Read:
Deuteronomy 5:1-6:9; Matthew 22:34-40
Reflect:
The greatest command from God is found in the ‘Shema’ (Hear, O Israel); the ancient Jewish prayer that has been offered to God over the centuries (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).
4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
This prayer is a clear summons (you shall) to love the one God with one’s whole being. But how can love be commanded? Orders can produce outer compliance, but what if the heart is not in it?
After all, love flows out of inner impulses and cannot be forced. What, then, is the explanation that love for God is commanded in Israel’s central prayer?
When Moses reminded Israel of the ten commandments in Deuteronomy 5 he prefaced them with the same statement he used in the original version (Exodus 20).
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. (Deuteronomy 5:6; cf. Exodus 20:2)
Here lies the beginning of an answer to the question about love as a command. Once Israel truly understood God’s merciful act of redemptive grace and grasped its profound significance for them, their hearts were moved to respond with loving obedience to his commands. It is grace that moves the heart to love. Not so much as an emotional sensation, but as a deliberate choice to love as one has been loved. So the command to love the Lord wholeheartedly is viewed not primarily as an order to be obeyed, but more as an overflowing response of deeply felt gratitude and love for God, the Redeemer.
Jesus himself affirmed the ‘Shema’ as the greatest commandment when a legal expert asked him about it. He said:
37…You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 22:37-40)
Wholehearted love for God, and secondly love for neighbor (which will be explored in the next devotional), must have first priority in a believer’s life. In fact, all other commands depend on these two (v 40). Without these prior loves efforts to keep God’s laws become a burdensome duty and impossible to fulfill faithfully. Love is necessary to inspire and energize the doing of the Lord’s will. Love does not trump obedience but gives it life and stamina to joyfully fulfill the desires of the Lord.
Jesus not only affirmed the ‘Shema’, but exemplified it in the deepest sense possible. He lived it out because he loved the Father (John 14:31).
I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father.
In Ephesians 5:2 the apostle Paul puts Jesus’ loving obedience to God in memorable terms:
Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Surely the self-sacrificing love of Christ (who is God in the flesh) for the world should move us to reflect a similar love back to him and others. We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19).
Respond:
So when we hear the ‘Shema’ command us to love God with our whole being, we respond with the deliberate choice to do exactly that, moved by the overwhelming recognition that we have been deeply loved by God in Christ and all he has done for us.
1 I love you, O LORD, my strength. 2 The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. (Psalm 18:1-2)