What does it mean to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? (Mark 12:30) When you look at your Christian walk, do you believe you are doing this first and great commandment? Is there a way to judge our love for God biblically?
For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.
To love God, is to keep his commandments. Can it be that simple? Yes! The harder part is to actually do it. We as Christians are told to study to show ourselves approved. (2 Timothy 2:15) What are you supposed to be studying? The answer is God’s Word, where his commandments are located. The more you can understand and love God’s commandments, the more you are able to love God. We can all learn from the psalmist in Psalm 119.
Now the commandments of God are all over the Bible. I am not just referencing the law when I use the word commandment. We are told in many places in the Bible how to obey God. Modern Christianity seems to think that your walk with God has nothing to do with obedience or discipline. In Jesus’s earthly ministry, he even teaches the same truth as previously mentioned.
If ye love me, keep my commandments.
He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
Your obedience to the commandments of God is more important than the current Church is teaching you. Even in the verse above, we see that keeping the commandments shows our love, but also is connected to God’s love for us and Jesus manifesting himself to us. I’m of the mind that those things are kind of big deals.
This understanding can be quickly dismissed by titling it as “legalism”, but that is a misrepresentation of what I am explaining. We are not to keep his commandments as a way of earning our salvation. We obey because we love God and want to walk according to his will. As a Church we must get back into the discipline of studying scripture, so that we know what God asks of us, then through obedience, we can love God biblically.
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