Mark 12:29-31
Which is the greatest commandment a scribe asks Jesus in Mk 12?
Jesus responds, “…‘Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment.”
Is it possible to love God too much? Occasionally we hear from people who sincerely think so. Their comments are usually directed at new Christians. They say in essence, you are spending too much time with God, too much time at church. They imply thereby that other important things and people are being neglected. You are so heavenly minded you are no earthly good. Do these charges have merit?
Can a person really love God too much? Not according to Jesus in this text. Our Lord here brilliantly answers another question meant to stump Him and in so doing identifies the essential requirement that we love God with our total being. He says that the Lord is ONE, truly unique, sovereign. There are no other gods. The Lord alone is God, and God therefore should be supreme in our lives…first, central, foremost, utmost… greater than anything or anyone.
In Luke 14:26 Jesus says, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.” This seems to be over the edge… But Jesus is not asking us to hate or neglect ourselves, our families or our friends, rather He is calling us to supremely love Him in such a way so as to make every other relationship in life to appear as hated in comparison. So can we really love God too much?
Jesus goes on… We are to love God not just with heart, soul, mind and strength, but with ALL of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. There is not much left after these four...
- We must love God with ALL our heart, sincerely. We must ever guard against hypocrisy.
- We must love God with ALL of our soul, sacrificially; our life is His, all of it. On Mount Moriah, it was not Isaac that God wanted, it was Abraham. Paul said, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. His life was Christ’s, all of it.
- We must love God with ALL of our mind, sensibly. Our mind, fully engaged in pursuing Him…we do not live by blind faith. Our love for God is not like a chat room relationship based on ever changing and unverifiable information. Rather it is fully informed by and grounded upon the Word of God.
- We must love God with ALL of our strength, strongly. Our body, the temple of the Holy Sprit, devoted to His service, to be used by the Spirit, for Christ, and because of Christ. Our body will therefore be different from others, do different things than others, things that others may not understand, and things they think not very important.
Loving our neighbor, the 2nd commandment, logically flows from the first.
So, is it possible to love God too much? No, the truth is…we don’t love Him enough. Compare your love to the condescension and sacrifice of the One speaking in this text. We owe Him. We owe Him big time! When we don’t love Him as we ought, we’re out of line, off course, out of whack in our lives, in our relationships, and in our priorities.
C.S Lewis in a letter he wrote in 1951 said it this way… “When I have learned to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.”
You see the truth is you will never love your wife, your husband, your children, your parents, your siblings, your work, your neighbor, your country…you will never love any of these as you ought until you love God with all you are…and the REAL TRUTH is…you are being irresponsible to them, you are neglecting them, by NOT loving God NOW with your total being.
It is impossible to love God too much!!!