Yes, There is Good News! Part 7

One time when Jesus was being tested by those pesky Pharisees one of them asked Him, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”  This episode is found in Matthew 22:36-38.  “Jesus replied, ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’”  This was not just something that Jesus came up with off the top of His head.  No, He was quoting from the book of Deuteronomy, one of the first five books of the bible sometimes known, from the Hebrew word for law, Torah.  “Hear O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.  Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Deut. 6:4)

In the previous article I mentioned that God “wants us to come to know Him and visit with Him and so to learn to love Him.”  What does it take to “learn to love” someone?  Unfortunately in our society we have somehow been taught that love is as easy as “falling off a log”.  Two young adults are attracted to each other and they falsely assume that they are in love.  We mistake the feeling of attraction for the reality of love.  Love is so much more.  And that is not to say that two young adults will not grow into a true love.

Have you ever realized that when Jesus was asked “which is the greatest commandment” and He answered, “To love ….” He was establishing the love we must have for God as a requirement.  Can you command anyone to love you?  Can you command an emotional response from another human being?  God is the creator.  He knows our make up.  He knows that we have an emotional side and an intellectual side.  And yet He commands us to love Him!  In fact He tells us that this is the greatest commandment.
 

A couple of entries ago I mentioned that we are capable of loving on several different levels.  One of those levels is that of a parent to a child.  This is one level of love that does not have to be taught.  When Mother gives birth and first holds the child in her arms, there is a tremendous outpouring of love for the baby.  That is a natural occurrence.  It is that type of love that God has for us.  His love is as that for a child.  In fact we are sometimes called, “the children of God”.

But we, the babes that He loves, must learn to love Him with all our heart, strength and life (or soul).  God is so far above us that we really cannot understand all that the nature of God entails.  Our 5 senses - those things that God has given us to interact with and learn from the world around us – will never begin to allow us to comprehend how to love an infinite being.  So He teaches us to love Him.  Jesus tells us we are to call God “Father”.  This allows us to begin to grasp the relationship we are to have – we have all had a father.

But perhaps I get ahead of myself.  Perhaps we should go back to the beginning and see with what gentleness He instructs us to love Him.