Come to the waters

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and will all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. (Mark 12:30)

You shall love the LORD your God will all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. (Deut 6:5)

The tricks we play with that word “love” are well known. For me, it is not primarily a word about feelings - although it is hard not to slip into that. It should not merely be something we say as a self-report about our own inner life. Love is primarily something we do.

This raises a good question for me this morning: How do we love God? To love someone is to do something for that other person. What could we possibly do for God?

In the end, isn’t the only loving thing we can do for God is please God? Obeying God is loving God. We can sing songs about how much we love God, but it is only by doing what pleases God that we actually love.

By stating this - I’m sure a painfully obvious thing to many - I do not want to dimiss the Bible’s witness that fear of God is a spur to obedience as well. Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 9:10). But perfect love drives out fear (1 John 4:18). I’m not sure how that works, exactly, but I take comfort in that.

Of course, this does leave open the question of what it means to obey or please God. I like Scot McKnight’s suggestion in Jesus Creed (the book) that following Jesus is how we obey God.