Sermon Tone Analysis

Brief Recap

As just a brief summary and recap of this passage to relate directly to what I’ll be sharing with you tonight, here is the main give and take of this passage:

The lawyer was trying to justify himself through the Law.

Jesus pointed out the impossibility of such a feat.

When the lawyer tried to squirm his way out of being cornered with the blanket statement “love your neighbor as yourself”, Jesus brought the parable to his attention to indict him.

The lawyer knew the Law— told him to love God and love neighbor.

To bind these sayings on your head and your hand, to bind it to your doorpost.

Everywhere, remind yourself of these things.

It’s very important.

You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Jesus agrees that what the lawyer said is true, but points out in the Parable of the Good Samaritan his own failure to keep these commands.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), .

Now that we have that recap, let’s dig into what loving God with your soul specifically means.

Define psyche (soul)

Let’s define the word being used in the Greek there:

Psyche (see-KAY) — the essence of a person, their life-force.

Was also used to describe someone’s entire being and everything about them.

Jesus agrees that what the lawyer said is true, but

So when God says in His Law “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength” he is more or less saying: love God with literally every part of you.

Did I miss anything?

Well, it’s covered by soul, that’s the rest of you.

But how do we do that?

It’s a daunting task.

How do we truly love God with our innermost being, with every part of us, so there isn’t a crevice or a crack left?

Let’s look at a related word in the Greek that may shed some light on what is going on here.

Psychikos (see-key-KOS) — the natural or unspiritual.

Our fallen state as humans naturally before we are changed by the Holy Spirit.

The same root word that describes the essence or life-force of a person is used here to describe a person who is functionally dead, at least spiritually.

Cut off from God.

We see this in the Garden of Eden when God tells Adam, “you will surely die” and in when Paul explains that because of Adam’s sin, sin and death have corrupted humanity so that we are dead spiritually.

This word is used as a dichotomy, the natural person or unspiritual person versus the spiritual person.

Let’s look at where else Scripture uses this word.

We are unable to understand the things of God because are spiritually blind—this is why Jesus said that some wouldn’t understand His parables.

They were psychikos, a natural person, dead in their sins and unable to understand the things that can only be spiritually understood through the help of the Holy Spirit.

This verse is describing the Resurrection of the Dead, and the difference between our old body, still tainted by sin, versus our post-resurrection body, when we’ll be free from sin completely.

This term was used to describe the state that people are in before we come to Christ, before we are regenerated or caused to be born again by the Holy Spirit.

This is an important concept for figuring out how to love God with our soul, because it illuminates for us once more the impossibility of loving God on our own, apart from the work of Christ.

All of Jesus’ ministry constantly pointing us away from ourselves and the works of the Law to Him and His perfection, to the fact that it was a work of God that would change a person.

Our soul needs to change—we can’t love God with who we were before we were saved because Scripture says that no one seeks after God:

Let’s walk through where Jesus discusses this more fully

Jesus is making the same dichotomy—between the natural man and the spiritual man.

To truly love God with our soul, we must be born again, and go from merely psychikos to pneumatikos (lit. of the Spirit; non-carnal; spiritual)—it is a change that is so profound and deep that our entire being is different from what it was before.

No longer are we oppressed by the power of sin but rather free to love God where we couldn’t before.

This change happens purely through the Holy Spirit—not of works, lest any man should boast.

Not only

How Do We Love God With Our Soul

So now that we know the pre-condition necessary to love God with our soul (we need a new, redeemed, transformed, polished off soul), what does that look like in the life of a believer?

Love for God comes from our innermost being, it is a part of who we are, the central aspect of our life as a Christian, and the treasuring of God is essential to the Christian faith.

Loving God involves finding joy in God.

Not just doing things for Him, but delighting in Him.

Obviously this was covered extensively, I’m sure, in “loving God with all your heart”, but I want to focus in on the aspect of satisfaction and contentment that love for God gives us.

Many times we can focus so much on what we need to be doing for God: The practical ways we can love God (caring about what he cares about, obeying his commandments, avoiding sin, etc.) that we forget one of the main reasons that God commands us to love Him.

Because it brings us joy.

Because it satisfies our soul.

Because it gives us contentment.

Loving God is good for us as His children.

We were created to long for God, to find such joy and satisfaction in Him that when we discover Him, we give all that we have just so we can have God.

Let us meditate on David’s psalm, when he was in the wilderness of Judah:

Is this sort of longing that you have for God?

If not, why?

God is Everything We Need

The main problem that we face when attempting to follow the greatest commandment is the problem of idolatry.

Other things that take our attention, affection, love instead of God.

We need to point our entire life’s trajectory towards God, not just because God commands it, but because He commands it for our good.

Nothing else can satisfy our soul like David proclaims, except for God himself.

A quote from C.S. Lewis that I thought was very poignant:

“No, your desires aren’t the problem.

The weakness of your desires are the problem.

You are like a child fooling about in slums with your mud pies because you can’t imagine what a holiday at the sea is like.”

- C.S. Lewis

God doesn’t want us to be miserable.

He doesn’t ask us to deny ourselves and pick up our cross to follow Jesus because He’s a sadist and He likes hurting His children, but rather He knows that the only true contentment, peace, and joy is found in Him and Him alone.

He knows that any pain or suffering we go through following Him is only for our good, so that we can proclaim with Paul “I count it all joy when I go through suffering.”

Sometimes I think we understand this mentally but we don’t believe it.

Of course, it makes sense that God should be enough for me, should satisfy my longings and my desires, should give me contentment, but I don’t think we understand why that’s the case, and it leads us to confusion.

Loving God, delighting in God with all of our being doesn’t bring us joy because when God sees us loving Him He says “Ah, perfect!

Since you have loved me, I will give you joy through this, that or the other thing.”

That’s not how this works.

We can wholly satisfied in God because it is God himself that satisfies us.

The very act of loving God, of putting our affections squarely on God, of pointing our entire being towards Him, is the thing that should and does satisfy us.

Olympic runners spend their entire lives, sometimes starting when they are three years old, all so that they can run 100 meters and get a shiny piece of metal.

How more so should we be spending our entire lives, devoting every part of us, to a cause so much greater than that, for a reward that is so much better than that—our reward isn’t just heaven or the promise of eternal life, but God himself.

Having a relationship with Him and being completely satisfied in Him forever.

Let us read from to help us understand what that means and why that happens:

John 4:7

What is the living water in this passage?

Is it riches?

Is it the rewards that we have laid up in heaven?

Is it the good things on this Earth?

What is it?

In , Jesus uses this analogy again, and he says “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.”

Jesus is the Living Water!

It is God himself that satisfies our soul.

Loving God with all of our soul isn’t a means to an end.

We don’t love God to get the joy that He promises us after we love Him.

Loving God with all our soul is both the means and the end.

It is the act of loving God itself that gives us joy, because experiencing God is the ultimate delight, the ultimate pleasure, the ultimate treasure.

Two glorious truths are evident from Scripture: The purpose of our lives as Christians is to love and glorify God, and glorifying God is the most satisfying, joy-filled experience in all of the universe.

It will fill us so that we will never be thirsty again.