Commanded to Love
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”
To be commanded to love is slightly oxymoronic is it not? For a loving God who has given us free will to choose freedom and eternity with him, telling us to love Him seems rather out of character.
However, in a western world of do’s and don’ts and right and wrongs, we might have missed the subtle idiosyncrasies in which this ‘command’ , or others like it, is pointing.
Do we see the Commandments as a list of Rabbinical laws in which our salvation is dependent, or do we look at them as the keys to relationally honoring the one person who gave up everything for you and for me to have the opportunity to choose eternity with Him?
Our first encounter with the aforementioned verse relays its message as a heart issue.
The divine timing of this most important command should not be missed as it comes at the close of the reading of the 10 commandments.
Deuteronomy 5:29
“Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!“
Deuteronomy 6:5-6
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.”
No commandment earns salvation, only Jesus offers that. Rather, each of them in their own right and collectively offers the freedom to live an unblemished life to relationally connect with Jesus in the way He desires and created so that “it might go well with us.”
How we look at God’s commandments matters.
Do we see a tyrannical God, punishing us by keeping us within the bounds of a set of rules simply for the sake of obedience?
Or do we see a loving God who chose self-sacrifice to save many who says, “I’m offering you freedom. Here’s a blueprint of the opportunities to love me, to keep my commandments, and to love others as I have loved them. Choose my way, love me in my way and experience true freedom”
God’s commandments are opportunities to give us the freedom to live the divine life that God intended us to live in Eden, but even more so, they are opportunities to Love the Lord and to Love others as he has called.
Before dismissing one or all of these precious commands, let’s ask ourselves how each of them give us the opportunity to first and foremost love God as Creator and Savior, and secondly, how to relay that love to love His Creation and His saved.