Matthew 22: 37-38,“Jesus said to him, " 'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind…This is the first and great commandment.”

            According to Jesus to love God above everything else is our most important duty toward God. Now the key to understanding this is to understand what is means to LOVE God, for we are command with our entire mind, soul and heart, Love God. So what did Jesus mean when He said “LOVE your God?” What is the correct way for a created human being to love God? We are not talking about love for other people or not what it means for God to love us, but what does it mean for us to Love God? That is the question facing the church and you today.

            The definition of the word “love” in Matthew 22:37 in Greek means **“…to be fond of, to love dearly, to be contented with…place first in ones affections.” So a right love of God is not just knowledge about God but dearly desiring and enjoying the God you know about, to treasure Him supremely above all.  This verse indicates that what you feel about God and feel toward God is the MOST important thing you are command to do. Is Christ the most dearly loved, desired, and treasured thing in your heart, mind, thoughts and conversations? Remember it is not: do you love going to church or love Christians or love giving to the poor or love listening to Christian music, but if you love God Himself above all. Is your thoughts and the free meditation of your heart on the Holiness, power, love, wisdom and indescribable works of Jesus Christ.  If you feel desire or long for anything in life more than God it is simply Idolatry.  This command here of loving your God with all your heart is guide to help us understand the deeper meaning and interruption of the first commandment given to Moses by God at Mt. Sinai

Here is something I would like to bring up. How does the definition from 1 Corinthians 13 relate to your loving God? Let me start by saying there are clear implications from this verse that you cannot use in how you love God. For example it would be evil to say your loving God includes being longsuffering toward God as if God has done someone wrong.  Where as a Christian is called to be longsuffering and kind toward the other saints who have hurt us. So the question is, what is the most fundamental aspect of us loving God? I believe it is to be found in the original Greek definition. **“To be contented with one thing, or dearly desire, enjoy and be fond of.” The reason I say one-thing is because of the sermon on the mountain Jesus makes it clear you can only have one primary desire or love.  You can’t love both money and God. It’s one or the other. Here below are some texts from the New Testament that use the same Greek word found in our Matthew text.

1 John 5:3 “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.”

Ephesians 5:28, “So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself.”

Luke 7:42, "And when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both. Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him more?"

 43 Simon answered and said, "I suppose the one whom he forgave more." And He said to him, "You have rightly judged."

John 17:26 "And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them."

            Please notice in the first example of 1 John 5:3 that the reason Gods commandments are not burdensome is because we love God. We enjoy God, we have more passion and desire, and we are fonder of Him than anything. Why then should His commandments be burdensome? Why do two people who are in love with one another go to other places with the other that they don’t like? Because as longs as they are with the one they Love (desire, enjoy, esteem), then it doesn’t matter where the other person wants to go. This is why the greatest commandment tells us to love God with all our strength. God is invisible, but He is spirit and gives us spiritual life to save us. Now, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we see, taste and know the risen Christ is alive and Supreme over all.  But because we “have not seen” Him we need, with all the strength that grace supplies us, be diligent to pursue God so that He becomes to us “Joy inexpressible.” When this happens we will gladly serve the Lord in every thing we do. Because Jacob loved Rebecca so much that even working 14 long years in labor was “but a day” to Him. Do you treasure Christ like this, Who is infinitely more valuable than Rebecca?

            Next Notice in John 17:26 what Jesus prays for us. Notice what kind of love Jesus wants to be in us. You see God does not love Jesus with a longsuffering love, a patient love, etc. In the beginning of gospel of John God tells of His love for His Son in this way, My Son “in whom I am well pleased.” Christ is said to be the “exact image” of God in Hebrews. God sees all His perfect attributes, complete moral perfection in His Glorious Son Jesus Christ. He sees them being displayed perfectly in His sons life and death here on earth. The Triune God consisting of the Father the Son and Holy Spirit are perfectly happy with each other. Absolute perfect love delight, and pleasure are in each other, for they are one God. They desire to enjoy what is most desirable, which is God Himself.

With that in mind listen as Christ gives us a little insight to what this loving Him means for us in verse 24 of John 17. “That they may behold my Glory which You have given me; for You loved Me before the foundations of the world.” God loved His Son since before there was time. We see Gods love is eternal. Once we have the love of God in us it will never leave, for He will never leave us nor forsake us. But please notice the phrase “behold my Glory”. Here we see Jesus praying for us to behold His Glory in Heaven forever. Jesus is praying for us the most loving He can for a finite created being. This is because He is praying for the Father to give us the greatest pleasure a human is able to have, God. To love someone you do all you can to make that person happy. God has done that for us by bringing us, by the crucifixion His Son, to a place where we know Him intimately, to “Behold His Glory.” If you behold infinite perfection and beauty then you will love it with infinite pleasure.

Understand we are not able to give anything to God that will add to His essential happiness in ourselves.  But we are able to do something for God which God very much delights in, which is ironically the very thing for which God created us for. To LOVE(treasure, enjoy, value, esteem, desire) God with everything within us, above every thing in the entire universe. By this kind of loving God we magnify to all the universe, that our loving God is the greatest, most beautiful, most valuable, most pleasurable of all Treasures.