Love: The Greatest Commandment

Within the greatest commandment are two imperatives: “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart … you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:28-31). Love is the core of the instruction.

But what does it mean to love? We use that word rather loosely in our day. We say we love our spouse and children, but also say we love our local baseball team and mint chocolate chip ice cream. Has the word lost some of its meaning? I think so.

Love is a choice stemming from knowledge and extending to action. God’s kind of love is ongoing, never ending, never wavering, never doubting, believing the best and working diligently to see it come to fruition. God’s kind of love is also sacrificial. It costs something. It’s not easy, but it understands the value of the person it loves and will pay the price to make sure the very best is extended.

God’s kind of love is grounded in truth. It doesn’t pretend, or excuse or live in false reality. But it overcomes the challenges that truth often presents and finds a way to communicate just how good God’s truth and grace really are. The Apostle Paul writes on love extensively in 1 Corinthians 13.

The greatest commandment is a commandment to love—to want, and to pursue God’s best. And the first part pertains to God Himself. Do we really want God’s best for us in terms of our relationship with Him? In Scripture, we learn that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick and difficult to understand (Jeremiah 17:9). As the CEO of self, our hearts need to be transformed by the gospel of the kingdom and the power of the Holy Spirit. The good news is that what has been broken by sin and guided by a fallen world, can be radically renewed by grace, faith, and spiritual disciplines.

One of the greatest joys we can experience comes from knowing that we can, in fact, come to a place where we truly do love (persistently and sacrificially pursue the best for) the Lord our God with all our hearts.

—Jay Armstrong, The Bonhoeffer Project, adapted