Jesus’ Command to Love Teaches Us a Lot about Thankfulness
“And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deuteronomy 6:6-9).
Love God. It’s the most important countenance of our hearts. Scripture is full of what happens when we put God first, and warnings of what happens when we don’t. Who He is reminds us who and Whose we are. In the greatest love story of all time, God sent His only Son to save us. He is love. Godly love is selfless love. Paul wrote to the Corinthian church:
“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).
Godly love is grateful for the status quo, which is drenched in the grace and mercy of God. He sees us, whether we are faithfully following Him or we are a mess of confusion, and He loves us. “The most loving thing we can do for others is love God more than we love them,” John Bloom wrote for Desiring God. “For if we love God most, we will love others best.” Love is impossible for us to uphold without the strength of God in our everyday lives. Even when we seek Him daily, our sinful nature gets in the way of executing love this way. But Scripture is adamant we love God and love each other this way. Jesus repeated the Old Testament command:
“Jesus replied, ‘The most important commandment is this; ‘Listen, O Israel! The LORD our God is the one and only LORD. And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these” (Mark 12:29-31).
The selfless love of Jesus was displayed on the cross, and it was for all of us. “God doesn’t put qualifiers on his love and the truth is his love is always ahead of ours,” Clarence L. Haynes Jr. explained. “Our response is always to the love that he has shown us first. In fact, if he didn’t love us first then we would have no capacity to love him back.”
The command to love teaches us the importance of thankfulness. Out of a heart overflowing with gratitude for the sacrifice Jesus made for us on the cross, and never-ending love of God, we obediently love God, and each other. When others thank us for our self-less love towards them, we get to point to the One from whom our ability to love selflessly comes from. The purpose of our lives is to love God, and love people. He is faithful to place others around us to listen to, and love well.
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Photo credit: ©Getty Images/Aaron Amat
