Today’s Inspiration – L is for Love
And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”
Luke 10:27
Now you come in to the issues of eternal life. You want eternal life? Here’s how, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself.” The emphasis is so…is so strong here, “with all your” is repeated four times…four times. What’s the point of that? Well, the point of that is to emphasize the extremity, the perfection, the completeness of this kind of love. “With ALL your heart, with ALL your soul, with ALL your strength, with ALL your mind,” so that nobody would think that He meant, “Well, with all your heart and your soul and your mind and your strength,” and somehow diminish the latter three. No, this is a call for perfect love of all human faculties.
You want to go to God’s Kingdom? Then love Him with all your kardia,you know, the cardiac area. That’s…to the Jew, that’s the place of thought and mind, with all the psuche, all the fleshly part of you, all the soulish part of you, all the human part of you with your ischus, your will, your volition, love Him with all your dianoia, all your intelligence, your intellect, with all your human faculties, love Him completely. And it’s the word agapao in the Greek, translating the old Hebrew ahaborahebin Deuteronomy 6:5 which refers to the love of the mind, the love of the will, the love of the emotion, the love of the affection, the highest kind of love.
So, you want to go to God’s Kingdom really? You want to go to heaven, you don’t want to go to hell? Then love God with all faculties that you possess totally and perfectly. They knew that was the Law. They could read it. They knew it. When Jesus answered the question, the lawyer said, “You’re right.” When Jesus asked the question, the lawyer answered the question with that same Scripture. They knew that. And therein, you see, was the nagging issue of conscience because they had to grapple with the fact that if they looked at their own heart, they knew that they did not, could not, would not love God like that. They couldn’t and neither can you and neither can I or anybody else in this life. And the love that was referred to here was the agapao love, it’s not phileo, affection, it’s not eros, physical, sensual, it’s not storge, family love. And the point here is not to exegete these four things. It’s not as if they’re separate technical categories. It’s simply a way of speaking of perfection in comprehensiveness and totality, loving God fully with every human faculty, loving with the mind and the feeling and the will, and even the body.
So bottom line, folks, you want to be in God’s Kingdom? Love Him perfectly, it’s about love, it’s not really about Law. Cause if you love Him, you’ll keep His Law, isn’t that true? That’s why you can sum up the Ten Commandments in “Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself.” The first half of the commandments are how to love God, second half are how to love your neighbor. The summation of the Ten Commandments is the two first and second commandments, loving God and loving your neighbor. That is the complexion of eternal life, it’s about loving God perfectly…perfectly.
And it connects with Luke 9:23, go back to Luke 9:23 for a moment. He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself.” Remember when we studied that? The first appropriate attitude for a person who comes to Christ is self-hate. I told you, when Luther pinned his 95 Thesis on the door of the church at Wittenberg, he had 95 declarations to make. Declaration number four called for self-hate. Nobody comes into God’s Kingdom that doesn’t hate himself. And the word “let him deny himself,” the word here, the Greek term means to refuse to associate with. It is to disdain yourself. It is to refuse to associate any longer with the person you are. Salvation is not about self-fulfillment, it’s about self-denial. It’s not about self-love, it’s about self-hate. It’s not about self-esteem, it’s about self-disdain, disappointment. It’s the rejection of who you are. It’s hating yourself and loving God. And so the sinner’s in an impossible situation because of his fallenness pride dominates his life, on his own he can’t hate himself, and because he loves himself he cannot love God perfectly. But that’s how you get into the Kingdom.
The person who perfectly loves God, who perfectly loves others, who is completely self-denying, selfless, this person qualifies for eternal life. The person who truly loves God with all his capacity demonstrates that love by perfect trust in God, perfect devotion, perfect fellowship, perfect humility, perfect obedience, perfect hatred of sin and whatever dishonors God, perfect rejection of evil, perfect love for others, perfect longings for God’s presence, perfect desire for truth. You see…you say, “Well nobody’s going to be able to do that.” Right, isn’t that the point? Isn’t that what Paul was saying in Romans 3? I mean, that was everything foundational in his gospel presentation. Listen to Romans 3, “But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.”
SOURCE: Excerpt from The Answer to Life’s Greatest Question, Part 2 at Grace to You.
Copyright 2015, Grace to You. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
The inspiration for these alphabet verses came from Crossroad
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