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Both Moses and Yeshua taught that the "great commandment" of Torah (הַמִּצְוָה הַגְּדוֹלָה בַּתּוֹרָה), that is, the imperative which is of utmost spiritual importance, is to love God with all of our being. Nothing is more important, and nothing better expresses the essential duty of our lives. And as I hope you will see, this great commandment is fundamentally an appeal to awaken to beauty, mystery, holiness, and peace. It's an invitation to be radically made whole, set free from fear and despair. It's the call to receive healing of your alienation and to know a real sense of belonging. This is the great commandment: to open your heart to receive God's love and to learn to love...
Just as God is the Source of all love, so loving God is the goal or end of our existence; it is our raison d'etre, our very reason for being. It is the answer to the haunting existential question of why we exist. No matter who you are or what you have done, the greatest thing about you is that you are loved by God, and that your central need is to receive God's love and to live it out in your life.
Love is inherently relational. It is not self-reflexive but giving and expansive. It seeks the beloved; it hungers and thirsts for connection. As the foundation of reality, our relationship with God teaches us who we really are, namely, sacred beings made in the divine image but who, despite being created to enjoy intimate fellowship with God, have turned away and fallen into spiritual blindness and insanity. The ideal has been lost to the real. Human life has become a tragedy, a nightmare, a prison of suffering and vanity.
This is the problem of the "human condition." We need deliverance from the darkness of sin, from the nightmare of our alienation from God. We must find the way out of our spiritually lost condition lest we succumb to utter despair and perish in shame. We need a new sort of life to overcome the "spiritual death" that enslaves us. To be healed we must be "reborn" by God's spirit and made into a "new creation." This is the only way to be saved from ourselves and our own insanity. We need a miracle, and this miracle is found in Yeshua, the only true Savior and Healer of the world...
As we come to believe the promise of who we really are, and as we answer and turn to God's love, our spiritual eyes will be opened and we will begin to understand God's will. We will regard both ourselves and other people as significant, valuable, and worthy of our respect. Indeed we will cherish and honor all of creation since it is God's expression and personal handiwork. As image bearers of God, we will become emissaries of his blessing, and we will discover that all of his commandments of Torah are "for life" (Lev. 18:5), which means they were given to promote love, healing, and shalom.
In Jewish tradition the great commandment is called the "Shema," meaning to listen, from the first word of Deuteronomy 6:4, "Hear (שְׁמַע), O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD alone." The opening passage continues to the next verse, called "Ve'ahvata," which reads: "and you shall love (וְאָהַבְתָּ) the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength," which expresses the fundamental duty to love God above everything else in our lives. Yeshua affirmed the great commandment when he said: "The first of all the commandments is, 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, 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.' Αὕτη πρώτη ἐντολή- This is the first commandment" (Mark 12:29-30).
Loving God is therefore the central issue of life, and the conduit of love is the heart. As Khalil Gibran put it, "He came to make the human heart a Temple, the soul an Altar, and the mind a priest." It is amazingly wonderful that the love of God is the core meaning of our existence, and yet love is not static but seeks the beloved, and therefore we are called to love God in return, and this is best expressed when we love our "neighbor" as ourselves. That is the second great commandment, namely, to love others as we love ourselves (Lev. 19:18, Mark 12:31, Gal. 5:14). Note here that loving others as we love ourselves logically implies that we love ourselves, which means that we confess God's love for us is real. We love others "as" we love ourselves, and we love ourselves "as" we accept God's love for us, so again love is relational, reciprocal, and a matter of profound communion.
But what does it mean to love God "be'khol levavkha," with all your being? For that matter, what does the word "love" really mean? In English the word "love" comes from the Hebrew word lev (לֵב), meaning heart, but the Hebrew word for love is "ahavah" (אהבה), which can be broken down to the letter Alef (א), a preformative meaning "I will," plus the root "hav" (הב) meaning "to give," which when put together indicates that love is a matter of a willingness to give. Love is therefore a spirit of generosity, of grace, and of compassion, the greatest example of which is the giving of God in the sacrificial life of his son Yeshua. "God is love" is expressed in the crucifixion of himself to save us from ourselves by giving to us forgiveness, healing, and the blessing of eternal life.
Notice that the commandment to love God, the Shema, is set in the context of Moses' appeal to Israel to keep "the commandments" of God, and therefore it serves as a "meta-commandment" to keep God's other commandments. Love is therefore the ground or foundation for the commandments, as the apostle John affirmed: "For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome," and as Yeshua repeatedly taught his disciples: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" (1 John 5:3, John 14:15). Doing God's will by keeping his commandments, then, expresses your love for God. If you do not care to keep God's commandments, then you reveal that your love for God is not genuine or sincere... Loving God is the response to God's blessing, while indifference leads to exile. The Shema, then, can be understood as an appeal to care, to keep faith, and to encounter God's love.
The Ve'ahavta ("you shall love") does not appeal to merely outward forms of obedience, of course, but to the inmost depths: with all your heart (בְּכָל־לְבָבְךָ), and with all your soul (וּבְכָל־נַפְשְׁךָ) and with all your strength (וּבְכָל־מְאֹדֶךָ). The traditional sages interpret your "heart" (לב) to refer to wisdom, and therefore to your mind, the "soul" (נפש) to refer your life energy - even if you should give up your life for his sake - and your "strength" or your "might" (מאד) to refer to your material possessions and money.
Regarding the heart, or the duty to attain wisdom, the Shema says that we should diligently repeat these matters to our children (וְשִׁנַּנְתָּם לְבָנֶיךָ), talking to them as we sit in our homes (בְּשִׁבְתְּךָ בְּבֵיתֶךָ), as we walk along the way (וּבְלֶכְתְּךָ בַדֶּרֶךְ), and whenever we lie down to sleep (וּבְשָׁכְבְּךָ) and whenever we rise up (וּבְקוּמֶךָ). In other words, the love of God should move us to regard him in every circumstance of our lives. Our father Abraham "got many souls" by persuading others of the truth and their duty to know God (Gen. 12:5).
So loving God is the point of life, the very reason for our existence, and the essence of what makes life worth living. But what does it mean to love God, and how is it possible to even do so? These seem to be vital questions as we consider further the duties of the heart...
Loving God is connected to worship, that is, ascribing worth to God by valuing him as the highest good and our ultimate blessing. In Hebrew worship is expressed using the root word shachah (שָׁחָה), meaning to bow down in homage, usually in hitapa'el (reflexive) form suggesting an inner state of humility and reverence. The impulse behind worship is gratitude for the blessing of life combined with a sense of awe - an awareness of the overwhleming beauty of the LORD and the glory of his holiness...
To love God certainly implies that we are grateful for the gift of our lives and that we care enough to listen to him and respond to his heart (i.e., his will). As the psalmist prayed: "With all my heart I seek you. O let me not wander from your commandments" (Psalm 119:10). It is absurd to think someone can love God and be indifferent to what God wants. People may "draw near to God with their lips" but their hearts may be removed from him (Isa. 29:13). Yeshua asks, "Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not the things I say?" (Luke 6:46). If you truly love the Lord, wouldn't you want to do what he asks of you?
There is an emotional aspect of love that is essential. When you earnestly love someone they will mean everything to you. You will irresistably be drawn to them, and they will always be on your mind. You will miss them and want to spend time alone with them. Your heart will be stirred at the very thought of them, and you will be overjoyed when you finally are able to be together. In the time of your communion with the beloved there is a deep sense of appreciation, connection, acceptance, and understanding.
Kierkegaard wonders what sort of a lover would he be who had no great desire to be with his beloved and take care of her. He considers it a mockery of love to give to her sustenance yet to have no affection in his heart. Psalm 91:14 reads, "Because he has set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he has known my name." The heart that passionately desires God knows God's Name.
A nagging question may be raised about whether such love can be commanded. After all, can feelings be commanded? In response it may be asked whether love is a feeling or something more? As we have seen the "command" to love is an invitation to "taste and see" that the LORD is good, and moreover that the invitation to believe is not about good feelings as much as it is about reality. It is the invitation to come alive to mystery, beauty, and truth. It's to be radically made whole, set free from fear and despair. But fundamentally love is a decision, an act of the will driven by conviction of the truth, and such a decision will lead to feelings of gratitude, loyalty, delight, wonder, desire, and so on. The same may be said regarding the commandment to fear God (Deut. 6:13). This sort of fear is not about the fear of punishment but rather appreciating the "awful goodness" and majesty of God. The fear of the LORD (יִרְאַת יהוה) is love's "fear and trembling" as it encounters the glorious beauty, the incomprehensible greatness, and overwhelming wonder of God.
Love and fear, then, are two sides of the same thing, as it says in Deuteronomy 10:12-13, "And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you, but to fear (לִירָא) the LORD your God, to live (לָלֶכֶת) in all His ways, and to love Him (לְאהב אֹתוֹ), and to worship (לעבודה) the LORD your God with all your heart (בְּכָל־לְבָבְךָ) and with all your soul (בְּכָל־נַפְשֶׁךָ) -- to keep (לִשְׁמֹר) the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good (לְטוֹב לָךְ)?"
In this connection Maimonides (following Aristotle) said that you can command actions that will eventually create such feelings, and therefore habits can be transformed into virtues of the heart. As you do the commandments you will authenticate their validity and thereby realize affections that are associated with them... This is especially true of the foundational commandment of all the Scriptures, namely to believe in the Lord (Exod. 20:2), and to do his will. The rabbis of Yeshua's day once tested him by asking, "What must we do, to be doing the works of God?" and Yeshua answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in the one whom God has sent" (John 6:28-29). The commandment to repent and believe in God's redemptive love given in Yeshua the Messiah, then, is the starting point of knowing the love of God, and the Holy Spirit (רוח הקודש) authenticates the truth through an "inner witness" that reveals the divine presence within our hearts (Rom. 5:5). This is sometimes called argumentum spiritus sancti, or the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Teshuvah (repentance) comes first so that we know God's tender mercies and forgiveness in relation to his sacrificial love (John 3:16).
The fear of God is about his glory, transcendence, and utter sanctity, whereas the love of God is about God's compassion, immanence, and healing for our lives, and both are fully revealed in the passion of Yeshua as the Lamb of God. The fear of God, however, is basic, since without first understanding God's greatness as our Creator and the Lawgiver who insists that we regard ourselves and others as sacred, we will not appreciate the nature of his forgiveness and compassion given in Messiah.
It is written in our Scriptures: "My people are destroyed for the lack of knowledge" (Hos. 4:6). Maimonides comments "One only loves God with the knowledge with which one knows him. As the knowledge, so will be the love" (Mishneh Torah). To know God truly is to love him. This is the "mode" of knowing God. As it is written: "For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light" (Psalm 36:9). The knowledge of truth of God sets us free, as Yeshua taught, because the truth is the message of the gospel itself (John 8:32; 2 Cor. 4:6). It is the love of the truth that leads to salvation (2 Thess. 2:10).
Knowledge and love derive from the same source, as when it was said that Adam "knew" Eve his wife (וְהָאָדָם יָדַע אֶת־חַוָּה) and she conceived (Gen. 4:1). You cannot know anything without first caring about truth. Indeed every science presupposes that it is better to know than not to know, and therefore epistemic value is assumed... The ancient pagan philosophers understood this. For instance Plato said that knowledge could not take root in an alien nature, and to understand something a person must live with it and develop an affinity with it (Republic). He later spoke of transformation that comes through intimate knowledge. By studying eternal verities such as mathematics, a person will gradually lose interest in ephemeral things and focus on the eternal "forms" of what is ultimately real. Kierkegaard famously said that "truth is subjectivity," by which he did not mean to suggest that "truth is subjective" and therefore relative, but rather that how something is known can disclose what it is. This is particularly the case regarding knowing God or falling in love, which are inaccessible without personal passion. It also applies to self-knowledge. As Dostoevsky wrote, "Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love." As Chesterton said: "You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it."
I have mentioned before that the Ve'ahavta ("thou shalt love") can be understood not only as a prescription but as a prophecy: "You shall love the LORD" is your ultimate destiny, even if at present you are battling through ambivalence and uncertainty. Love is the end (τέλος) of your existence, your place within God's heart, and heaven itself. Others have said, however, that the Ve'ahavta is a revelation of God, a disclosure of his heart. In that sense God makes himself vulnerable by asking us to respond to him... "Behold I stand at the door and knock..." (Rev. 3:20). This is because God is not some philosophical abstraction like Aristotle's Unmoved Mover, or an object of theological contemplation, but is first and foremost a Person who desires and seeks our love. That God speaks to us and "empties himself" so that we can understand him is the revelation of his love. He is the Word of God who invites us to love him because it is the invitation that opens the very possibility and awakens the soul to love at all. As it says: "We love him because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). God's imperative (or plea) to love him is heard when we receive the inestimable blessing that we are his beloved. We only can know ourselves as loved by means of his love, and through this "first love" we are able to love others (Lev. 16:18; Matt. 22:39).
The declaration that "God is love" (ὁ θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν) is the underlying and overarching reason for all the commandments and imperatives of Scripture. The commandments are opportunities for our connection with God. As we fulfill them we become "partners with God" in healing the world. Instead of thinking we "ought" to keep the commandments lest we be punished, it is better to think that by doing the commandments we come to know God's heart in all that we do. The imperative language is used to remind us of the profound significance of our actions...
God's love overcomes the powers of sin, hell, and death. It is the gate of our healing opened at the cross of Messiah. The regenerated soul, redeemed and known to be loved by God, triumphs over the dust of death. This is experienced as a form of resurrection, a shocking adventure like Moses' encounter at the burning bush or Paul's blinding vision of the risen Messiah on the road to Damascus. "You must be born again" said Yeshua. You must experience an entirely new realm of existence as a child with whom God is well-pleased.
It is by grace your heart hears the Shema, that is, God's invitation to know his love. By studying the Scriptures you encounter various characterizations of God, for example, as your Creator, as the Healer of your fears, as the Deliverer who rescues you from the darkness of the curse; as the Good Shepherd who seeks for your soul; as the Lamb of God who exchanges his life for your own; as the Faithful Redeemer who delivers you from slavery and exile; as the Atonement of God who restores you and cleanses you from sin, but most especially in the revelation of his heart in Yeshua, who substantiates and embodies God's Presence and knows the language of your pain, and who promises eternal life to all who put their hope in him. The Holy Spirit comforts you with the inner witness of God's truth; you have received the "Spirit of adoption" by whom you cry out, "Abba, Father," sacred names of intimacy and closeness...
The revelation of God's love is also built upon the testimony and experiences of God's people over the millennia, though it is not always obvious what the love of God will look like in the lives of those who trust in him. For example Job proved his love for God in the ash heap of painful despair yet later found consolation and blessing, while King David extolled the goodness of God for overcoming his enemies. The same may be said of Moses' intercession to die in place of his people (Exod. 32:30-32), which foreshadowed Yeshua's death on the cross for the sake of God's redeeming love.
So the commandment to love God reveals the means for the heart to know his love. It is a circle that begins and ends in God's grace and compassion for us all. The answer may be expressed in different ways for different people, but it is not likely expressed in religious dogmatism that regards God's truth in "geometric" or axiomatic terms, nor is it a recipe or set of rituals that defines an authentic spiritual life. It is not found in an esoteric sacramental system but in a heart response that is alive to God's passion and that shares in that passion. It is more like a love poem than a catechism; it is an affair of the heart more than a system of theology. It is known and experienced in an "I-Thou" relationship with the Living God, the Ascended One (אֵל עֶלְיוֹן) who overcame every obstacle to bring us back to life and into the open arms of our God.
We must be careful, however, not to regard God in our own image and likeness. While God's love is his essence and he offers us deliverance from ourselves and newness of life, it is on his terms, not our own. We cannot say, "love us, forgive us, take away our suffering, give us happiness and joy, deliver us from all our fears," and so on, apart from knowing and honoring God as God. This is where the transcendence of God comes in and acts as a "boundary" in our relationship with God. Regarding the Lord as your "buddy" risks over familiarization and even thinking that he is your servant rather than the other way around! How can we stand in awe of God if we regard him as a "genie" invoked to do our bidding or our own "personal Jesus"? God cannot become a conceit of the soul that makes itself the center of the universe!
And yet God does indeed "empty himself" to partake of our frailty and to save us in the depths of our being; the Lord does reach into our lives and "serve" us. He made himself a man of sorrows (אִישׁ מַכְאֹבוֹת) acquainted with our grief. Yeshua is our Suffering Servant (הַמְּשָׁרֵת הַסּוֹבֵל) who gave up his life in exchange for our need: "God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him (2 Cor. 5:21). He heals us in the intimacy of our suffering; he comforts us and encourages us to walk with him, he asks us to trust in him, and to "open the door" so that he may enter. It is paradoxical, to be sure, the Fire of God that envelops us in his passion...
There is a paradoxical balance between love and fear. God is a person - the lover of your soul - yet you are a "klume," or a speck of dust in the vastness of the universe. The sages say each of us holds two notes in our hand. One reads "For me the world was created," and the other reads "I am but dust and ashes." Two notes, equally important.
At times God may feel very close to us, "a friend who sticks closer than a brother" (Prov. 18:24), while at other times God may feel "high and lifted up," and we shrink back before his great glory, and yet both these times are present and one. The Lord is both the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Word made flesh who dwelt among us, the baby who upheld the universe while feeding upon his mother's breast, and the Infinite One who alone dwells in immortality and blinding light, whom no one has seen — yet he has indeed been seen! (1 Tim. 6:16; 1 John 1:1-4). The Lord is glorious beyond all description - the "glory of his train" fills heaven and earth - yet he considers the lilies of the field, he tends to the birds, and he counts the number of hairs on each of our heads. His greatness extends to the highest heights yet equally to the lowest lows. "For this is what the high and lifted up One says, the One who abides forever, whose name is Holy: 'I dwell in a high and holy place, but also with the broken and lowly of spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the crushed'" (Isa. 57:15).
Of course much more could be said on the topic of God's love, and what I've shared here barely scratches the surface, but I hope that at least some of what I have said here might provoke you to consider these matters for yourself. One thing, however, impresses me as all-important, and that is the realization that the one thing absolutely necessary for us, namely God's unconditional love, is the one thing God says is what is necessary, after all. Our heart's deepest need is met in God's deepest passion. Amen.
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