God's Order of Love

Part OneWhat God says about love.

---

---

I’ve been thinking about love for months. I talked about it here and even a bit here because wherever I find myself in the scriptures I come back to one of three themes: love, discipleship (growing as a disciple of Christ), and/or evangelism (sharing God’s Word with others teaching them how to enter into covenant relationship with Jesus Christ) and really the latter two are an extension of love.

Love has not let me go in my study of scripture.

There are so many different things I want to reflect on, share and offer you. I’ll start with these words and thoughts for Part one of this conversation.

For the past nine years I have worked closely with women of a wide age range, at various stages of life, who live all across the world. Often, I encounter women who have a hard time loving themselves.¹ I could point to a number of reasons this might be, but of all those reasons, the most impactful and significant is given to us in scripture.

In Mark 12 a scribe asks Jesus, ”which is the first commandment of all?” Jesus answered,

“The first of all the commandments is: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.”²

From the words of Jesus Christ I see a picture in my head that I’ve sketched out to look something like this

The first conclusion I’ve reached is this— the most important thing that I can do in my life is to love God.

But not just “love God,” we’ve been given more instruction than that. The most important and impactful thing that I can do in my life and with my life, is to love God with ALL of my heart, with ALL of my soul, with ALL of my mind, and with ALL of my strength.

Loving God with my emotions, my being, my intellect, my thoughts, and my physical body is a prerequisite to being able to fully and wholly love myself.

There is no part of me, there is no part of you, that is exempt from loving God.

There is no part of your life that is exempt from being commanded, instructed, and/or exhorted to love God first and fully. All of you, all of me, must be submitted and subjected to the love of God, putting His will, His wisdom, and His way before our own. There is no part of your life that is exempt from the commandment of loving God.

Conclusion number two— loving God is also the best way that I can love myself. In fact, I go as far to say, loving God is the only way that I can truly, wholly, and fully love myself (and others, but we’ll get to that as we continue this conversation).

So, when I look at someone who struggles with loving themselves, my question is—do you love God with all of you? Are you walking in covenant relationship with the Lord Jesus? And this question is one of sincerity, not of accusation or judgment. The question is an invitation and encouragement to examine oneself because God has given us the order.

1. Love God with your all. This allows us to open ourselves up to receive the love of God that equips us to love ourselves, knowing and understanding the invitation that God has extended to us to walk in covenant relationship with Him daily.

2. It is that love we then have for ourselves that allows us to walk in the love of God daily and then, and only then, extend it to others. You cannot circumvent God’s order: love God, love yourself, love others.

“If you love Me, keep My commandments…. If anyone loves Me, he will keep My Word.”³

Jesus is not talking about a legalistic life of following rules. Anyone can follow a set of rules without being in relationship to the person who created the rules (we’ll see an example of this in a moment).

God’s love is an invitation into covenant relationship with Him. We respond with our love by laying our lives down to take on His. We learn how to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength in His Word, not by culture or popular vote.

God has “given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him.”⁴ “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”⁵ (emphasis added)

God has not left us without direct instruction on what it means to love Him and what that looks like in action.

Loving God means seeking His righteousness not your own. Loving God means laying down your life, taking up your cross, and following Him. Loving God means being willing to relinquish and let go of everything that you thought made you who you are—titles, possessions, and the like.

In Mark 10 a man came to Jesus wanting to know what to do to inherit eternal life and walk in covenant relationship with the Lord forever. He told Jesus how he kept the commandments from his youth—no adultery, no murder, no stealing, no bearing false witness, not defrauding others, and he honored his mother and father. He was a commandment keeper, a rule follower. That part, was not the challenge for him.

But Jesus taught Him beyond where his knowledge of scripture was. Yes, it was great that the man had kept those commandments, that is exactly what he was to do. However, his obedience was not complete.

“Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.”⁶ (emphasis added)

First, Jesus’ response was out of love. An invitation to follow Him. God’s love is not an invitation to pursue him with your moral behavior devoid of giving Him your heart, mind, soul, body, and being with it. This young man offered God his morals—making good choices in obedience to commandments. But God doesn’t simply want your behavior; your behavior must be a reflection and response to giving God all of you, living in submission to His will, His way, and His Word.

To me, Jesus is saying to the man, “yes I see your behavior that you’ve kept from your youth, but you still lack. Lay aside everything you have and when you do, there will be a void, I will fill that void with the only thing that can bring you into relationship with me. Take up your cross and follow me. I have more commandments than those you’ve already kept. Of all the things you’ve given me, one thing is missing—I want YOU.”

The young man showed that he was willing to be a rule follower but not a Jesus follower. Those two people are not the same. The young man was “sad” when he heard what Jesus had to say. And rather than do as Jesus told him, he “went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.”⁷. But “[w]hat will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?”⁸ Luke asks it like this, “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost?”⁹

The young man went away at the invitation to love God with his all. He was unwilling to depart from the things that gave him status, comfort, identity, recognition, purpose, meaning, importance, and the like. Yet, what gives us all of those formerly listed things, is God himself and nothing else.

The young ruler was not willing to love God with all of his heart, mind, soul, and strength—ironically, the first and greatest commandment of them all. And we see that following a few selected commandments is not what God requires or respects.

We must love God beyond the outward appearance of obedience. We must love God beyond bragging about what we “don’t do” and put our pursuit on what God has required us to do. The young ruler was willing to hold on to earthly treasure that tarnishes, fades away, and can be stolen instead of treasure stored up in heaven.¹⁰

Jesus extended to the young ruler and has extended to us an uneven exchange. The young ruler walked away that day earthly rich and spiritually poor. His faith was in his wealth and riches. His faith was in what he could see and understand. And that is why loving God also requires faith.

And that is where I will pick up in part two. Thank you for engaging in God’s word with me. Please share your reflections and questions.

---

1. Keep reading throughout the various parts of this conversation as I expound on what loving self looks like and means. It is not the portrayal the world gives. Your view on what it means to love yourself may broaden as we study God’s word together looking at what it teaches us about God’s commandment to love.

2. Mark 12:29-31

3. John 14:15, 23.

4. 2 Peter 1:3

5. 2 Timothy 3:16

6. Mark 10:21

7. Mark 10:22

8. Mark 8:36

9. Luke 9:25

10. See Matthew 6:19-21