"I want atheism to be true …. It isn't just that I don't believe in God... It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.” (Thomas Nagel, The Last Word)
Peter said, “Woman, I do not know Him,”…The Lord turned and looked at Peter. Peter remembered the word of the Lord… “Before a rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.” And he left and wept bitterly. (Luke 22:57, 61-62)
It is the week of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is in the temple in Jerusalem teaching. Repeatedly He is challenged by the religious establishment of Israel; repeatedly He answers their challenges and the crowds are “astonished at His teaching” (Matthew 22: 33). A lawyer steps forward and asks a question, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment,” (Matthew 22:36-38).
Since this is mentioned by Jesus as the great and foremost commandment, I believe it deserves a second and even a third look. First, we examined love and why it is essential to our faith in God. Second, God was emphasized and why He is worthy of our love. Here, we will explore why we must be commanded to love God. If loving God is the core of our faith and if God Himself is worthy of our love, then why must we be commanded to love God? Shouldn’t loving God be as natural to us as thirsting for water or as instinctual as closing our eyes before a blinding light?
But loving God is not natural for us. We are predisposes to seek independence from God. Our natures have been corrupted and we seem to be hardwired to rebel against God. Yes, man is capable of great good; he fights disease and injustice and shows kindness to strangers and even altruism to loved ones. Yet man is also capable of great evil: wars, concentration camps, man-induced famine, egotism and pride. Paul writes that we are all “under sin,” as he quotes from the Psalms: “There is none righteous, not even one…there is none who seeks for God”, (Romans 3:9-11).
In Eden, everything “was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Adam and Eve enjoyed a perfect paradise and had perfect fellowship with God. Still, they disobeyed God (Genesis 2:16-17; 3:11-13). The Lord rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt; He drowned Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea, allowing the children of Israel to escape. Even though the Lord provided for Israel in the wilderness, the people quickly began to grumble against the Lord (Exodus 16:2). Before long the children of Israel were ascribing the greatness of the Lord to a man-made golden calf: “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:4). All of heaven must have shuddered at these words!
This pattern can be traced throughout the Old Testament and all the way through the New Testament. The church at Ephesus was the model church for all of Christendom at the close of the first century (Revelation 2:2-3). They toiled, persevered, and did not grow weary. They did not tolerate evil men and they put to the test those who call themselves apostles. Yet the church in Ephesus was told, “You have left your first love” (Revelation 2:4); they had to be commanded again to love God. Even today many successful churches need to hear: “you have left your first love.”
I was witnessing on a campus here in Budapest when I had a conversation with a healthy, middle-aged woman. She spoke of the peace she had as she contemplated her own death. Yet as I brought up Jesus, she quickly became agitated and moved on. The human heart is inclined to anything or anyone…except Jesus.
Robert Robinson knew this tendency of the human heart when wrote the great hymn, Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing: “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love; Here’s my heart, O take and seal it, Seal it for Thy courts above.” To love God must be commanded because of the frailness and wickedness of our human hearts.
Still, in spite of the rebellion of the human heart, God draws us to Himself. “BUT GOD (two of the most beautiful words in the whole Bible) being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved,” (Ephesians 2:4-5).
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