HOW CAN WE LOVE GOD?
28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:28-31
The preamble to their question seems to suggest that this man was more sincere than the rest. It isn’t clear whether this was another trick question or whether he really wanted an answer. He questioned Jesus about the greatest commandment and Jesus, as a fully-trained rabbi, responded with the Shema which He would have learned at His mother’s breast.
Those who deny the Trinity have lost the significance of the statement, “the Lord is one”. ECHAD is not a numeral but an expression of unity, of loving submission and interaction between beings, a unity of essence, vision and purpose, a team expressing unity in diversity, and this cannot happen outside of a plurality. Even if there were twenty beings in the Godhead, they could still be one if we understand the meaning of ECHAD.
The response God yearns for from His sons is the love that He has for His offspring, the human beings He has created voluntarily to receive and return the love He has for us. In The Message, Peterson uses the expression “passion and prayer, intelligence and energy”, which conveys the idea of action rather than thought and emotion. Love, correctly understood, is an action word. It has an emotional content but, without the active response, it is without meaning and power.
The way love is expressed to God is by directing that love toward our fellow human beings. If we love God’s children, and that includes those whom we consider “outsiders”, we have an outlet for our love for God which God Himself has chosen and approves. Outside of that, loving God has no expression and loses its energy and outcome.
Every other commandment is a practical way of showing and expressing our love for God. Like God’s love, our love does not need to take into account the worthiness of its object. Love is an expression of who we are, not the worth of who we love.
How is this love possible from people who have an inborn selfishness which does not respond to mere will power? The Old Covenant provided the prescription but not the power. Only faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus can transform us from selfish to loving people because we are made new by the power of the Holy Spirit.
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 2 Corinthians 5:17
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 1 John 4:7-11