Loving ourselves...part III

When God calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves, he's not telling us to love ourselves, he's calling us to care for our neighbors in the way we are already naturally inclined care for ourselves. 

What this passage is doing is giving us a standard. Self-care is the standard by which we measure and base our care of others. He is telling us to simply do for others what we desire they do for us in the way we automatically and naturally do it for ourselves.

However, we have a problem. This is totally impossible to do by ourselves. Our commitment to self-care is too great--so is our need for infinite love. We can not love others sacrificially until we know we are loved in the same way. 

Which is exactly why he appeals to this as our standard. He wants our care of others to be equally as great as our care for ourselves. 

The solution?

It is only when we know - are fully convinced - we are ¹perfectly cared for and loved by God, that we are freed and enabled to love others, but not until then. In ourselves alone, we do not have the love necessary to love in this way - i.e. sacrificially - or the assurance it will be worth the sacrifice.

But how can we know whether God loves us that much? Through Christ and his work on our behalf we have absolute proof of God's love. In and through Christ, God completely took care of both our alienation and our need for infinite love. He did all of this for us because of his care and love for us.

Do we believe this is true? Do we believe that God loves us ²this much? Unless and until we do we can never love others as God designed us to.

God says he loves us and did everything necessary to prove it. Is he lying? The actions God took prove he is not. It is for us to believe or reject His promised love demonstrated by His sacrificial actions. This is his call and also our greatest struggle, to believe. Do you?

For more comments on loving ourselves click here and here. 

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¹When we know that no sacrifice we make in loving others will go unrewarded, we are able to love sacrificially. And how do we know this? Because God proved it by sending His Son to restore us to himself and then raised him back to life after he sacrificed himself for us. Resurrection life after His sacrifice is ours because it was Christ's first. Christ's resurrection is the firstfruits of all other resurrections for those who love Him.  

²do we believe in his love enough that it transforms and frees us to love others in the same way he loves us i.e. sacrificially? Not unless or until we do can we ever love sacrificially.

Loving ourselves?

Most everyone who has studied this closely agrees that knowing we have value is vital to becoming whole and functioning well. The question then becomes, how is that best accomplished?

We hear a lot today about how and why loving ourselves is necessary and the best way (maybe the only way) to feel good about ourselves. Why? Because others will fail us, but we can always choose to love ourselves. 

But what if there is someone who knows you better than you ever could, with all your flaws and cares about you, and loves you regardless? Do you think/believe that's even possible? 

The best "self-care" is not caring for yourself but letting somebody care for you who knows you and loves you better than you know and can love yourself and can meet your need for love better than you or anyone else.

Someone who has infinite knowledge, infinite ability, infinite love, infinite resources, and an infinite desire to care for you could do that better than you can.

That would not be you. A finite being - you or I - cannot meet an infinite need. We were never designed to meet our endless need for love. Believing we could is when all our troubles began.

Our only challenge is believing God knows and loves us better than we do and entrusting ourselves to his care, that whatever He gives or withholds is best for us. This is the exact opposite of what Adam and Eve concluded when they chose to eat from the tree of good and evil.

Is there anything that helps us to believe he loves us in this way?  

John 15:13  "The greatest love you can have for your friends is to give your life for them." - Jesus

1Jn 4:9  "And God showed his love for us by sending his only Son into the world, so that we might have life through him. 10  This is what love is: it is not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the means by which our sins are forgiven." 

Christ said you can know the truth and the truth will set you free. He also said "I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me..." Do you believe this?

For further comments on loving ourselves, click here and here

strength for self denial

To do things well for (1)others require we (2)deny ourselves.

Why? Our focus is not on our own needs and indulging in (3)self-affirming and self-comforting activities but on the (4)needs of another for their comfort and affirmation. Loving our neighbor as we love ourselves and treating others as we would have them treat us requires self-denial.

But self-denial isn't natural or even possible on our own. How do we do this?

The strength or ability to deny (5)ourselves doesn't come from us -   (8)our willpower - but can only occur when we look to and draw strength from God through increasing trust and dependence on Him. He, by his commitment of infinite love to us, is the source of our affirmation and comfort, not our efforts to self-affirm and self-comfort. 

What is it exactly we are asked to believe/trust in and how does this give us strength?

We are to recognize/believe we are of value, worth, significance, and importance objectively and personally to God i.e., we know/believe this is true because God says he feels this way about us and backed it up by His actions. 

Do we believe this? Is God ever wrong? We must have the right answer if we are to ever participate in his love and benefit from how he sees us.

Regardless of what we are feeling or experiencing, God's infinite regard/love for us has already been demonstrated and proven by sending Christ for us. His love is forever ours because of Christ. Nothing can or will ever separate us from it. 

It is through God's disposition of relentless, perfect, and infinite love we find strength. Therefore, it is God himself, who He is for us and toward us, that is the source of that strength. Because he - the sovereign creator of all things - is for us, nothing can be against us.

When we really and truly (6)“buy-in” to this, we no longer need to prove our worth - “self affirm”- by doing things to gain affirmation. We know we are already affirmed and it has nothing to do with what we do or don't do. Now we do things out of the strength we derive from that affirmation...God's affirmation. And not just a limited and temporary affirmation but an affirmation that is infinite (and will be eternal) because the source is the almighty infinite, eternal God. He is the "I AM" the only self-existing, infinite, eternal, most valuable, and glorious -- highly affirmed -- being in the universe.

What exactly is the nature of the strength we derive from God? In a word, it is simply knowing I am valuable to this God. When we fully grasp and believe this, nothing else matters. Or as Paul says it, "...if God is for us, who can be against us."

We are called to abide -- firmly remain standing -- in the belief and awareness of God's love/value for us. We are told by Christ himself to never lose sight of our being cherished and precious to him and to hold fast to this.

"As -- in the same way -- the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide -- continually remain and stand -- in my love." John 15:9. The very same love the Father has for a Son, the Son has for us.  What greater love is there in the universe than the Father's love of his Son. It is this same love he has for us. Selah -- Pause, reflect, and let that sink in.

How can we be certain God feels this way about us? He not only tells us this -- and because he is trustworthy, this alone is enough -- but He demonstrated it by His actions. 

Not just any actions but actions of infinite proportions. Looking intently into and constantly reflecting on what He and His Son denied themself of and put themself through is our proof. The closer and harder we look the more of his love we discover. 

This is why we do communion regularly, to remember and reflect on the actions Christ took to restore us back to them in all their infinite love. We are encouraged to remind ourselves (7)repeatedly of this amazing gesture of love. 

To continually reflect on these realities is to be strengthened by them. That strength empowers us to focus on others and not ourselves. "As -- in the same way -- the Father has sent me (Jesus) so I send you" i.e. in the power of knowing God's infinite love is ours and with us no matter what do, where we go, or how challenging it is. 

For a discussion on why faith is hard work click here.

For a further discussion on how the most valuable values us click here. 

For a discussion on the difference between loving vs, valuing click here.
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(1)God, our neighbor, and other brothers and sisters in Christ.

(2)Denying our self and death to self are tied together. There is no death to self without denying our self and to deny our self results in the death of self.

Death to self is not literal or absolute however i.e. we – our self – don't die but we die to self-loving, self-comforting, and self-sustaining behavior/actions as the source of our affirmation.

Death to self doesn't occur by devaluing ourselves, it is knowing our true value in Christ and loving others out of the infinite fountain of God and overflow of His love.

(3)Self-affirming activities are endless. It’s simply any activity we engage in solely to make us feel good about ourselves. This can be done through drugs, sex, food, achievement, money, entertainment, recreation, being better or different than others to make ourselves stand out in order to gain praise and on we can go. Fill in the blank.

It’s important to understand none of these things in themselves are necessarily wrong or bad. All things are created by God for His glory and our joy when understood and used properly. It’s why we seek them that becomes the problem i.e. do we see them as our gods from which we derive value, worth, significance, importance or as gifts from God because He considers us valuable, significant, important.

(4)This does not mean we find no joy in helping others, but that joy is in the other persons joy, not in the joy itself. It is an inclusive, not an exclusive joy.

(5)we - self, still need to be nourished if you will, emotionally and spiritually. This is not through self-effort but in and through God.

(6)This is a lifelong process and the essence of our spiritual development and maturity, i.e. our day-to-day sanctification. 

(7) Have you ever wondered why there is no prescribed schedule for communion. I suspect the reason God does not want us to do it as a ritual but as "oft" as we remember his love i.e. it's not an activity to impress God but one that springs forth from the worship of God. If it does not, it becomes a hoop to jump through. The exact opposite of what it's intended to do for us.  

(8) It does involve choice, but our choice is to believe God is honored in our loving our neighbor as we love ourselves and He will reward us for our faithful obedience and sacrificial love. This differs from willing ourselves to act solely to prove we can or impress others. The former is looking to and depending on God for grace to love others, and the latter is looking to ourselves with no regard for God and His will. This is subtle and not outwardly obvious because it's a matter of the heart, not our actions. 
 

Loving ourselves… part II

More and more we hear talk about loving ourselves.

Why? My observation of myself and of others, is this comes from a deep, often unconscious, sense of feeling unloved, often connected to our ¹family of origin.  

When you grow up knowing - and believing - you are truly and deeply loved - ultimately by God but also well conveyed to those who were blessed enough to have godly loving parents - you rarely think about being loved any more than you think about eating right after a very large, satisfying meal. The more loved (valued) you feel, the less likely you will be allured by the offer of love from temporary, unhealthy, or destructive sources. To use an analogy, healthy, godly love inoculates us from catching the bug of unhealthy, fleeting love. When we know we are infinitely loved, we become givers instead of takers, comforters of others instead of those who seek comfort. 

We all have a deep sense of feeling unloved simply because we are disconnected and separated from our Creator - the source of love and ²life Himself. However, this sense will be more or less exaggerated and felt depending on how much true sacrificial love we did or did not receive from our parents.

People usually resort to self-love because they have been deeply hurt and ³disappointed by others. And in truth, not even the most loving parents or any other person can give us the love we were designed for. Only God can. As a result, we are more inclined to no longer trust others to come through for us. We believe we can only trust ourselves, so this is where we go for love. As meager as self-love may be, it is better than nothing, plus we have some control over it. At least we feel we do.

Our ability to trust - or lack of it - starts with our parents. We are already naturally inclined to distrust. It was the disposition of our original parents (Adam and Eve) and continues to be ours. But our earthly parents help lay the foundation on which trust is either nurtured or damaged more. 

Because of the breakdown of the family unit at large and the huge significance of the support (or lack) it offers, there is an increasing number of children that grow up experiencing a greater sense of missing love, resulting in increased efforts to self-love. The greater the breakdown, the greater the effort. Hence the rise of Narcissism, the appeal of self-love, and the age of the "selfie."

The challenge, however, is when all is said and done, we are designed for infinite love. A finite being - you and I (including our parents) - can never give us infinite love i.e. an infinite need can never be met by a finite solution. Only infinite love will do.

Though our parents are our first and most significant relationship through which our self-concept is shaped, ultimately no parent can give us what we were designed for; infinite, uninterrupted love. 

Since perfect love (God's) is available to all of us, to not accept it is on us individually, not our parents. We may be damaged because of inadequate parental love but this is only an opportunity to experience and appreciate God's love all the more - if we can learn to trust it.  

Loved well...or not

When a child is loved well (consistently) by parents who also know they are loved well - due to a strong sense of love of feeling loved by the Creator - and the parents clearly convey to their child the reason they love well is because of God, the child will easily transfer their sense of love and trust from their parents to God when they eventually move out on their own and no longer under the direct care of their parents.

God never fails even if others do

The beauty of God's love is even if and when someone does not receive healthy love and support from their family of origin, God also uses this to show the greatness of his love by contrast.

Psa 27:10  Although my father and my mother have forsaken me, yet the Lord will take me up [adopt me as His child]. Amplified version.
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¹However, the root cause is we are all alienated from our Creator, the source of love and life. If we are designed to be in a loving relationship with our Creator and are absent that relationship, we will always have a sense of feeling unloved no matter how loving our parents or others are. 

²though we still have access to and use of created things and use them as God/love substitutes -- which includes other creatures i.e. animate and inanimate.

³The beauty of being a believing parent is God's forgiveness of us and unrelenting love for us frees us to acknowledge our mistakes and ask for our child's forgiveness when we make them -- and we will make them. Being a good parent isn't about being perfect; it's about being real and demonstrating the love and grace of God in our brokenness. Our brokenness becomes an opportunity to demonstrate how the grace of God works in our lives as imperfect bearers of God's image (and in this sense the same as our kids - we all need and are recipients of grace) and therefore can be the same in the child's life as well. 

It's about consequences, not shame.

When you blow it, how do you feel? How about when you blow it again and again in the same area? 

Do you grit your teeth, buckle down, and say, "I am not going to do that again" and then do it, anyway? 

So what's the solution? How can you find the strength to not mess up again?

Motivation to obey Christ has ¹everything to do with consequences and nothing to do with feelings of guilt or shame. God doesn't chide, shame, or reject us when we do wrong. We should never seek to obey God out of shame or fear of rejection ... but it is certainly wise to do so out of fear of correction. This is the essence of fearing/respecting God.

A truly loving parent will always correct their child when they do things harmful to others or themselves. And it will hurt, but that is not rejection. In fact, it's just the opposite. Those who God loves, he corrects. It is precisely because God wants what's best for us that he corrects us.  

A truly loving parent never stops loving us, no matter how stupid we act. Do they like it - or do you, if you are a parent - when we (or our kids) make poor choices? No. 

Are parents greatly grieved by these harmful choices? Definitely. Angry? Possibly. But not at us but for our sake and the sake of others. If God is mad, it is only because we are doing things that are destructive to ourselves and ²others. He is not mad at us but angry over the harm it causes ourselves and others. If we are his child, God is for us, not against us.

Not just destructive to us...

Disobedience is also dishonoring to God. To treat God with disrespect or low regard says to others God must not be worth loving or is that great. He's not important enough to pay attention to. This is a very harmful message or way to approach life. This is a problem, not for God, but for those who think God is not worth pursuing due to our not pursuing God as we are designed to. 

When we don't pursue God as we should - and He deserves - others will ask: 

If God is loving, how can those who call him Father be so unloving, e.g. how can such a loving parent (God) have such a spoiled brat (us) for a kid?

If He is great, how can those who call Him Father pursue things other than God and find greater meaning, joy, and life in them instead of Him?  

If God is the greatest, wisest, most powerful, and loving being of all, why aren't his children pursuing him more? 

We must ask ourselves if we are perfectly loved by God, why are we so unloving. Why doesn't his love create in us a love and compassion for others similar to the love and compassion he shows us? 

This occurs only because we don't truly know the nature of his love and how great it is. To say it another way, we may have heard of his love and know about it, but we haven't yet fully "bought-in" to it i.e. we don't really believe He loves us that much. 

Love, as well as consequences, should move us

What about our love, gratitude, or faith? Don't they have something to do with why we do or don't obey God?  

Of course, those who complain about a believer's lack of love use this as an excuse and justification for their own indifference to God. But in reality, they refuse to see the problem is with all of us, not God; with our unbelief and refusal to enter into and participate in God's love, wisdom, and power extended to us in Christ, not because God's love isn't fully extended to us as his adopted children i.e. the problem (our being unloving) lies within us and not within God.

Faith is always a part of obedience (obedience is the fruit of faith). As we mature and experience God's love, wisdom, and power, we begin to discover from first-hand experience he is good, all the time, and worthy of our complete trust and faithfulness. In the hard times and blessed times, he is always good, loving, wise, and patient. This creates gratitude on our part and a response of love to his love, wisdom, and goodness toward us. These experiences of His love always create growing confidence (trust/faith) in the goodness of his directions and His ways of handling our lack of trust in him.

For a further discussion on the uselessness of feeling guilt and shame click here.

For a further discussion on why God hates evil click here. 

For a further discussion on the "anatomy of motivation" to obedience click here. 

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¹I don't mean "everything" in the sense it is the only thing that motivates us to pursue God. Love, trust and a desire to honor (glorify) God are key motivators as well. These fall on the positive side of what moves us to pursue God. For more on this click here.

I am referring to the negative side. When it comes to the reason we are not to sin, it should be to avoid the pain of consequences, not the shame of failure or fear of rejection.  

²We often assume he's against us when he is for others, but he's for *both us and them; just like he is for both himself and us. Our happiness is intertwined with the happiness of others. God first, then others.

We are inter-relational beings because God is an inter-relational being as Father, Son, and Spirit. For more on this point, click here. 

Designed to love and be loved

We are designed both to love and be loved:

We are designed TO love. To love is a key part of what it means to be in Gods image. It is a central part of our make up; who we are, the way we were made. 

But we were not designed to love independent of the source of life and love. We can only love as God designed us to, which is to be fully loved first. 

Nevertheless when we are in Christ and truly believe we are loved, we do not need to think about loving others, we will love others (...IF you abide in me you WILL bear much fruit...). Loving others is what we will do if and when we are fully connected with the Creator. It is not something we have to force, it is simply who we are when we are plugged into Infinite love. 

If we find unloving attitudes within us the solution isn't to grit our teeth and will ourselves to love others more, it is to believe and receive his love and let it transform us and make us lovely/loving.

Do we play no part in this process? Are we simply passive? No we are fully engaged in receiving God's love. We receive God's love by faith-which is our "work." This is harder than we might think. 

Faith is a posture of humility. We don't like being humble, we prefer to be our own god, to be our own source, to think we can be all we need to be on our own when we cannot and were never intended to.

Christ said without him we can do nothing.

"...I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing..." - Jesus - Joh 15:5

When we are loved, we act differently (love others). When we see ourselves differently, as beloved children and not worthless condemned sinners, we act differently, lovely. When we know at the core of our being we are fully loved it shifts our self perception so significantly that we treat others differently. We see ourselves as significant/valuable and we therefore in turn treat others as significant/valuable. This change of behavior is not forced, but the fruit of our seeing ourselves as God's beloved children.

It is only when we do not receive and experience God's love that we focus elsewhere, on self-love to fill the void. In a word we are selfish.

We are also designed to be loved by God. When God's love is not in us and filling us, we are empty. When this void is filled with his love it frees us from the need to self-love and enables us to do what we were designed to do which is to love others. 

This is why we find great joy in loving others. It is who we were designed to be.

When we have great love for others we cannot take credit because 

1. God made us this way 

2. It can only happen when we are fully loved ourselves 

3. This kind of love only comes from God who is love.

We are naturally designed to love. But we only do so when we are loved. Nevertheless, when we are loved, we do not have to think about how to love others, it simply happens when we act in faith believing we are loved because this is the way we were designed. This is part of what it means to be made in God's image.

When this occurs we cannot take credit for being this way because it can only happen when we are fully loved ourselves and this kind of love only comes from God who is love.

#love

Broken yet fully loved

We are far more ¹broken than we are willing to admit but also far more loved than we can ever imagine or hope for - or are usually willing to believe.

Why do we struggle to believe that we are both broken and fully loved at the same time?

We fear if someone knew ²all our faults they would reject us and no longer love us. Why? Because admitting to or being seen with all our flaws usually results in rejection. 

We so greatly long to be fully and deeply loved, we fear ³losing it if we ever find it. We believe it's better to never be loved than to powerfully experience love and lose it.

The more we know we are loved - regardless of our flaws - the more we can admit ("own") them - not only to the one who loves us but to ourselves as well. 

Why does love free us? We are no longer concerned that admitting our brokenness will result in rejection. We know we are loved regardless of how broken we are. 

Love is the fuel of growth and change. Why?

Admitting our faults to ourselves and others is vital to our maturing. 

We can't and won't fix something if we don't think it's broken. And we can't admit our brokenness until we know we will not be rejected for it. Once we feel safe to admit our brokenness, we can be more honest with ourselves (and others) about our shortcomings.

We can admit our faults only to the extent we know we are loved despite them.

When we are loved in ⁴this way we desire to bring joy and honor to the only One who loves us this way. We delight in doing all we can to honor them. When this is for God, He in turn feels honored to be in a relationship with us.

For a discussion on loving yourself click here and here.

For a discussion on what it means to be broken click here. 

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¹We are not broken in the sense that we no longer have natural abilities, talents, or resources but in how we use these, i.e. do we use them to self-comfort instead of bringing comfort to others as we were *designed to?

Self-comforting is so common it is considered normal, not broken. We not only embrace it but applaud others who do this as well. "Loving ourselves" has become a cultural mantra in the West when it is actually the primary evidence and expression of brokenness. 

Our need to love ourselves is only because we have rejected God, the very source of love. How? Whenever we look to or go to something other than God for love, we are telling God we can do better at finding and experiencing love on our own than we can from Him, when in fact only God is the source of love, life, and all things. 

*We are in God's image, designed to be like God, which is to be other-focused - i.e. to give, not take. The more we give, the more we are like God, and the more we partake of and experience Him, i.e. experience love flowing to and through us to others.

We justify getting or taking because we think it will make us happy, more complete, and whole. Short-term it may, but the ultimate solution to our need for love is not taking it but receiving it from the Source, which enables us to pass it on to others. 

God is primarily what we need, but we refuse to receive what he offers, i.e. His infinite affections offered to us in and through His Son Jesus.

We reach the highest level of our design - God's likeness - when we give. But not to get but simply for the joy of seeing others receive life through us. And we can only give as God does when we are receiving love from the One who is the ultimate source of love, God himself. 

²This is what makes our family of origin so unique and significant. No one sees our flaws and strengths as much or as well as family. If we come from a loving family, this is where we feel safest... Or "more at home" to use a common expression. If we come from an unloving family, this is why for some thoughts of family are most painful. And also why we may fear letting others see us the way we truly are. 

³This approach believes you can't lose what you never had to begin with.

There is a saying that it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.

But what if you never love again? All you have is the painful memory of not having something (love) you still need and long for. Is this not the essence of hell itself? I'm not suggesting we avoid love for fear of never experiencing it again. I am saying no human can love us in the way we are designed for, i.e. perfectly and continuously loved, without interruption. Only God is perfect, perpetual, and endless love. 

⁴God alone consistently loves us in this way. He alone is perfect and infinite love.

Loving our neighbor isn't hard, it's impossible.

We must have a sense of meaning, purpose, and value to function as we were designed to. Without this, life is pointless. 

We normally obtain this through our achievements. This isn't bad or wrong, but part of how we are wired. However, it is insufficient if we draw our sense of value primarily and only from what we do. Why?

Our primary source of meaning, purpose, and value is God himself. We were created to love God and be loved by God 1st and then to love our neighbors 2nd. To gain a sense of meaning, purpose, and value exclusively or primarily through being valued-loved-admired by other finite creatures is contrary to who we are and how we are wired. Operating in this way does not address our core need for infinite love. Other finite beings cannot give infinite love. By design and definition, a creature is a finite being.

Including ourselves. We can not meet a need for infinite love using finite resources.

Now consider this; if everyone committed to loving, appreciating, and valuing their neighbor as themselves, we would all be loved by our neighbors? Problem solved, right?

"Hey neighbor, start loving me as yourself! That’s what the commandment says. What are you waiting for?" 

The focus of this commandment however is for us to love them, not demand they love us. 

There is one significant problem, however,

we don't love our neighbor the way we love ourselves!  On occasion, we might but in pockets or bits and pieces. By and large, this doesn’t happen and hasn't happened on a global scale. The world is still a mess. War, starvation, fear, distrust, etc. continue unabated.

We've all heard of calls for unity, peace, and love, especially in times of greatest discord and division. There have even been songs written about it. You may recall John Lennon's song "Give Peace a Chance" with the regular refrain, "all we are saying..." as if it is no big deal to achieve. The Beatles also sang "All You Need is Love." The lyrics even said, "it's easy." Or you may recall the song "We Are the World" by several high-profile artists. 

These are all lovely sentiments and worthy goals. The desire expressed by each is noble and right, in fact, it is what we are created for. This is not only what we need but part of who we are and what we are designed for.

Yet, the world is still a mess. So why don’t we all simply do this? If it were easy, I think we would.

The problem is, if we think we can all merely start loving each other without being connected to the Source of love, we do not understand the human condition. This is like being told to give our neighbor a drink of water when our own water is shut off. 

Dr. Larry Crabb once said that most people go into a relationship like ticks looking for a dog. However, there is only one problem... we are all ticks. We cannot give something we don't have i.e. infinite, selfless (sacrificial) love. The only way we can love our neighbor as we were designed to and in the way our neighbor needs us to, is to be fully engaged in loving God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength. 

And this will not, and can not, happen unless we experience God’s love first. Loving God first is the greatest commandment for good reason.  We cannot love God in this way until we see that he has loved us in ¹this way. This fills our cup (or turns our water back on to continue the above analogy). In short, absent God's sacrificial love, we are not able to love our neighbor as ourselves. We are too busy tending to our own emptiness and need for love.  

When "push comes to shove," if God's love is not filling our hearts we take care of number one i.e. ourselves. We only love sacrificially when we see we have been loved sacrificially.  And we have been. Love has a name. It's ¹Jesus!

For a further discussion on how God empowers us, click here

For a further discussion on how God's Spirit works within ours, click here. 

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*Has God loved us with all His heart, soul, mind, and strength?  Yes!! When!? Over 2000 years ago in and through Christ. And after Christ rose He sent his love by His Spirit (that issues forth and flows out of the love the Father and Son have for each other).

The law/obedience... required or not

Is obedience to God and His law a requirement?

In one sense, it is not and in another sense it is.

1. Obedience is not required:

For justification, i.e. We are not, cannot, nor ever will be justified (in right standing with God) by our obedience to God's ³law. 

To approach God's law in this way is saying we can make ourselves "right" with God through our efforts, i.e. we can be good enough to make (or cause) God to accept and love us. 

If so, Christ wouldn't have needed to die to obtain our right standing with God i.e. Christ's death was ⁴unnecessary and a waste. We could simply be our own savior and the cause of our salvation. 

But we have a major problem. In order to be right with God requires a love, faithfulness, worship of and loyalty to God, that is equal to His beauty, majesty, and glory. God, being all glorious, rightfully demands and deserves a matching response. Not because God needs us to respond this way for His sake but because it aligns with who God is and who we are i.e. it is operating according to the reality of what is.

We are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, because of who He is and the way He loves. Anything less would be inappropriate and inadequate for an infinitely majestic, all-glorious being.

However, this ³does not occur for several reasons.

• To not love and honor God with all we have and are minimizes the beauty, majesty, holiness, glory, and infinite worth of God. The greatness of God justly compels and requires our perfect love and absolute faithfulness, loyalty, and worship of him for who He is - the infinitely beautiful, majestic, and all-glorious God. Because of who God is, nothing less than perfect faithfulness, absolute and total loyalty, is suitable or sufficient for the Creator, Giver, and Sustainer of all things. He deserves all our devotion and rightfully desires no less.

But who among us loves God this way... with all we are and have? Yet everything we are and have is from Him, is it not? At a minimum, this alone demands our perfect loyalty, devotion, and respect, if not our affection. This is also at the heart of greatest commandment. 

• Only God is perfectly loyal in faithfulness; we are not. This is a problem since faithfulness and unfaithfulness in a relationship can not mix. This would be like a married couple with one partner being infinitely good and perfectly loving, loyal, and faithful, while the other partner is off pursuing other "lovers." No normal and healthy relationship works this way.

• Our attempts to earn a right standing with God nullifies the work Christ did to fully restore our broken relationship with God. Attempting this is an insult to Christ and His efforts. By seeking to be acceptable and worthy of God's love by our efforts we are saying Christ's faithfulness to God - which was even unto death - was unnecessary; that I can do better and be good enough and love God well enough to make myself right and acceptable to God without Christ having to do this for me. In effect, this is saying to God and others that Christ died in vain. His death was unnecessary and useless. 

• We simply do not and cannot love/value God perfectly as He deserves, i.e. with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves, without God empowering us. 

How does He empower us? By love. We are designed to respond to love and be the recipients and conduits of love. We are not the initiators of it. God alone is the source and cause of love. We love Him because He first loved us. 

• And He will not empower us until the fallout (i.e. the harm and consequences) from our rejection of His beauty, majesty, and glory is addressed and accounted for. The veil of blindness that obstructs us from seeing him as He truly is, must be removed. This occurs only when we are restored to a right relationship with God through Christ's efforts, not ours, i.e., we are justified by faith in Him and His efforts on our behalf, not by our efforts on His behalf. 

2. Obedience is a "¹requirement" to experience all God offers us:

If we are to partake of the fullness of God, His life, and bring Him maximum honor and experience our greatest flourishing. 

This has nothing to do with our justification before God as our judge and everything to do with our communing with God and being in a harmonious and fulfilling relationship with Him as our loving Father. Having a "right standing" with God is only possible through Christ's efforts, not ours. Christ alone was perfectly faithful to God - even unto death - not us.

However, being close to God and in a warm relationship with Him is up to us.

• Experiencing God in all his greatness and the full potential He created us for requires our maximum participation in who He is as our all-wise and loving Father and faithfully pursuing all he calls us to do and be. The essence of this is loving him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength as he rightfully deserves and loving our neighbors as ourselves (who, like us, are also in God's image). 

• Our obedience does not cause God to love us but aligns us with Him and "plugs us in" to who He is - His heart-will - as the most lovely of all. Obedience is evidence of our love for him. It is a reflection of our love for God and should match his love for us. 

Obedience to God could be summed up in one simple verse..."John 14:15 ESV

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments."

It also ushers us into his presence more fully. When we draw near to him, ²he draws near to us. 

• God is loving, good, kind, and wise. In Christ, we are his children. When we are aligned with Him, His love flows to us and empowers us so we also become loving, good, kind, and wise. This also reveals and reflects Him to others through us, i.e. It honors him. It brings him glory and also brings us the greatest joy.

In summary, obedience is a requirement as far as our maximum flourishing, experiencing God, and honoring Him, but not as far as our justification. 

The Westminster Catechism asks...

What is the chief end of man?

The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. God's glory and our joy go hand in hand i.e. our greatest joy is in glorifying God.

"For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen."  Rom 11:36  

For a discussion on how we seek to earn God's love, click here.

For a discussion on the difference between "Cultural Christians" and grace-driven followers of Christ, click here.

For a discussion on how God empowers us, click here and here.

For a discussion on the essence of God's Kingdom, click here.

For a discussion on how God's love is both conditional and unconditional, click here.

For a discussion on whether our focus should be on morality or Jesus, click here.

 

For a discussion on what righteousness is click here

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Footnotes:

¹I put "requirement" in quotes to distinguish it from justification. It is a requirement in the sense that drinking water or eating nutritious food is a requirement if we wish to stay alive and experience optimal health. 

God is Life. All we are and have is from Him. Partaking of, experiencing, and fully engaging Him is up to us.

Loving God with all we have and are and our neighbor as ourselves is to operate according to our design (and His will). Things work best when they function as designed. This is especially true of us as creatures who alone are in God's image.

Even as God's child - through Christ - if we stop eating and drinking, we will still die. Nevertheless, we are no less loved by God because we violated God's design to physically sustain us through eating and drinking.

²Not in his disposition and posture of love toward us (Christ already fully took care of this and secured it for us) but in our disposition towards Him. 

God's willingness, desire, and commitment to manifest Himself to us and our being able to experience Him in all his love are perfectly secured for us by Christ. 

But our full participation in all Christ has secured depends on us i.e. on our trust in God and faithful pursuit of Him as spelled out in the greatest command to love Him with all we are and have and our neighbors as ourselves. 

³Not because we shouldn't obey the law or because the law is not good, but because we cannot without His love empowering us.

The entire Bible illustrates this. Every time God sought to advance His purpose through us, we failed. Beginning with Adam, then Abraham, Moses, Jacob, and David.  Each was called to be God's special representative to multiply and advance His loving and righteous rule on earth, and each failed (though God did not, and used them anyway and succeeded).  

Why did God show this throughout the Bible? To demonstrate that he alone, through Christ, could live righteously and satisfy the requirements to faithfully and perfectly honor Him as he deserves i.e. according to God's true honor, glory, and righteousness. 

⁴What a massive insult to Christ and all he went through for us.

Morality or Jesus?

The church needs to get away from the ¹morality drill. Morality should not be our focus. Why? Because without God's enabling, none of us can truly be moral.

It's not that morality doesn't matter. It absolutely does. However, none of us can produce a truly moral life ²simply and merely by willpower. It is the fruit of something far deeper; something missing. 

Morality -- i.e. choosing to live according to God's commandments -- is not the cause of God's acceptance of us but the fruit of it. So why should we ask or expect the world to do what none of us can do on our own, Christian or otherwise? Morality is the RESULT of being loved by God first and then loving and honoring God in response - which also involves loving others as we wish to be loved.

Christ said, "if you LOVE me, you WILL keep my commandments" but instead, we somehow hear "I must keep God's commandments so He will love me." Sorry, but this is not his message. Read it again slowly and in its context. Morality shouldn't be our focus, the greatness, the goodness, and the love of God for us, and our response of love should be.

When we see God as he truly is -- all-loving, all-wise, and all-powerful -- for and to those who trust Him and that He is always present with us, this understanding causes us to ²want to seek to honor him in our words and deeds i.e. to want to live morally Isa 6:1-8. We don't seek moral living as our primary aim. When we see Him as He is, "high and lifted up," -- i.e. of tremendous value, beauty, majesty, wisdom, etc., -  loving God with all we are and have will be our primary desire and aim. In fact, this statement itself; that He should be our primary desire and aim, is a ¹moral statement and the true essence of morality.

We are not to focus on how poorly we or others are behaving but on how infinitely loving God is. And with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength loving our neighbor as ourselves in response. Focusing only on morals causes us to take our eyes off of God. It is the cart before the horse.

People are tired of moralistic preaching and its condescending hypocritical message of do what I say, not what I do; of us expecting and demanding of nonbelievers something even we Christians cannot -- and do not -- do ourselves unless moved by God. The truth is NO ONE is or can ever be moral enough to be approved by God. Christian or otherwise.

So why are we trying to get or expecting the world to be moral? This is indication of our lack of understanding how morally bankrupt we all are and what is needed for us to be truly moral. ³Moral actions is not what they need. They need Jesus first. When they fall in love with Jesus everything else follows. Then and only then will they want to honor him with their words and deeds i.e. live morally.

All the "Christians" that are always preaching or demanding morality from an unbelieving world needs to please stop.

Instead, we are all called to fall passionately in love with God. To love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength is the greatest commandment for good reason. Don't we think this is convicting enough or a pursuit worthy enough of everything we are and have? Yet no one does this unaided by God's Spirit, not even the most devoted among us. 

There is a reason Christ said on these two do all the other commandments hang. In fact, it's entirely dishonoring to God to focus on moral behavior because it brings attention to us, not Him i.e. "look at how moral I am. You should be moral too," when in fact none of us are truly moral. If we were, Christ wouldn't have needed to die for us.

Will morality save us? NO!!! It's precisely because we are not moral and never can be moral enough to ever be approved by God, that God sent his Son to do what we could never do for ourselves; to provide and then offer to GIVE us a perfect moral status. Yes, give it! This is why it's called "good news." It is not something we do but something declared, if we'll accept it. 

We don't have to be moral in order to be totally accepted and fully loved by God because Christ did that for us. He was moral on our behalf and he bore the complete and total consequences for our immorality. We certainly need to recognize we dishonor God by our words and deeds but that is totally different from being moral in order to gain/win/earn God's approval. 

The truth is we must be 100% perfectly moral for God to ever accept us 100%. Well, guess what? That's never going to happen and that is precisely why Christ came and died. To provide morality for us and offer it to us as a gift.

For several posts on the legitimate role the law plays in a believer's life click here. 

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¹For a further discussion on the grounds or basis for morality click here.

²I am not saying we should abandon morality itself, but we should not expect morality from a person who does not know God and is not empowered by God's love to live morally. For the significance and meaning of morality click here.

Php 2:12  Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13  for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. 

³I am not saying morality isn't important, or there is no right or wrong. There is wrongdoing that causes real harm and should be corrected. But this is more a societal issue i.e. it addresses our horizontal relationships with our fellow man, not our vertical relationship with God as far as His acceptance of us.  

I am speaking of our personal relationship with God. I am saying the morality we all need to be good enough to be restored to God, we can never produce on our own by sheer will power. We are simply too morally bankrupt to ever be perfectly moral. True morality is the fruit of godliness not the cause of it. Godliness is the fruit of loving God. Loving God is the fruit of him loving us first. 

Perfect morality has to be provided for us and given to us as a gift. And since it does, this is the message we must bring others; the good news, not "stop being bad...and start acting good..." Rather we must declare we are all bad and can never be good enough. None of us. The heart of where we all drop the ball is we don't love and honor God according to his true majesty, beauty, and honor. All other immoral behavior is simply the fruit of not loving God as we ought and He deserves.