Mark 12:28-34 Why Do I Have to Love God so Much?

Why Do I have to Love God so Much?

Mark 12:28–34 ESV

And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.

Why do I have to love God so much? The short answer is because He is worthy. The long answer is a bit more complicated. This issue we have with sin is one of love. I know that sounds upside down and backwards but listen to me for a minute. Before you dismiss me hear me out. We love God because we don’t want to sin and we feel like if we love God enough we will overcome sin.

That is false. We cannot love God enough to not sin. This mind set is wrong and only serves to drive us further and further down the rabbit hole. We are going to fail from time to time, day to day, hour by hour, and minute by minute. We are going to fail and that makes us believe that we cannot love God enough, somehow we begin letting the enemy tell us that we cannot possibly be loved by God since we don’t love God enough not to sin. We set ourselves up because we say in our mind “I love Jesus and God and I serve them with my best.” Now when I sin my best is not good enough therefore I am unworthy of love from God because look what I did. I didn’t love God enough to not sin.

The next thing I know I am wandering through this world seeking to find a way to sin less and love more and it becomes an endless up and down that will never stop. I have not gotten it right from the start and therein lies the issue. My Bible lists this passage as the Most Important Commandment. Why? Without love there is no service to God. If I don’t do what I do for God out of my love for Him, then my service to God is for me and that is serving self not God.

Let’s look at this passage and break down what Jesus is saying. Jesus was in a spirited debate with some of the folks of his time known as Sadducees and they don’t believe in the resurrection. So that was a whole long drawn out discussion, then this religious teacher who was standing there listening to the discussion asks a question.

He asked which commandment was the greatest of all? Now this guy was likely trying to trap Jesus just like the first group, however, the answer Jesus gives is one that tells us why we have to love God so much. Jesus says we are to love God in four ways: heart, soul, mind, and strength. This is not a new commandment in Deuteronomy 6:4-5

Deuteronomy 6:4–5 ESV

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

Moses said the same thing exactly word for word with only one difference. Jesus added with all of our mind, why? Because at this point they were thinking they were in charge, making the rules, and Jesus knew that our mindset has to change. Let’s look at these four things and figure out why I have to love God so much.

1st I am to love God with all my heart. Easy right. Maybe easy to say, but hard to do sometimes. Sure we try, but do we do it? Not always. We know this love that Jesus speaks of is Agape’ so we understand its the highest most important kind of love, but lets go back to the way.…”With all my heart.” This is listed first. I have to give all of my heart to God.

All of my heart, I’ll say that again because it is important, all my heart. The context means to give God all my love. It means with uprightness of heart or true-heartedness if I can say it like that. It means that my affection cannot be divided between God and anything else. It means that I am truly one hundred percent devoted to loving God with all my heart. Nothing or no one can ever take God’s place in my heart.

Now lets look back at the original question, why do I have to love God so much. I love Ms. Tammy with all my heart second only to God and no one else. I don’t love her because I have to I love her because I love her and I can’t live without her. When I get ready to do anything on this earth there are two steps. Pray and ask myself how will this affect Ms. Tammy? Will it make her happy, will she be disappointed in my choice, will she be proud of what I am doing? If She ain’t happy my world doesn’t work. That is a devoted love. I am not just saying that I love her. I try to show her how much she means to me and make sure that she knows by my actions, by what I do. I’m not doing it for anything that she does for me, its because I love her not because I expect some kind of reward for being the greatest husband who truly loves his wife….(smile).

See how it works. I am not trying to love her I am devoted to her and I adore her and I show her that in my actions, not because it is required by her. She don’t even get mad when I do foolish things she just laughs and loves me. Same with my love for God, I don’t love God in order to not sin, I love God so much that I don’t want to sin. I love Him with all my heart. When He is displeased with me I am not at peace. That is loving God with all my heart. He is the one that I think of when I am deciding something, I seek His guidance in everything. Not just the “Big” stuff but all the stuff. That is pure love church.

2nd Jesus says I am to love God with all my soul…this means my emotional nature. I am gonna put feeling into my love for God. Have you ever seen someone who says they love someone, but there’s no feeling behind it. “Yea I love them.” They just as well be saying they love food, or they love the beach, or they love something not so much someone. They are in love with the idea of someone instead of being in love with someone. They have loved them so long they forgot how to truly love, they are just in a place of comfort. To have that person in their life is like a security blanket. They make them “feel” good or comforted. It is no longer a true pure love its attachment to an idea of a person they used to truly love. They probably don’t even know much about that person anymore. Cause people change over time but God doesn’t.

We have to put feeling into our love for God. It has to be a connection that is deeper than what I hope to gain by serving God. I have to put my heart into it and next I have to put feeling into my love. I have to not become complacent that God loves me because I love Him. God loved me even when I didn’t love Him. When I was His enemy He sent His Son to die for me.

I can’t just say it I have to do it. I have to put all of me into the relationship.

The 3rd thing Jesus says is I have to love God with all my mind. This means that my love is not just blind devotion. I put thought into my love for God. Thinking about my love for God and my devotion to Him means that I meditate on His Word. I remind myself that I serve a loving God and that I am not required to love Him I want to love Him. It’s not something I do to become a better guy or girl. This is not a relationship that is a self help fixer upper kinda deal. I am all in. I think about God and how much I love Him and pretty soon sin is on the back burner.

The last thing that Jesus listed is with all your strength….put some intensity into it. Remember your first love. Man that was intense. Whether you were the boy or the girl in that relationship it was intense. You really leaned into it. You put weight behind it.

When I love God like this in this way. When I put these four things together it comes down to all the power that you possess. Your love for God becomes something that is alive and growing day by day. It becomes a love that overpowers everything in your life including sin.…When I love God like Jesus told us to, sin has to take a back seat there is no other option. We no longer have a desire to sin….when we do its an immediate reaction to stop and repent.

Look what Jesus says I am to do with all of this love. I am to love my neighbor as I what, love myself. I can’t love my neighbor if I don’t love me first. If I think I am unworthy of God’s love, if I am not satisfied with me I cannot possibly love someone else. If I think I am such a sinner that God can’t love me then how in the world can I love myself. It goes back to not being able to love God enough not to sin. I am gonna sin and my love for God is not measured by that sin.

I have to understand that I am a sinner and I needed God to save me and when I asked, He did. Now I love Him because I love Him not because He does stuff for me, not because I am good enough, not because I don’t want to sin no more.….

I will still fall down, I am not telling you that this side of heaven you will be perfect by no means, but sin will not be able to get a toe hold in your life if you truly love God. It will come and you will learn to see it and call it what it is and repent and be forgiven. You will learn to defeat it in many ways and it will become harder for the enemy to deceive you because of your genuine love for God.

Think of how much you love that special someone in your life. Think about how much they mean to you….Do you love God like that?

This religious teacher that asked the question in the first place says to Jesus “What you said is true, to love God with everything I have is more important than all the religious stuff.” Loving God is so important to overcoming the sin in our life. Our love for God has to be so strong and so true that God is first in all that I do. His will is my want and the desire of my heart is to serve Him, not for what I get, not because I have to, but because I love Him.

What the religious leader said is this if I can paraphrase here, my practice of loving God and desiring to follow Him is more important than any other sacrifice I can make. It is giving myself to God and saying here am I Lord send me.

Jesus confirms that what the religious teacher says is correct by saying “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” Putting God first, loving God with a pure heart is the key to overcoming the sin in our lives. We grow closer to God when we truly love Him and seek to find Him.

Only through the blood of Jesus can we overcome sin. God loved us so much that He gave His son that we could have life eternal.…..Our love for Him has to be genuine, it has to be pure, it has to be for Him and not for us.

Invitation……….