Honest Reflection: Do You Love God?
What the writer of the Heidelberg Catechism says about what it means to truly love God
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 first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Matthew 22:37-38
What does it mean to love the Lord your God?
In his commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism (the catechism which he wrote), Zacharias Ursinus explains what it means to love God:
“To love God with the whole heart, is, upon a due acknowledgment of His infinite goodness, reverently to regard and esteem Him as our highest good, to love Him supremely, to rejoice and trust in Him alone, and to prefer His glory to all other things, so that there may not be in us the least thought, inclination, or desire for anything that might be displeasing to Him. Rather, to be willing to suffer loss of all things that may be dear to us, or to endure the heaviest calamity, than that we should be separated from communion with Him, or offend Him in the smallest matter, and lastly, to direct all this to the end that He alone may be glorified by us.”
Let’s break down this definition.
Due acknowledgment of His infinite goodness.
A “due acknowledgement” means to give proper credit to where credit is due. It means to recognize something for what it really is. A due acknowledgment of God means that we see Him as He is rather than who we wish Him to be (Rom. 1:21-23). In particular, we are to acknowledge His infinite goodness. Ursinus is saying that unless we see God as the chief and infinite good then we are not rightly acknowledging His true greatness and goodness. To love God means to see Him as the Supreme Good. As Anselm once said, “God is that which nothing greater can be conceived.” This also means that we are not loving others well if we fail to promote this wholeheartedly in their lives.
Reverently regard and esteem Him as our highest good.
To love God means to take Him most seriously. It means that our joyful reverence of Him is not trivial or silly. Even amidst the greatest joys and pleasures, God is to be feared with a godly fear (Pr. 1:7). To love God as God deserves means that nothing and no one gets the same “fear” that God gets. He is the One who makes us rejoice the most. He is the One who grabs our heart’s greatest affection.
To love Him supremely.
Every thought, intention, affection, and action should pulsate with the most holy desires for God. Because God is Love (1 John 4:8), He should have love returned to Him. This means that we should have no idols in our lives. Nothing and no one (including ourselves) should have a greater love in our hearts than God. I say this for the purpose of conviction to myself and others: As football season approaches, does our favorite team get more love from us than God? Does tailgating, studying facts, preparation for the games, and discussion of the players get more attention and focus than our great God?
To rejoice and trust in Him alone.
This would mean that corporate and private worship would be the most thrilling time of our week. This would mean that when times of trial and uncertainty arise that our faith never waivers from God’s promises in His Word. This means that we would never put our trust in other theories, ideologies, or anything else more than in God’s Word (Ps. 115; 119:77). This means that we would be like the deer who pants for water as we pant to be in the presence of God (Ps. 42:1). This means that even with our jobs, families, and other responsibilities (far from forsaking these!) we would still pursue the Lord and knowledge of His Word above all other pursuits.
To prefer His glory to all other things.
To put it simply: That God would truly be God in all our thoughts, words, and deeds. That God would be God in all realms of our lives: Physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, intellectually, vocationally. To love God means that we would have no rivals to God—and not merely to have no rivals but to love Him in such a way that it would be of the upmost silliness to even mention the possibility of a rival to Him in our affections.
That there may not be in us the least thought, inclination, or desire for anything that might be displeasing to Him.
As high as God is above the heavens, so much would He occupy our thoughts that nothing would compare to Him. And it doesn’t merely mean to think about God most of all—it means to also allow zero impure or profane thoughts into our minds. It means to utterly repudiate anything unholy in our affections. One reflection is this: Is there any amount of shame in our hearts for people to know that we are Christians, church members, committed servants, or even officers in the Bride of Christ? Is there anything in us that shrinks from claiming the gospel of grace when we’re around any group of people (especially our neighbors and coworkers)? Were we to love God the way He deserves to be loved, none of these desires would resonate in our hearts.
To be willing to suffer loss of all things that may be dear to us.
This means that our love for God would be so great that (were it to come to it because of the effects of sin or death) we would gladly suffer the loss of our careers, tenure, awards, records, reputation, riches, homes, friendships, businesses, retirement plans, athleticism, intellect, respect, speaking engagements, pulpits, and even our families (Lk. 14:33). Would we love God so much that even with the extreme pain of these losses would we be content with having Him?
To endure the heaviest calamity.
Loving God the way He deserves to be loved means that we would die for Him and His Kingdom. It also means we would live for Him and His Kingdom. Often this means that we suffer smaller “deaths” as we live to God. Because God would be the highest in our affections, we would gladly endure extreme trials as long as we had Him. Were it to come to it, we would welcome shame from our peers, disrepute amongst our colleagues, the stripping away of accolades, disrespect from our clients, the defunding of certain research opportunities, demotion or even firing from our jobs for embracing Christian ethics, rejection by others when we tell them about the gospel, chronic physical pain, loss of opportunities that we worked so hard for, and even intense persecution. We would not merely die for God but we would live for Him by dying daily.
Than that we should be separated from communion with Him.
The greatest pain for those who love God most is even the hypothetical idea that we could lose communion with Him. We would not let any type of persecution keep us from gathering on the Lord’s Day (Heb. 10:25). We would not let sleep or work keep us from His Word and Prayer. We would not let social pressures keep us from embracing a godly lifestyle. We would rather be thrown to a den of lions than cease to pray (Dan. 6) or thrown into a fiery furnace than to reject our King (Dan. 3).
Or offend Him in the smallest matter.
The greatest pain of our hearts would not be our sufferings but our sins. And this would mean that it is not the sins of others that would disturb us most but our sins would disturb us most. We would weep at the thought that we are so wicked that Christ Himself had to die for us to save us. We would cringe at the remaining corruption within. We would despise the sinful desires of our hearts. We would do anything to avoid even the possibility of offending our God in any area of life.
To direct all this to the end that He alone may be glorified by us.
Every decision, blog, song, parenting tactic, gas station top, business opened, employees interacted with, ethical dilemma, evangelism opportunity, meal with friends, writing project, lecture given, class taken, internship employed in, dating relationship, or whatever else—all of it would be completely and solely for the glory of God and love of Him.
The Temptation: Water This Down!
This was really hard to read for the first time and harder to write on. It makes me feel like my conscience melts before the justice and holiness of God. It shames me to see my greater loves for things other than God (especially my love for myself). It even moves me to think about my friends: “Give them a break! This is way too much.”
We might be tempted to say it’s legalistic. But, it’s only legalistic if it changes the standard of God’s Law.
The reaction we can have (that I had when I was writing) is to say, “Who can even do this? This can’t be realistic.” Jesus did it.
Think about this again: Jesus did this!
Matter of fact, I wasn’t merely thinking about how this affects all the different types of people in our congregation. I was also thinking about how this shows the love that Christ has for the Father. You can go back through that list and read it again to see what I mean.
Just because it is unattainable for us sinners doesn’t mean that God lowers His standard. He cannot lower His standards because His standards are Himself! He cannot change (Mal. 3:6).
The stern reality is that this is what it means to love God. And all of us fall short of His glory (Rom. 3:23). The wages of this is death (Rom. 6:23) — eternal death in every realm of life. This is a serious infraction! There is no response of God that will sound like:
You gave it your best shot.
I’m glad to see your effort.
As long as you had some desire to do it.
He requires perfection because He is perfection. This is His Law. The tragedy and misery is that not only are we guilty but also that we cannot attain to this on our own.
We are thinking totally wrong about this if we only think that this isn’t fair or that it’s unrealistic. The greater reality is that it is tragic that we can’t and won’t love God this way. To love God this way is not only what God deserves but it is what we were made for (Gen. 1-2). It is only part of our curse that we don’t love God this way.
The Solution: Fix Your Faith On Christ
I hope we can see our desperation for Christ. We will only be in a right relationship with God if we have Christ’s record of loving God transferred to us. We need Jesus’ perfect righteousness and active obedience. Nothing else will do!
Think about the beauty of this righteousness! Think of the pure and holy delight that the Father has in us because of this righteousness! There has never been anything remotely close to this beautiful in all creation. Horatius Bonar once said that there has only been one thing that humanity has ever offered to God that was perfect—this righteousness of Christ.
Dear Christian, do you think about yourself this way? Do you remember whose robes of righteousness you wear (Is. 61)? Do you have any idea the smile of God that is upon you (Num. 6)? Do you have any conception of the eternal and infinite pleasure that God has in you because you have Christ’s righteousness (Zeph. 3)?
Jesus gets at something of the magnitude of this love in John 17. In the second portion of 17:26, Jesus prays, “That the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” Notice this: The same love (infinite, holy, eternal) that the Father loved the Son with is the love with which He loves us!
At our most sane moment, we would acknowledge that we see so little of God’s love in our best moments that it is as if we picked up one grain of sand and said, “Compared to all the grains of sand in the galaxy, this is how much of God’s love we know.”
This love of the Father for you is the reason why He sent His Son to give us a perfect righteousness.
And praise be to God that by the power of the Holy Spirit and the will of the Father—we have Jesus! It is by our union with Christ that we receive His righteousness (Rom. 3:21-31) as our status and we receive His power to live a righteous life (John 15). This union with Christ means that slowly and surely we will grow to love God more and more!
The great hope we have is that on the Last Day we will be utterly transformed and glorified at the sight of His glory (1 Jn. 3:2). Until then, we continue to look to Him by faith (2 Cor. 3:18). But, it is true that on that Last Day, at our glorification, we will be perfected. We will be able to love God in this way for all eternity! And this will be considered a part of the eternal and infinite blessedness of heaven.
Jonathan Edwards once said that heaven will be a world of love. It will be a world of love of God for us, our love for God, and our overflowing love for others. Perfectly. Eternally.