Increasing My Love for God

In Luke 10:25-37, Jesus is tackling two issues. He not only hangs every commandment and prophecy on two things, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself, but he also ties love for God and love for people together. Jesus points out to the questioner what the Bible has pointed out to us all along: the more we love God, the more we will love people. The more we show mercy for people, the more we demonstrate how much we love God. We can never be full of the Holy Spirit and fail to walk in love.

If we hate people because of their race, their ethnicity, what they’ve done to us, or what they’ve said about us, the Bible tells us that we are a murderer. We know that murderers have no place in the Kingdom of God. If we are to walk in the Spirit, we must walk in love. Remember, all of the commandments hang on love.

Let’s take another look at 1 John 2:15-17, which we read earlier in this plan. It speaks on those that love God and those that love the world. Notice there are two separate categories. The passage makes it clear that those who harbor love for the world and its fleeting pleasures do not have the love of the Father in them.

Finally, John 14:21 is written to instruct us how to show our love to God – by keeping His commandments. When we keep His commandments, we are showing Him we respect, fear, and ultimately love Him.

While worship is important, loving God is more than worshiping His name on Sunday mornings. We have to follow His commandments, we have to love the things He loves, and we have to show love to one another.