I have heard many people tell me that they love God and they love Jesus, and when I ask why, most often they say, “I love God for all the good things he has done for me.”
But I say that if you only love God for what he has done for you, your love is nothing to brag about.
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Personally, I do not claim to love God. Yeah, I know that one of the most important commandments is to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might. And also to love your neighbor, but honestly: how do you love someone you never met, don’t really know, and can’t even see or touch?
The love that we are told to have is not an emotional love, but an expression of compassion and respect that transcends the emotional love that is all we can really feel as human beings.
Spiritual love is the kind of love that God has for us. Yeshua said in John 3:12 that if we cannot understand earthly things, we won’t be able to understand spiritual things, and that is why the way God loves us is beyond our ability to comprehend, or to duplicate on earth.
But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
So, nu? What am I leading up to? It’s this: if you love God for what he has done for you, that love is useless. That’s right- useless, and I’ll tell you why.
What did Yeshua tell us in Luke 6:32-33?
What credit is it to you if you love only those who love you? Why, even sinners love those who love them. What credit is it to you if you do good only to those who do good to you? Even sinners do that.
So, if you love God for what he has done for you, there is nothing special or powerful about that love. What I am saying is that to love God for what he has done for you is not really love, it is appreciation.
I believe we should love God for what he has done for everyone else.
When I have been asked if I love God, I say I love what he has done for us- he gave us life, he gave us intelligence, he gave us the right to choose what we will do, say, and who we will follow (which has turned out to be a double-edged sword), and he has given us Yeshua so that we have the option to be saved from ourselves.
I don’t say I love God because I do not feel “love” when I think of him. What I feel is gratitude, appreciation, awe, and respect, but not love, not like I love my wife or my family, or comfort food.
Now that’s just me, and it doesn’t mean you have to feel that way, also.
Maybe you can feel that emotional love, but if your love for God is emotional, then I really believe it is not the type of love God requires because emotional love is human, and I think God wants us to learn how to love as he does; not emotionally but spiritually.
Do you recall how many times we are told, “Be thou holy as I am holy”? I think we can paraphrase that to also mean, “Love others as I love others”.
God’s love is one that goes beyond emotion; it is a complete understanding of the other person and having a consuming compassion for them, even if that person may be evil. That doesn’t mean we condone or accept the evil they do, but that we love them in the way we are willing to forgive them, to help them, to work with them, and to minister to them.
But that doesn’t mean we do not punish them for what they do, for sin always has consequences to the one who sins and, sadly, more often than not to innocents who become collateral damage from that sin.
God forgives sins when we repent and ask him to forgive us by means of the shed blood of the Messiah, but his forgiveness is spiritual and is the only way we can be in his presence after Judgement Day. However, while on the earth in this mortal form, when you sin you will get your tuchas in a sling! You cannot escape the wages of sin, and if you do not suffer for them here on earth, you will have to deal with them in the afterlife.
God’s love is not motherly or doting, it is the epitome of “hard love”. He will punish the ones he loves severely for the unrepented sins they commit, and he will not forgive those who do not forgive others (Matthew 6:14-15).
God will always love you with a love that is beyond anything any human could ever understand or comprehend, even as he condemns you to Sheol, and it will hurt him more than any hurt any human could ever feel for a lost loved one.
Let’s end with this: if you say you love God, that is not a bad thing, but you need to ask yourself what is the basis for that love? If it is only because of what he has done for you, that is not enough.
I believe the best way we can show just how much we really love God is to do good for others without thought of reward, of being held in esteem, and without publicity or bragging.
As Yeshua said, tzedakah (charity) should be done in secret so that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing (Matthew 6:3). Give to those who need without asking for anything back, help those who need help without needing to be thanked, and forgive those who wrong you, whether by accident or on purpose, regardless if they ask forgiveness or even care that they hurt you.
If you ask me, that is how we should love God.
Thank you for being here and please comment and share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers, Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.
That’s it for this week, so let me wish you Shana Tova (Happy New Year), and during these next Ten Days of Awe may your review of the past year help you see how you can better show your true love for God in the coming year.