Here is a truth the devil really doesn’t want you to know:
the commands of God are not burdensome (1 John 5:3). The devil wants you to
believe God’s commands are torturously burdensome and the death of your
happiness. The devil wants you to believe that God is withholding joy from you
in the limitations he places on you.
But that is the insidious photonegative of reality. The
commands of God are only liberating, especially in their limitations. What the
devil knows, and we often fail to see at first, is that trespassing beyond
God’s merciful limits is not the freedom of self-determination — it’s selling
ourselves into bondage. Whenever we obey a command of God in faith, he sets us
free or keeps us free from the blinding, oppressive, destructive slavery of sin
and increases our capacity for joy. The commands of God are not burdensome;
they are the narrow gate to life and true freedom (Matthew 7:13–14; John 8:32).
And the greatest of all of God’s commandments is that we
love him with our whole being (Matthew 22:37–38). It’s the greatest commandment
because it is the fountainhead of all the others. It is the very heart of every
other joy-producing commandment, and the only way we can faithfully obey those
commandments (Matthew 22:40).
Doorway to Love
Oh, but the great commandment is so much more! It opens for us a world of unparalleled and fathomless beauty. For the greatest affection we can ever experience is love (1 Corinthians 13:13), and the greatest love we can ever experience is love for God. And we can only experience this greatest love because the greatest Lover loved us with an infinitely greater love first (John 15:13; 1 John 4:19). From the wellspring of God’s love for us, and our reciprocal love for him, flows the capacity to love everyone else (1 John 4:7; Matthew 22:39).
This greatest of all commandments opens the door to the
heaven of heavens — what Jonathan Edwards described as “a world of love” —
where we experience the fulfillment of our deepest longings: the fullest joy
and pleasures forever (Psalm 16:11). In keeping this commandment there is truly
a great reward (Psalm 19:11).
It is a horrible, wicked, demonic deception if we hear in
this commandment a narcissistic, insecure, tyrannical God who simply insists he
be highest in our affections or to hell with us. I have no doubt this is how
the devil views God. But that is the devil’s own evil heart projected onto God,
and the distorted view he wishes everyone else to believe. For the pure see God
as pure, but the crooked — the devil and all who follow his deception — see God
as tortuous (Psalm 18:26).
Yes, hell exists. But it is not a sadistic cosmic Auschwitz
created by a divine despot. It is the great and just woe reserved for those who
call the greatest good the greatest evil by judging God to be tortuous and
choosing the bondage of sin over “the freedom of the glory of the children of
God” (Isaiah 5:20; Romans 8:21).
No, in commanding us to love him most, God is bidding us to
enter the door of heaven. He is commanding our greatest happiness! He is
commanding that we receive and treasure the most valuable Treasure, that we
experience the deepest satisfaction in the most satisfying Person, that we most
enjoy the most Enjoyable, that we trust most the most Trustworthy. Who in their
right mind wouldn’t want to obey this commandment? It is 200-proof Christian
Hedonism.
Rescued from Insanity
Such is the insanity and tragedy of sin. All of us have
disobeyed this commandment and refused heaven, preferring the empty,
destructive deception of self-determination (Romans 3:23). And therefore, we
could all be sentenced to the great and just woe of being sent away from the
presence of heaven forever (2 Thessalonians 1:9).
But that was not what God wanted. God wanted mercy to
triumph over justice for us (James 2:13). God wanted grace to triumph over
condemnation for us (Ephesians 2:8; Romans 8:1). God wanted his love to triumph
over our hate (Romans 5:8). Therefore, God showed his love for us by sending
“his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” so that we “should not perish but
have eternal life” (1 John 4:10; John 3:16). This is love! This is how much he
loved you.
Without the cross, the greatest commandment would be the
sentence of death to us. All it could produce in us is terrifying condemnation.
For sinners can never love the triune God with all their being. Hell would be
our destiny. But through the cross of Jesus, this commandment becomes pure
gospel to us. For when we receive Christ, his perfect love for his Father is
credited to us!
And that means heaven, that expansive world of love, is now
open to us. We can receive foretastes of it now in increasing measure as we
walk by the Spirit (Romans 8:4). And when the Lord Jesus finally sees us
“safely into his heavenly kingdom,” we will receive the ability to fulfill this
command and experience the full range of its soul-satisfying benefits (2
Timothy 4:18).
God Wants Your Love
It is also pure gospel to us that God’s greatest commandment
does not command our performance, but our affection. Isn’t that wonderful? God
is most concerned that we experience the joy of love, not that we merely jump
through behavioral hoops.
The glorious secret of Christian obedience, that gracious
divine conspiracy, is that the more we experience this joy of being loved by
God and loving him in return, the less his behavioral commandments feel
anything like hoops for us. Rather, they become our joyful means of expressing
our love for God as he mercifully shepherds us through the narrow gate.
That’s why Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my
commandments” (John 14:15). These are not the manipulative words of a
dysfunctional father meant to guilt his children into doing what he wants.
Jesus was revealing a glorious reality: love is the only motivation for our
obedience that God wants. God wants us to obey him out of love, not fear of
condemnation (1 John 4:18). Because he knows that when we love him, his
commands are not burdensome.
Hear God’s Love in His Commands
The devil does not want you to know or believe any of this.
He wants you to hear drudgery and boredom and bondage in God’s commands,
especially the greatest command.
But God wants you to hear his love in his commands,
especially his greatest command. God wants you to hear life in his commands.
God wants you to know that his commands, which Jesus has already kept perfectly
for you, now form the faith-path for your hard trek through this valley of
shadow to the narrow gate that leads to life. And this gate will open to you
the most expansive world of joy you will ever know: heaven, God’s world of
love.
Article by: Jon Bloom
Jon Bloom (@Bloom_Jon) serves as author, board chair, and
co-founder of Desiring God. He is author of three books, Not by Sight, Things
Not Seen, and Don’t Follow Your Heart. He and his wife live in the Twin Cities
with their five children.
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