“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deut 6:4-9)
What does it mean to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul and might? Does it mean we do extraordinary things for God? Does it mean we sell all that we possess and dedicate our lives to serving the poor like Mother Teresa? Does it mean we quit our job and go into full time missions like a few people I know? Maybe. But I suspect for most of us, extreme answers like this are not what God is saying here or calling us to do. So what is God telling us in these words that He gave to Moses to give to us? What does it mean to love God with all of our heart, soul and might?
Simon and the Prostitute
There is a story in the New Testament where Jesus enters someone’s house, and a prostitute is there and runs to him and begins kissing his feet, wiping them with her tears and drying them with her hair. The owner of the house knows this woman, that she is a prostitute (that in itself is perhaps another story) and he takes offense that Jesus is letting her do this. Jesus responds to him, saying:
“Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has wet My feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave Me no kiss; but she, since the time I came in, has not ceased to kiss My feet. You did not anoint My head with oil, but she anointed My feet with perfume. For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little.”
Luke 7:44-47
Jesus is saying that the prostitute knew she was a sinner. Simon did not. If we know we are sinners, really bad sinners, then we will love God with all that we have, because we realize how much He has forgiven us. Simon was in denial. He did not think of himself as a sinful human being but as a righteous man. Many of us are in denial like Simon was. We cannot love God if we do not think we are sinners in need of a savior. It is that simple.
“Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
Proverbs 16:18
Loving God with all of our heart, soul, and might begins with admitting we are sinners and need Him to save us. It is the opposite of pride, and it begins with realizing the depth of our depravity, with acknowledging that if the right circumstances had occurred in my life, I could have been Hitler, Stalin, Chairman Mao, Genghis Kahn, or just some guy on the news that robbed his fourth liquor store in two weeks. It is only by God’s grace that I have not killed somebody or done worse. This is the beginning of loving God with all of our heart, strength, soul, mind, and might – to realize that our depravity and capability for evil is way beyond anything we can imagine.
Worse than We Can Imagine
I remember when I was first born again. I could barely believe I was forgiven, that is how dark my past looked to me. When my eyes were opened and I could see the depth of my sin and depravity, it was very hard for me to believe that I could be forgiven. It took roughly fifteen years for me to finally truly believe I was forgiven. And I wasn’t that bad of a guy – I didn’t really do any of the big sins, just the little stuff. Imagine what it must be like for people who have committed really big, serious offenses, such as physically hurting or killing others…..and now imagine that is you…..because in God’s eyes we are all that bad. Loving God begins with realizing and embracing the horrible nature of our sinfulness, and then realizing that God has forgiven us in Christ Jesus. He died on our behalf, and paid the penalty for our sin.
More Loved and Forgiven than We Can Imagine
The second side of this coin is to realize that we are accepted by God and loved by Him more than we can ever imagine. He has forgiven us beyond anything we can imagine. He loves us more than we realize it is even possible to be loved. He loves us so much, that He gave us His Son, His only Son, and had Him die in our place. We see the foreshadowing of this in the story of Abraham and Isaac, when God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 21 and 22). But God stayed his hand, and provided a ram in Isaac’s place. The ram represents the sacrifice of God, Jesus, who was to eventually come and die for the sins of the world. God does not require a sacrifice from us, but rather makes the sacrifice for us, that in Him we might have life everlasting. All He asks is that we believe. Even a 5-year-old can do that.
When these two realizations come together, that we are more depraved than we can ever imagine, and that we are more loved and forgiven than we can ever imagine, we find ourselves weeping at Jesus feet, just as the prostitute in the story does. She is overwhelmed. All of the sins she has committed – wiped away, forgiven. And all of the sins committed against her have received justice on the cross. She is fully loved unconditionally, regardless of who she is, what she has done, what has been done to her, etc. Her entire life has been resolved in Christ, and somehow she sees it before He has even been crucified. What an amazing moment she must have experienced. No wonder she broke down. It is just amazing to think about.
Why Did Jesus Have to Die
People often ask why Jesus had to die. Imagine someone brutally raped your sister and mother, then brutally killed them, killed your dog, shot all of your cows and chickens, burned your house down, dug up your yard with a backhoe, then left. The perpetrator gets caught, goes to prison, and in prison he is born again. Time goes by, and you both die. In heaven you run into each other. You might say to him, “What the heck are you doing here, you rapist, you murderer, etc.” And he would answer back to you, “Jesus paid the penalty for my sin.”
That is why Jesus had to die, in order for there to be justice for what that man did. Someone had to pay the price for there to be justice. This also illustrates the depth of the payment that Jesus has made for us. Not only has He died to wash away the sins that we have committed. He has also washed away the sins that were committed against us, to the degree that we are not bothered by the ex-rapist and ex-murderer we meet in heaven. This is so big that most of us cannot get our minds around it. And if we do, we are perhaps reduced to tears at the feet of Jesus, like the prostitute was.
Forgiveness and Justice
The prostitute in our story somehow was able to grasp this. She knew. She knew sin. Imagine what had been done to her over the years by the men she was with. And she understood that Jesus was going to make it all right again. There would not only be forgiveness, but there would also be justice. She understood the depth and depravity of man way beyond anything Simon could imagine. All she could do is weep at Jesus’s feet. It is possible that she was drying His feet with her hair because she accidentally cried on them unintentionally and was trying to dry them – we don’t know.
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, with all thy strength, and with all thy might.” Do you know the depth of your depravity? Do you understand that you are a sinner? Do you recognize your need for forgiveness? Or are you more like Simon, I’m okay, you’re okay? Do you say to yourself, “I’m not that bad of a person”, or do you weep and cry when you realize just how sinful you are? What would it take for you to see the depth of your depravity? What would reduce you to tears at the feet of Jesus? Do you want to love God? Do you want to love Him with all of your heart, soul, and might? Then join me in this prayer, as we ask God to make it so:
Lord God almighty, ruler of heaven and earth, creator and sustainer of life, I come before you now and ask for the forgiveness of my sins. I pray that you would show me the depth of my depravity apart from you. Make me to know how others have felt when I sinned against them. Make me to feel as the prostitute felt when she was crying at your feet. Deliver me from ever being like Simon, thinking I am just fine thank you, and in need of nothing, when in reality I am miserable and blind and wretched. Deliver me Lord God from the smug thinking that causes men to ignore your voice. Let me hear you. Let me hear from heaven. Speak to me Lord. Show up right now in my life, just as you showed up in the prostitute’s life. And let me fall at your feet, weeping and sobbing, drying your feet with my hair. I owe you so much. Apart from you I am dead in my trespasses and sins. Don’t ever let me forget that truth. And out of this knowledge of the depths of my need for you, may my love grow. May it grow and grow and grow until it is like a giant oak tree, planted beside the water. Fill me with your love, even now, and enable me to truly love you with all of my heart, all of my soul, and all of my might. In Jesus Name we pray. Amen.
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
Romans 3:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23
“But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together. One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 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 foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”
Matthew 22:34-40
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