Do you love God?
If you answered yes, then I have to ask, do you love him because you care for him or because he commands it? Did the chicken come first or the egg? Or – is it both?
The third positive commandment as enumerated by Maimonides is to love God.
P3 – “To love Him, as Deuteronomy 6:5 states: ‘And you shall love God, your Lord.[1]’”
How does this command apply to the Disciples of Yeshua?
As I’ve always understood it, love is freely given, not demanded. It seems counterintuitive for God to set down this command, and yet, He does. The love of God plays a key role in the life of faith. We serve God because we love God. Are we free from this command? Any student of Scripture should quickly realize there’s no feasible way to argue we are. It takes center stage in several teachings of both Yeshua and the apostolic epistles.
Jesus made the love of God first and foremost among God’s commandments:
Matthew 22:36–37 (TLV)
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Torah?” 37 And He said to him, “ ‘You shall love Adonai your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
As stated in P2, Yeshua is quoted elsewhere as beginning with the Shema where the unity of God is included in this command. While they are enumerated as two commands, the two are one and function as a continuous thought. The unity of God and the love of God go together and are inseparable and this is confirmed by our Master’s teaching.
Yeshua made the Shema and loving God the central tenant of Scripture (the “second [which] is like it” will come later). Here are some allusions I found to this command in the rest of the Apostolic Writings:
It’s worth noting that “shema” is not only to “hear.” Look up the word in any lexicon and you will see that it is to “listen,” to “hear” and to “obey.” You cannot have one meaning without the other. The full meaning dwells within the word in Hebrew even if it appears to lose some of the meaning when brought into English.
John 14:15 (TLV)
15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.
1 John 5:3 (TLV)
3 For this is the love of God—that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.
2 John 6 (TLV)
6 Now this is love: that we walk according to His commands. This is the commandment—just as you heard from the beginning—that you walk in love.
To love God is to live in obedience to His Commandments. We demonstrate our love through our service to Him.
So, did you love God and then keep the commandment to love Him? Or did you keep the commandment to love Him and then actually fall in love with our Creator? Was it the chicken or the egg?
Don’t get me wrong. While we can have fun and enjoy the unanswerable questions, we don’t love God just because we’re commanded to. We do it because He first loved us.
1 John 4:19 (TLV)
19 We love, because He first loved us.
1 John 4:10 (TLV)
10 This is love—not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atonement for our sins.
We are called to return His love. That’s the command. It’s a circular logic, but it’s true, nonetheless. We love God, because He loved us. God loves us because we love Him as it says in Proverbs.
Proverbs 8:17 (TLV)
17 I love those who love me. Those who earnestly seek me find me.
To be a child of the Kingdom, you are required to love God. If you believe you are free from a calling to love God, you’re in danger of stepping into the other camp which I personally want no part of. That road leads to nothing good – only hate and death. I’m not free to stop loving God – this is a command every disciple is required to uphold.