Impossible
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Deuteronomy 6:5 NASB
You shall love – Have you considered the fact that this commandment, the most important commandment in Scripture, is simply impossible? Think about it. How can anyone, even God, demand that you love Him? Isn’t that pure obligation, the exact opposite of love? It’s as if God were to say, “You are required to like drinking sour milk.” He could, of course, require you to drink sour milk, but can He require you to like it? If love is demanded, how can it be love?
Franz Rosenzweig treats this concern in his book, Star of Redemption. His insight is crucial! He writes:
“Yes, of course, love cannot be commanded. No third party can command it or extort it. No third party can, but the One can. The commandment to love can only proceed from the mouth of the lover. Only the lover can and does say: love me!—and he really does so. In his mouth the commandment to love is not a strange commandment; it is none other than the voice of love itself.”[1]
Do you understand? “You shall love the Lord your God” is not an obligation! It is the cry of a lover. “Love me!” isn’t a demand. It is an invitation—and it can only be fulfilled by one who already loves! God doesn’t dictate our love; He pleads for it. Why? Because He already is the lover of our souls! The “impossible” command is, in fact, impossible—if it is an ultimatum. But it is entirely possible—no! It is genuinely desired by us—if it is the voice of one who already loves us.
Consider the implications. I am free not to love Him, but if I don’t, my refusal isn’t a violation of a commandment. It is the devastation of my own blessed existence. It is spurning the One Who is the summum bonum of love itself. If I don’t respond to God’s call, I really can’t truly love at all. I can’t know the connection between the divine and human basis of being. I can’t know the truth of John 3:16 for that verse is not about “saving” us, it’s about loving all that has been created.
Put aside any thought of divine obligation, listen to the call of the Great Lover, and respond.
Topical Index: love, commandment, Deuteronomy 6:5
[1] Franz Rosenzweig Star of Redemption (Syracuse University Press, 1999), p. 176.
For me what makes loving God such a difficult and even abstract concept to grasp is all of the theological wreckage that 66 years have amassed and how monumental a task it is for me to try to get that all out of the way. I even see tinges of said theology in Rosenweig’s comments. I don’t know. I guess that presently doubting Thomas and I may have something in common at some level. Or maybe not.