John Piper On What Jesus Demands From The WorldChikamu

Love God with All Your Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength

Our culture treats love as a basic individual right. People are free to love and express that love however they want. A couple may marry if they fall in love and divorce when they fall out of love. Those who have affairs are presented as courageous—willing to risk everything for the freedom to love.

Jesus makes clear demands about whom we must love and how we must love. Jesus demands that we love according to the absolute standards that the Creator God has established. The great and first commandment to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind is not a call to abandon our heart’s desires but to look to God as the only one who will perfectly and eternally satisfy our longing to love one that is supremely lovely.

How often did you use or see the word love this week on social media or in conversations at work, home, or church? You might say: I love my wife and kids! I love turtle cheesecake frozen custard! I love Minnesota in the fall! I love the latest U2 album! Of course we don’t put all those “loves” on the same level—we have deeper affection and commitment for our spouses and children than we have for ice cream, colorful trees, football, and music. Each of these loves requires some relationship or personal experience. An unmarried man does not express deep affection and commitment to his wife, and only someone who has personally tasted turtle cheesecake frozen custard will declare its excellencies. In the same way, the unregenerate person whose heart is spiritually dead and whose mind is set on earthly things cannot and does not “love God” with his heart and mind. We need to be personally transformed if we are to love God and His Son Jesus as the Bible demands. 

Jesus becomes the litmus test for whether or not someone genuinely knows and loves the Father. The Bible does not present us with the option of loving God but rejecting Jesus. Jesus says in John 8:42, “If God were your Father, you would love me.” Loving God is more than vague attraction or generic gratitude. It is recognizing and relishing the compelling beauty of Jesus. We cannot love Jesus in our fallen human nature. We need God to give us a new heart, new preferences, and new desires to see and treasure Jesus as beautiful and not boring. 

Jesus demands that we love Him more than family and friends, more than sex and sports, more than frozen custard and the beach house. Jesus doesn’t demand our love like an insecure, manipulative brat but as the Good Shepherd who has laid down His life for us and as the glorious, risen King with all authority. He commands that we love Him for our supreme good and our supreme joy because He alone is able to satisfy the longings of our hearts for goodness, truth, and beauty. When Christ is our first love, we are able to love and enjoy other people and other things as wonderful gifts from God’s hand.