David, the man after God’s heart is teaching us another lesson on how to love the Lord
“Stablish thy word unto thy servant, who is devoted to thy fear.” Psalm 119:38.
We are more devoted to ‘loving’ God in our own limited definition of love whereas God’s love language is obedience.
As The Message Version puts it;
“Give me insight so I can do what you tell me— my whole life one long, obedient response” (Psalm 119:33).
We might not obey those we say we love because we believe our myopic scope of love should suffice for our unwillingness to submit but God will rather us fear Him and never in Scripture told us to love Him. Not once.
‘Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength’ was Moses summarising the Ten Commandments to the Israelites.
Rather than hearing ‘do not’ ‘do not’ which may sound like rules which cannot be kept, he summarised the one thing we could do which covers all the ‘do nots’ and that is ‘do’ love God not with our head, society’s definition of love or even with our resources. Our love for Him should be heart, mind, soul and strength, likewise, loving our neighbours the same manner by which we love ourselves and this way, we will assuredly fulfil God’s commands.
When an ‘expert’ in The Law came to ask Jesus which is the greatest of the commandments (in an attempt to test Him rather than actually meaning this question), Jesus in His wisdom quoted what Moses had said about loving God and loving our neighbours.
By no means is this saying we shouldn’t love God This writer LOVES GOD!… and by no means is fearing God being afraid of God. Rather, what instrument do we use to test whether this is the kind of love that God receives?
Is it just by saying it, writing it in our bios, t-shirts or even tattooing it on our skin?
God laments,
“These people draw near to Me with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me” (Isaiah 29:13).
“If ye love me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15).
“And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28).
When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this:
“Fear God and keep His commandments, this is the WHOLE duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13).