirit of God is in me with my own spirit. I can have a closer relationship with God more than anyone else.
What can God give to us that is greater, that is better, that is more fulfilling and excellent than Himself? He is the Supreme Pinnacle, the Unmatched Apex, the Shining Unparalleled Core of everything. Nothing else comes anywhere close to how marvellous, and incredible, and precious He is! Why, then, do His children seem often to want anything but Him? They want His power, His blessings, His providence, His protection, and a mansion in heaven one day, but they don't really want
Him. God has become small, and weak, and uninteresting in the minds of so many today. Many Christians are going about with this view of God, and so are empty of the joy and power of walking in fellowship with Him. They look at one another and think, "My flat, grey, powerless life as a Christian is just like the life of every other Christian I know. I guess this is what the Christian life is really like." How wrong they are! And in their terrible error may one day find themselves standing before Christ, hearing the words, "Depart from me. I never knew you."
