Cleaving to God is the desire of any Believer in the Messiah Yeshua (Jesus). I’m not sure I’ve ever met a sincere and devoted Christian who doesn’t cleave or cling to God. While most may not realize it, we are participating in the sixth positive commandment of Torah as enumerated by Maimonides.
P6 – To cling to Him, as Deuteronomy 10:20 states: “And you shall cling to Him.[1]“
I’m not talking about the “Believers” in name only that we are regularly warned about (Jude 4, 1 Cor 5). These people care nothing for the faith, but only practice a twice-yearly social hour or worse. Those are the people who pervert the faith as Jude says and who, by all appearances and Biblical descriptions, do not cleave to God.
The people I’m referring to know their God. They strive to learn from their Master Jesus. Some of us are better at it than others, of course, but when life happens, we all seem to magnetize ourselves to God. When national disasters happen, our churches fill up and people begin seeking God’s face. They may not be in their pews every week, but God is their first and only answer.
It’s probably worth defining the word as we understand it in English. The dictionary defines this word as “stick fast to,” “adhere strongly to (a particular pursuit or belief),” and “become very strongly involved with or emotionally attached to (someone).”
With those definitions, it should be easy to see that we, as Believers, naturally cling to God to some degree. After all, He is our source of life. How could we not?
Still, we are called to cleave with purpose and not just by the natural inclination that we develop as Believers. This will inevitably dovetail into other commandments so it’s worth pointing out that no one commandment stands on its own, this is an entire lifestyle we’re called to live. Our cleaving with purposeful intent requires actions such as study (P11) and prayer (P5).
Initially, I found it difficult to find this command in the New Testament. It wasn’t as overt as the previous five commandments I’ve researched. From this point on, I suspect it will become increasingly difficult in some cases to find the direct correlations, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist!
Most references to the word “cling” or “cleave” are in reference to sin, dust, or cleaving to one’s spouse or fellow disciples. There is one imperative command given by Paul in his letter to the Romans though that seems to align perfectly here.
Romans 12:9 (TLV)
9 Let love be without hypocrisy—detesting what is evil, holding fast to the good.
It doesn’t come through in English, but the word behind “hold fast” is the same word that the Septuagint translates cleave to in the Deuteronomy verse above. However, even in this instruction, we don’t necessarily see it plainly. Paul is saying cleave to what is “good.” To make the direct connection, it requires that we hear the words of Yeshua while reading Romans and that’s exactly what happened to me while I was researching. It’s like His voice said the words in my head.
Mark 10:18 (TLV)
18 “Why do you call Me good?” Yeshua said to him. “No one is good except One—that is God.”
Considering these two verses together, Paul can be understood as saying “hold fast to God.” This seems to be a pattern with Paul. He alludes to the commandments of Torah, but often doesn’t explicitly quote them. Paul is calling us to hold fast to the only Good that exists which is God.
Another way to look at this can be found in the case law of Israel. The sages of Israel asked the question: How do we cleave to God if He is a consuming fire?
Their answer – we do so by emulating God and His deeds.[2]
Given that logic, we can see the idea of cleaving to God as one of the main themes of the whole New Testament. To be Disciples is to be imitators of our Rabbi Yeshua.
Ephesians 5:1–2 (NKJV)
1 Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.