Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, the lawyer answered Jesus when Jesus challenged him concerning what must be done to inherit eternal life. I assume the lawyer soon enough found out that he hadn’t it in him to love like this. Since there is only One who is love in this universe the reality is that no human can love like this. It is beyond our capacities. God only requires himself so we can only love God with His own love. But, a most crucial question is how is this love expressed in our relation to God? Is it a matter of emotions? Is it related to how much we do for God? Has it something to do with obedience? Or is it expressed in faith?
In what ways did Jesus express His love towards His Father? It is true that they often spent time together, but not that often. Jesus spent most of His time with friends and His disciples. He was even accused of being a glutton and drunkard. The question thus still remains unanswered. How did Jesus love His Father? We are so accustomed to gauge, think and assess in terms of outer realities and appearances that we assume to love God is something outer, for instance, like good works.
If that is the case we have fallen for one of the enemy’s tricks, because love is something inner. It is simply saying yes to God and trust His reality when He opens up our awareness to things far beyond the scope of our natural minds and which shake the foundations of which our reason is secured. It is to dare to jump into the river and get soaked in whatever the Spirit shows us concerning our identity in Christ. To love God is to dare entering the reality in which He moves lives and has His being, that is, total freedom to be being accountable to no one save our personal inner reality. This is what Kierkegaard called existentialism. It was Eckhart who said that when the Father begets the Son, He gives Him all His nature and essence! We are that son in our unique expressions of Him. If we are still caught up in a sin-consciousness, questions about the law and things that pertain to our temporal earthly abode we haven’t yet dared penetrate the infinite abyss in which God dwells and by that expressed our love and trust in Him.
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