What does it mean to love God? Often we think of love for God as an emotional state. No doubt loving God does involve our emotions, but it is not the only or even the central way in which the Bible calls us to love God. The sixth chapter of Deuteronomy calls us to love God in several different ways. They are practical means by which we can both grow and express our love for God.
ESV Deuteronomy 6:1 “Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the rules—that the LORD your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, 2 that you may fear the LORD your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. 3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey. 4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
The more central tenet of Judaism is the declaration in verse 4: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” Loving God first requires that you know that he is one. You cannot truly love God without knowing him as he actually is. There are two ways in which the final words of verse 4 may be translated: “the LORD is one” or “the LORD alone”. In fact, both are true.
Let’s consider the first translation—the LORD is one. There is some archaeological evidence that the people of Israel identified the LORD with particular places or locales. Some inscriptions have been found which read “Yahweh of Samaria” and “Yahweh of Teman” and even “Yahweh and his asherah”. Apparently some people in Israel understood the LORD as split inside his being and divided in his character and purpose. But this cannot be the case if the LORD is one. Since the LORD is one he is never divided in his mind or heart or self. Whatever God is in one place is true of God in every other place. He is never at cross purposes with himself.
If we look the other possible translation – the LORD alone – then we are forced to consider, not the internal consistency of God but the allegiances of the people of Israel. Israel needed to be reminded of the truth that the LORD alone is their God because their loyalties were divided between the true God and the other gods on offer in the Ancient Near East. It is not difficult to see in the history of Israel that the nation was happy to give allegiance to another god at the drop of a hat. The temptation to turn to other gods was very strong. It happened again and again. So the reminder of the truth that there is only one God is vitally important.
As Christians our confession is still that the LORD our God is one and he alone is God, but it is enhanced by the fact that the New Testament reveals the Trinity. In its simplest form the doctrine of the Trinity is that there is one God in three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each of the persons is equally and completely God. The central Christian confession is not Deut 6:4 but rather that Jesus is Lord and he has risen from the dead (Rom 10:9). The confession that Jesus is Lord is equivalent to saying that he is the one God and equal to the Father, who is himself the God of Israel. The Holy Spirit is also tacitly confessed as God by his association with Father and Son (for example, see the baptismal formula in Matt 28:19).
Since we agree that the Trinity is one God we must not fall into the error of thinking of the three persons as having three separate purposes. Whatever God does, he does as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, united in love and one in purpose. To give one example that often trips up Christians, consider the death of Christ. The false idea is that God the Father is angry and the Son tries to make the Father not angry by dying. The truth is that both Father and Son are angry with sin and opposed to the rebellion of humanity. So they both have the goal of saving us from our sin. The Father sends the Son and the Son dies to make salvation from sin possible. Then the Holy Spirit makes the death of Christ apply to the lives of people by enabling faith in Christ. The Godhead is fully united in purpose.
Like Israel, it is possible that our allegiances may be divided, which is a way of saying that we do not always believe that the true God is active in every area of life. We must avoid the temptation to think of God as only active or relevant on certain spheres of life. Is our God the God of church and not the God of home? Is he God of devotion and not God of work? Is Jesus the God of feelings but not of money? If God is not really the God of every sphere of life then we have put another god in his place in those other spheres. Hudson Taylor, great missionary to China, is credited with saying, “Christ is either Lord of all, or not Lord at all”. It is a strong way of saying that our allegiance and devotion must only be for Christ and no other.
The consequence of the truth that there exists only one God is that “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut 6:5). When Jesus referred to this command he added “with all your mind” (Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27). What does this mean? We may think of heart, soul, mind and strength as a way of describing the whole human person. Thus loving God with your heart, soul and strength are different but complementary ways to express your love for God. The oneness of God must be matched by the total devotion of the whole person to God. In other words, we must love God with every part of our being.
The heart describes the innermost part of a human person, the centre of affections and will, the place from which desires spring. Human hearts bent on evil all the time (Gen 6:5) caused God’s heart to be grieved over humanity (Gen 6:6) and he brought the flood. Pharaoh’s heart was hardened against God (Exod 8:15). In contrast to these wrong desires of the heart, the emphasis in Deuteronomy is that Israel must be faithful to the covenant by setting the heart to love God and obey him.
In Deuteronomy “all your heart” is always followed with “all your soul” (Deut 4:29; 6:5; 10:12; 11:13; 13:3; 26:16; 30:2, 6). The two go together. The Hebrew view of the soul should not be confused with the Greek idea. In Hebrew the most basic meaning of soul is “breath” and thus it means life, person, self or desire. It can be identified with the whole person but often stands for the inner person. Thus Deut 6:5 commands Israel to have holy preferences, even to the point of death.
The verse ends with the injunction to love God with all your strength. This is another way of saying that we must love God with all the capacity of our physical bodies. It is not about emotion but about actions and service to God. Loving God with your might implies that you give him your substance, your wealth, and your property.
The three together – heart, soul and strength – encompass everything that a human being is and has. What follows in this chapter provides us with practical ways in which we can obey the command to love God completely.
“6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
Loving God is very counter-cultural. It is difficult to stand against the messages that assail us from every side, telling us to love ourselves above all and to seek our own pleasure. Those who would love God instead must have a plan. Deuteronomy 6 tells us that the secret to setting your heart on God and his commands is to put his word in front of you often and to talk about it all the time. Tying the words of God to yourself, hand or head, might be literal or not, but it is never just a matter of an outward action. It includes putting the words of God into the heart. The words of God are intended to control individual behaviour, the way our homes and families work, and also the nature of the covenant community.
We may not tie the word of God to our heads, but we can be proactive in setting our minds on it. Personal Bible reading and Bible study are clearly ways to go about this. But we can also help one another in this endeavour. First of all, we need to speak the word of God to one another. The epistles exhort us to this exact thing. Colossians 3:16 encourages the body of Christ, to “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” We should also be discussing the word of God with fellow Christians often so we can understand it better and understand how God wants us to behave in the world. This is the way we love God with all that is in us, by placing what is important to God in our hearts daily.
Deuteronomy then goes on to warn us to be careful.
10 “And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, 11 and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, 12 then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 13 It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. 14 You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you—15 for the LORD your God in your midst is a jealous God—lest the anger of the LORD your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth.
The people were about to enter the land promised to their forefathers. These blessings of land, houses, vineyards and fruitful trees were not the result of their own hard work, but rather the result of God’s grace. This is very similar to the blessing of the new covenant which comes by God’s grace alone. We are all familiar with Eph 2:8-9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” The potential trap of having such blessings given to us is that we forget where they came from. If the blessings are spiritual, it is easy to think of these as something we earned. We must guard against that.
If the blessings are physical: houses, cars, money in the bank, good jobs etc, it is easy to forget that the LORD gives the power to make wealth (Deut 8:17-18). We have so much wealth in this country that it becomes a distraction away from God. The parable of the sower, or parable of the soils, reminds us of just this problem. The seeds that “fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature” (Lk. 8:14 ESV). Wealth is often a distraction from love of God. It is not much of a leap from forgetting that material things are given by God to the place where we begin to worship the material things themselves. Wealth, then, can become a false god. Colossians 3:5 makes it plain that greed is idolatry.
Moses insists that instead of forgetting the LORD, “It is the LORD your God you shall fear.” Israel must not forget the God who rescued them from slavery in Egypt and we must not forget the God who saved us out of our slavery to sin. Either way, we must fear God because he is a jealous God. God is jealous of any other allegiances and rightly so, since he alone is truly God and there is no other. To fear God is to live with reverence, obedience and total commitment to him. This is what it means to love the true God and not serve other gods. Fear of God means total allegiance to him alone.
16 “You shall not put the LORD your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah. 17 You shall diligently keep the commandments of the LORD your God, and his testimonies and his statutes, which he has commanded you. 18 And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the LORD, that it may go well with you, and that you may go in and take possession of the good land that the LORD swore to give to your fathers 19 by thrusting out all your enemies from before you, as the LORD has promised.
The incident at Massah is found in Exodus 17. At Massah the people put God to the test by refusing to trust him. They complained to Moses that there was no water to drink and said that God just wanted them to die in the desert. This is not trust in the LORD and his promises. It was disparaging to his character. Love for God includes trust that God is true to his word and that he will take care of his people. Love for God is also expressed through obedience to his commands. It is easy to say that you love God and more difficult to be diligent in being obedient to him. This command connects to the exhortation to put his word before your eyes continually. Instead of merely reading the Bible, learn to obey what you have read. Instead of just listening to a sermon, learn to obey the commands of God revealed in it. Instead of thinking that love for God can only be expressed through song, know that God sees your love for him in your obedience.
20 “When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the LORD our God has commanded you?’ 21 then you shall say to your son, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt. And the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. 22 And the LORD showed signs and wonders, great and grievous, against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household, before our eyes. 23 And he brought us out from there, that he might bring us in and give us the land that he swore to give to our fathers. 24 And the LORD commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as we are this day. 25 And it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us.’
Lastly, we can love God by remembering and talking about the redemptive actions he has done on our behalf. This is why we come to church because in the very act of taking communion, we are reminding ourselves of what Jesus has done for us. This reminder helps us to love God continually. Talking about these things keeps our thoughts focused on our God and his love for us. Thinking about what God has done for us in Christ reminds us that God does not command us to love him without reason. Just as the LORD showed his love to Israel by delivering them out of Egypt before he asked Israel to love him, God loved us first and has shown us his love by the cross. “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 Jn. 4:10 ESV).
Love of God is not merely about learning rules and regulations. God redeemed his people from slavery and as such he owned them. But God did not give them oppressive rules to obey. His relationship with Israel was one of love. His laws give freedom. The same is true in the Christian life. “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome” (1 Jn. 5:3 ESV). His commands are freeing not enslaving. James calls God’s commands “the law that gives freedom” (James 1:25). Paul tells us, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Gal 5:1) and therefore we obey God by serving one another in love (Gal 5:13).
We must continue to be vigilant in doing what Deuteronomy tells us to do: know that there is one true God alone; make the choice to set our allegiance on that one God and no other; be diligent in reading and discussing the word of God; don’t forget the Lord and start believing that his blessings originate with our hard work or somewhere else; fear God, obey him, and trust him; and continually remind ourselves and others of God’s great redemptive actions in Christ.
But loving God is not easy. How many of us would claim to have loved God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength over the last week? I can’t make that claim. But we have the sure knowledge that although we fail, there is one person who loved God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength. Jesus is the perfect human who loved God totally and completely all the way to the cross. Jesus is more than just our example in this. He dwells in us by the Holy Spirit so that we also can love God.
We are not given the command to love God and then left alone to do so. We have Jesus as our great High Priest (Heb 4:14-15), who has lived as a human and loved God perfectly. We have received the Holy Spirit, who has poured the love of God into our hearts (Rom 5:5). And we have one another, the covenant community of the church. So let us encourage one another and pray for one another, so that we may all love God with all our heart, soul and strength.