Love the Lord your God...
Twice in the last couple of months, God has spoken to me about my relationship with him. The second time, I was watching a video on the computer, with David Carr, a pastor from Birmingham, who was talking about love for the Lord and love for others. He linked loving the Lord with loving others and said that when you do love others they will respond to you. And I sensed the Lord speak to me, challenging my about having “lost my first love” for him. That's what brought me to this text.
Deuteronomy should really be called “These are the words!” That is its Hebrew title (taken from the first words on the book!) And that is important – because we need to hear Deuteronomy as “The words of Moses” - his big “pep-talk” to the people. It's also important because “These are the words” was a common way to begin a covenant document. So Deuteronomy is not only Moses' pep-talk, but, as God's prophet, his words are the covenant that God makes with his people and renews when they mess up.
So we hear the first and greatest commandment in this context: they are part of Moses' pep-talk, the lynch-pin of the covenant God is making with his people. Before anything else really – before any other demands, any other rules, Moses tells the people – speaking for God – “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength.” They once asked Jesus “What is the greatest commandment?” that question, (Matthew 22, 37-40) and that is how he answered. But he also added, the second is Love your neighbour as yourself. (Lev. 19.18)
That's the first thing God wants from us: our love. All the other stuff follows on from that:
worshipping God alone (6. 14),
avoiding images the pagans worship (ch 7), spiritualists and fortune-tellers (18. 9-13),
eating the right food (ch 14.1-22)
paying tithes; keeping the festivals (ch 16) giving the right sacrifices (ch 17),
forgiving debtors and freeing slaves – caring for the lest and lowest (ch 15),
dealing properly with serious crime (19. 21),
marriage and divorce,
and even care for animals (22. 6f) and health and safety (22. 8)
God wants the love of our heart, soul and strength.
Heart means the centre of you – not just (as in English) emotions but thinking, remembering, wanting, happiness, anxiety. All of these things that are deep inside up, the OT includes under the heading of “Heart”.
Soul means “whole person”. In Hebrew thought you don't have a soul, you are a soul. “Soul” is related to the word “to breathe”. It includes the drives, experiences and functions that makes us human.
Strength is force, abundance, or muchness. It's connected with the word for a glowing, red-hot stick from the fire, that can burn what it touches. It has energy that reaches beyond itself.
So what is this thing we call “love?”
The Christian faith's greatest theologian, Paul describes what a loving lifestyle is like in 1 Corinthians 13, which is all about actions and attitudes towards one another. It is about decisions we make, to behave and think in a particular way, in our interactions toward other people. We would all do well to dwell deeply in these words and put them into practise in all our relationships including our marriages. Paul tells us how to love with all our strength: how to reach out to others in love. But Paul says you can do all sorts of sacrificial things and still not have love. He recognises that love is an experience as well as a decision.
But what does it mean to lvoe with our hearts? What is love in the deepest, inside part of us?
Biologist Helen Fisher talks about lust, attraction and attachment, as three separate systems driven by different hormones.
Another biologist Jeremy Griffith defines love as "unconditional selflessness" that assures co-operation and survival.
Psychologist Robert Sternberg talks about intimacy, passion and commitment: and recognises that these are present both in sexual and non-sexual relationships.
Philosopher James Giles says it is about vulnerability and care. He also talks about love as an experience and as anticipation.
C S Lewis and others talk about the four Greek words for love – agape is selfless love, philia is brotherly or friendly love, eros is sexual love and storge is the love between one who is dependent and one who provides (child and parent). But in the Old Testament, ONE word is used for all of these loves. It's the same word in Deuteronomy 6. 5, (love the Lord...) and Leviticus 19. 18 (Love your neighbour...); the saem word for sexual love – Isaac loved Rebecca (Gen 24. 67) and Isaac loved Rebecca (Gen 29. 18; Jacob loved Rachel...) the same s word for family love (Gen 37. 3 Jacob loved Joseph), friendship (Ruth 4. 15 (Ruth loved Naomi, David loved Jonathan, 1 Sam 18. 1) and the same word for God's love (Ps 47. 4 , Ps 146. 8; Isa 43. 4, Jer 31. 3.) Same word, over and over. God's love for us, our love for God, and for our neighbours, the love between husband and wife, parents and childes, and friends. It's this Hebrew word Ahav .... So I suspect the Greeks were not fully right. While the four loves are different in intensity and how they are expressed, they also have common ground, some things that are the same in all of them.
What is happening on the inside of a person, when they experience this thing we call “love?” I want to suggest four things that are common to very kind of lvoe – although they have different expression and different intensity in different relationships...
1. Esteem – admiration, respect for who the other is. In other words, something makes you value the other person – whether that person is your wife, your best friend or your newborn baby. You admire their beauty, their rippling muscles, their sense of humour, or just value the fact that they are your flesh and blood. They matter to you. This person is important. Paul says love doesn't boast about self nor dishonour others. Love treats people with respect that areise from Esteem.
2. Enjoyment of, or yearning for, presence. You want to be with the one you love. When you are with them, you enjoy their presence. When you are separated you miss them. If your husband or wife is away for a few days, don't you get excited when you know they are coming home? When you have to leave your baby with someone for a few hours, don't you think “Will she be OK?” In Rom 1:11 and Phil 1:8 Paul longs to see his Christian friends.
3. Extravagant, generous sacrifice. Yielding yourself and what is yours to the other. In love, you want to give. That balances out the other thing about enjoyment: you don't simply want your life to be enriched by having the other person around, you want to bless and enrich their life too. And it means that you will be ready to change your life, surrender your preferences, for the other person. Love is not self-seeking, says Paul.
4. Expectancy, hope for future accomplishment. A belief in what your partnership can do and be. That may be a young couple getting married and hoping to have a family who will all, of course, be beautiful, successful and good. Or it may be four lads from Liverpool starting their own rock group. Paul says love believes and hopes.
So we can think about how these traits work in our human relationships; in the life of the Church, in our families. We can think about how they work in loving our enemies; and in loving our selves.. But we need to recover these traits in our love for God. These are the heart things: Esteem, Enjoyment, Extravagance, Expectancy. Awe and wonder at who he is; yearning for more of his presence; surrendering our lives to him, and living hopefully, by faith. These things need to be there in our relationship with God. And when they are, the foundation is laid for healthy loving of others, including our neighbours as ourselves.
But how is this love to be ignited and maintained in our relationship with God? God says “Shema, Israel: Listen....” The answer is in the text.
Firstly we need to be the “our” in “The Lord our God”. Israel had seen God at work in their life together. They knew themselves to be his people. God draws us into a relationship with himself and calls us His people. The first of those times recently when God spoke to me about my relationship with him, was the day after Glen Frey, of the Eagles, died. He wrote the song “Desperado.” I used to associate that song with people who are living messed up lives, far away from God. But I was listening to the day after Glen Frey died, and it struck me as being about me: “You better let somebody love you before it's too late.” It's possible to be too busy, too angry, too afraid to get close to God. We need to opt in – to choose to love the Lord.
Secondly, it is a response to who God is. “The Lord our God is one.” He is one, not many. He is unique. He is not one god among many. He is the one true God. In the pagan world with many gods, that was a game changer, and it still is. The pagan gods were often kind of like us – only with superpowers. They squabbled among themselves, they fell in love. But The Lord our God isn't like us. He is holy and mysterious. We love – because he is awesome, powerful, mysterious, indescribable! We love because he is faithful, reliable, just, fair, and holy. The ultimate duty – to love God – is founded on the ultimate truth: God is ONE.
Arthur Aron says we are biologically wired to fall in love, if we (1) Reveal to each other intimate details about our lives for half an hour. And (2) stare deeply into each other’s eyes without talking for four minutes. And I think that is how to fall in love with God, too. (1) revelation: read God's word, absorb the truth about who God is. And (2) Contemplation. In contemplation we are not looking for revelation. We are connecting with what is already revealed. Paul says “we all beholding the glory of God are being transformed from one degree of glory to another. So, gaze at the truth you have learned about God. Gaze at it in silence and fall in love with Him!
© Gilmour Lilly February 2016
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