Love

“And you shall love the LORD your God, and keep His charges”  Deuteronomy 11:1

Love – Ahav is one of three Hebrew verbs about love.  It’s not a “feelings” verb.  It is an obedience verb.  It calls us to action, not necessarily emotion.  That’s why it can be a command.  That’s why it is quite often linked with the commandments.  Loving God with the verb ahav means acting in accordance with His wishes even when you don’t feel like it.

Post-modern culture has reduced “love” to a sympathetic feeling.  To say that I love someone usually means that I have strong emotional attachments that make me feel good.  The introduction of the “irreconcilable differences” clause in divorce law was a capitulation to the power of emotional love.  Today people break relationships because they lose that magical feeling.  The tragedy is that emotionally based love is primarily focused on me, not on the other person.  I judge the success or failure of the relationship on whether or not my needs are met.  That kind of love cannot be subject to a command.

But God commands us to love Him.  It follows that God does not command us to always have a good feeling about this.  God knows (and so do we if we stop long enough to think about it) that emotions follow actions.  So God commands actions.  When we do what He commands, then we discover our emotional connections being changed.

This has an important consequence.  If love is a command to act, then I cannot love God if I am not acting according to His will.  It doesn’t matter what I say or how I “feel”.  Loving God simply means acting on God’s behalf.  This is love that focuses attention on what God wants, not on what I want.  To love God is to live God’s way regardless of my current feelings.  There is no better example of this command than the life of Jesus.  He was obedient to His Father regardless of the consequences and in spite of his emotions.  That is the message in the Garden before the crucifixion.  “Father, I don’t really want this to happen (let this cup pass from me), but if this is what you really want, then I give up my right to myself and place everything in your hands.  I will do what you wish to have done.”

Are you “loving” God with ahav love?