There is a difference between knowing about God and loving God.
A person can know Scripture, attend church, and serve faithfully, yet still struggle to give God the deepest affection of their heart. The Christian life is not simply about what we know or what we do. At its centre is a relationship with God Himself.
When Jesus was asked which commandment was the greatest, He answered without hesitation:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” – Matthew 22:37
This was not a new idea. Jesus was drawing directly from Deuteronomy 6:4-5, where Israel was commanded to love the Lord wholeheartedly. In Mark 12:30, Jesus gives the same command, again emphasising the totality of our devotion.
God does not ask for a compartment of our lives. He calls us to love Him with the whole of who we are.
Yet this command must be understood in light of the Gospel. We do not love God to make Him love us. God loved us first. His love was demonstrated supremely in Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us. Through the Holy Spirit, that love is poured into the hearts of believers, enabling us to respond to Him.
As 1 John 4:19 says: “We love because he first loved us.”
Our love for God is therefore a response to grace, not an attempt to earn it.
Loving God With the Whole of Who We Are
When Jesus says, “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”, He is describing a love that reaches every part of our lives.
To love God with all our heart means that He is not simply one interest among many. He becomes the centre around which everything else is ordered.
To love God with all our soul speaks of our whole being and life. To love Him with all our mind means that our thoughts, understanding and convictions are brought under His truth.
Love is therefore more than a feeling.
It involves:
- Affection: we genuinely desire God and delight in knowing Him.
- Allegiance: we choose God above competing loyalties.
- Obedience: we allow His Word to shape how we live.
- Surrender: we yield our plans, ambitions and preferences to Him.
This is why loving God cannot be separated from everyday life.
Psalm 63:1 gives us a picture of a heart that genuinely desires God: “My whole being longs for you in a dry and parched land where there is no water.”
David’s language is personal; he does not merely want what God can provide, he wants God Himself.
That distinction matters.
It is possible to seek God’s blessings without truly seeking God. We can want His provision, His protection, His direction and His answers to prayer while giving little thought to knowing Him.
But the greatest gift of Christianity is not simply what God gives us.
It is God Himself.
Paul came to understand this deeply. In Philippians 3:7-8, he described the things he had once considered valuable as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ.
His priorities had changed because his treasure had changed. This connects directly with Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6:21: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
What we treasure reveals what we love.
If Christ is truly our treasure, our lives will increasingly reflect that reality.
Love for God Is Seen in How We Live
Love sounds beautiful when spoken, but Scripture gives it practical expression.
Jesus does not separate love from obedience. Genuine love for Christ produces a desire to honour Him.
This does not mean that every believer will obey perfectly. We are still being sanctified. We will stumble, make wrong choices and sometimes allow our desires to compete with God’s will.
But the direction of a believer’s life should increasingly move towards Christ.
We obey not because we are trying to earn God’s acceptance, but because we have already received His grace.
That is an important distinction.
Grace comes first. Love responds. Obedience follows.
We are not saved because we love God perfectly. We love God because He has rescued us through Christ.
This guards us against two extremes.
- The first is legalism: believing that our religious performance earns God’s favour.
- The second is carelessness: claiming to love God while deliberately refusing His commands.
The Gospel gives us a better way. We are saved by grace through faith, and that grace transforms the way we live.
So loving God affects ordinary decisions. It affects:
- How we treat people: because those who love God are called to love others.
- How we use our time: because our lives belong to Him.
- How we handle temptation: because holiness matters to the One we love.
- How we respond to God’s Word: because we trust His wisdom above our own.
- How we respond to difficulty: because suffering does not mean God has stopped being faithful.
- How we use our gifts and resources: because what we have ultimately belongs to Him.
Love for God changes what we pursue, are willing to surrender, and what we consider valuable.
This is why Jesus described loving God as the greatest commandment, everything else flows from it. Immediately after commanding His followers to love God, Jesus identified the second greatest commandment: “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Matthew 22:39).
Our love for God should therefore overflow into love for people.
We cannot claim to love God while deliberately living with hatred, cruelty, pride or indifference towards others. Love for God reshapes our relationships because His character begins to shape ours.
The more deeply we understand God’s love, the more freely we can surrender to Him.
We do not have to earn the love that He has already demonstrated through Christ. Instead, we respond in worship, surrender, and love.
Conclusion
To love the Lord is to give God more than a Sunday morning, a few prayers or occasional religious activity. Jesus calls us to love Him with all our heart, all our soul and all our mind.
That is wholehearted devotion.
But this command does not begin with our effort. It begins with God’s love for us.
“We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
The cross is the clearest demonstration of that love. Christ gave Himself for us before we could do anything to deserve it. The Holy Spirit now pours God’s love into the hearts of believers and enables us to respond.
To love the Lord is not simply to feel strongly about God; It is to recognise His worth and give Him our whole selves.
Because when God truly becomes our greatest treasure, loving Him is no longer an obligation we merely perform.
It becomes the response of a heart that has discovered that there is nothing more valuable than Christ.