Together - Daily DevotionalSample

The First Commandment

Reading: Mark 12:28-34

Key Verse: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” verse 30

We have spent time understanding what it means to seek first the kingdom of God. We turn now to how we do that. The Old Testament contains over six hundred laws but in addition the Pharisees added hundreds more regulations. One day, Jesus was asked to identify the greatest commandment of all. 

Jesus response is illuminating – it is to do with attitude in a relationship not compliance to a commandment. The love of which Jesus speaks is of committed sacrificial devotion and encompasses our whole being. We love God with our affections and decisions, we love Him with our emotions, we love Him in our thinking and we love Him in the way use our physical bodies. Love for God as number one will impact our whole personality and particularly our behaviour and speech. We do not reduce this love to mere duty or ritual otherwise we become like the Ephesians who, “have forsaken your first love” (Rev.2:4). Neither does our love disappear like the morning mist or early dew (Hos.6:4). 

Our love for God is consistent, permanent, passionate, sacrificial and is the driving force that directs and empowers our lives. Yet we only love him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).

Prayer: I love You Lord with my whole being