The Call of the Christian

Part One – Love God

By Michael K. Farrar, O.D.

© God’s Breath Publications

 

When we are saved from our sins and become a follower of Christ we need to understand that in our service to our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, our Heavenly Father wants us to follow our calling. Our calling will be fulfilled as the Holy Spirit, who is given to us as a gift to reside within us at conversion, empowers us accomplish this calling.

 

Some would say our calling as followers of Christ is to impact society through political and social means by voting, obeying the laws of the land and providing assistance for those in need. While these are activities that responsible Believers should participate in, they are not the main calling that is upon our lives. Others feel that our calling is to attend church, learn about the Bible and worship God every Sunday. While this is also a good practice for the Christian, it is not our main calling. Still others would say that our focus should be that we pray for and practice, signs and wonders, including experiencing encounters with His Spirit. While these can be beneficial at times in the life of a Christian they are not the calling of the Christian. The desire for signs and wonders, as well as spiritual experiences, without the proper basis and wisdom of God’s Word can actually become a distraction or hindrance to the true calling of a Believer.

 

I believe the call in the life of the follower of Christ is threefold or triune. One part of our calling as a Christian is found in Matthew 22 in verses 36-40. In this passage Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is:

 

“’Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.’” Matthew goes on to state another aspect of this calling to love God when he writes, “’And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’” Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 6:4-6 and Leviticus 19:18 and thus demonstrates His respect for the entirety of God’s Word. He sought to fulfill the Old Testament Law, not do away with it.

 

The magnitude of this love in this commandment is great because it is not only directed towards God, but also others. The Greek word used for love in this passage is “agape.” This is a deep, self-sacrificial love whereby you love seeking nothing for yourself. Your focus and attention is on the person receiving the love. Your passion and dedication is to serve them with your whole heart, mind and soul. This is the love we are to have for God as a follower of Christ because this is the type of love God has for us. It is also the love Jesus demonstrated when He died for us and the type of love the Holy Spirit empowers us to have for God and others once we have accepted Jesus as our Lord and Master. This calling to love God and others is repeated in two other gospels. In Luke 10:25-27 as well as Mark 12:28-31. It is interesting that in Mark, in addition to heart, mind and soul is added the word strength, with which we love God.

 

Loving God would seem to be a natural response that would come from the experience of receiving forgiveness for all your sins, past, present and future. But often our past experiences and inadequate knowledge of God hinders our ability to know how to love in this “agape” fashion. It is a love we never knew before, a love we never gave before, a love we were never equipped to have before. Burdened by a sin nature, a slave to the sinful flesh within us and our sins of the past, this love is a stranger to us until we are saved. Once the love of God is both experienced and realized when we receive salvation, the training and instruction begins in this calling. The Holy Spirit begins to prompt us in how to respond to our loving Savior, our Heavenly Father and to the Holy Spirit Himself. He begins to reveal the meaning of scripture which tutors us in this calling. The Holy Bible contains numerous examples of how to love in an “agape” fashion. It teaches us in what it means to love in this manner and how the Holy Spirit can empower us to truly love in the way that God loves us.

 

The training ground for loving God is in the obedience of God’s commands in His Word and this is also the proving ground of our love for Him as well. John the apostle speaks to this truth in 1 John 5:3 where it states:

 

1 John 5:1-3

“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome,”

 

While many people might think obeying commands, even God’s commands, might be burdensome and a hardship, they are not if you truly love the Lord. When you are walking in step with the Spirit of God and loving God with all your heart, mind and soul, the commands and laws of God are a pleasure to live by and it brings you joy to live both in the security and the blessing of His guidelines.

 

In Matthew 22:36-40 we have a description of how we love God. First we love Him with our whole heart. The word for heart here in the original language stands for the core of a person’s identity. It is the inner self that thinks, feels, and decides. In the Bible the word heart has a much broader meaning than it does to the modern mind. The heart is that which is central to man. While we think today of the heart as the seat of our emotions, the Hebrew thought of it as the thoughts of the mind and a person’s will. Proverbs 4:23 tells us to, “Guard your heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life.” Everything comes out of our heart. The heart reflects the feelings of the mind, the thoughts of the intellect which produce the thoughts we think, the words we say as well as the actions we carry out in life. Proverbs 23:7 also reveals that what we think in our heart reveals who we really are. So we are called to love God with the deepest part of our heart, which are the thoughts and feelings that reside within us.

 

Next we are told to love God with all our soul. The soul relates to our emotion of thought, that which motivates and directs our action. It indicates not only the entire inner nature of man, but also his entire personality. Matthew 26:38 says, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful.” So the soul has emotion but drives actions and thoughts. To love God with all your soul means we are to love Him with all of who we are as a person, our entire being and personality. This means whether we are quiet and reserved, outgoing and gregarious, or intellectual and a thinker we are to love God with all of who we are and how He made us. What a joy it is for God to be loved by each person with their unique soul or personality. What variety He must experience as love is given to Him by extroverts and extroverts who have natural and spiritual gifts that He has given them to express towards Him and others.

 

Next we are instructed to love God with our entire mind. Mind refers to the thinking capacity within us. What we think is very important to God, especially in how we love Him. He wants our thoughts to be focused on loving Him. This is why it is important that we study His Word so that it can be buried deep within our mind and thought life. It has often been said that most spiritual battles are focused on what we think in our mind. Our mind makes decisions for how we act. It can have a mighty influence over our heart and soul and can turn us from sin and disobedience if we listen to godly guidance that is based on godly thoughts. The mind is a very important part of a balanced Christian life. While emotions and feelings in our heart and soul are important for the spice of life, if we let them rule our lives without the balance of the mind we can run down all sorts of paths of imbalance and distractions. The Corinthian church is a good example of possessing all the spiritual gifts, but their emotions got the best of them and there was great imbalance in the church because of it. Paul wrote not only two letters to the Corinthians but possibly four. These were not just for encouragement, but also for strict accountability because the Christians at Corinth had gotten out of control with their emotional passions, stressing experience over careful godly thinking with a mind focused on God’s Holy Word. As you can see from what has been said before there is a blending of the heart, soul and mind when you attempt to define these aspects or parts of who a person is.

 

We have another reference related to the passage in Matthew that lists one additional way we can love God. In Mark 12:30 we are told to also love God with “all our strength.” This refers to the degree with which we commit ourselves to love God. We are to put the full force and power of who we are in our heart, mind and soul behind the love we give to our God. We don’t hold anything back. We don’t hesitate to put our entire being into our passionate love for God.

 

There is another crucial aspect of loving God that is required as proof that we really love Him as we should. Matthew tells us that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves. You can’t say you love God and ignore those around you or harbor hate for them. The minute you are angry towards someone, your love for God has begun to erode. 1 John 4:19-21 verifies this when it says, “We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”

 

In Galatians we are given a list of the fruits of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is given to us when we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord our Savior and dedicate our life to loving God in all we do. When we receive this special gift of the Holy Spirit in our lives He begins the process of not only training us in holiness and encouraging us in living the Christian life, He also manifests characteristics of who He is because He is God living in us. The fruits of the spirit are fruits that will be revealed in our lives as we keep in step with the Holy Spirit in our walk with God. If you notice the order of these fruits, the first is love.

 

Galatians 5:22-25 states, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.” Love is the foundation from which all the other fruits can be manifested. If we have love for God and others we will have joy in our heart and peace in our mind. Love for God and others will manifest in our actions of kindness and goodness expressed toward them. Loving God and others will be fostered by our faithfulness and self-control. The fruit of gentleness will be a result of our love for God and others because the “agape” selfless love of God will permeate our heart, mind and soul.

 

John Stott who dedicated his entire life to serving the Lord as theologian, pastor and Christian author stated, “Love is greater than knowledge. Love is greater than faith. Love is greater than religious experience. Love is greater than service.”

 

1 Corinthians 13:13

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

 

1 John 4:7-8

“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”