Cries from the heart of the Father for the lost love of His children are scattered all over the bible.
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answering all of their questions, and then the Pharisees decided to have a go with questions of their own:
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment.
I am not sure what the Pharisees expected to hear from Jesus on this occasion, but they might not have had an immediate problem with Jesus’ answer. Elliot’s commentary says:
“… the Pharisees had grasped the truth (about the need to love God) intellectually, though they did not realise it in their lives ... Truth was truth, even though it was held by the Pharisees and coupled with hypocrisy”.
What is this love that the Father asks for and expects of His children? In the Old Testament, in various places, the prophets can be heard speaking on the Lord’s behalf “why have you turned away from loving the Lord your God”? Isaiah 29 v 13: “These people come near to Me with their mouth and honour Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.''
In the New Testament, to the church in Ephesus (Revelation 2 v 3) Jesus says: “You have persevered and have endured hardships for My Name, and have not grown weary. 4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. 5 Consider how far you have fallen”!
Cries from the heart of the Father for the lost love of His children are scattered all over the bible. The lost love is not atoned for by sacrifices and other deeds done in the name of the Lord. As part of Jesus comments about His return Jesus says (Matthew 7 v 22-23): “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your Name and in Your Name drive out demons and, in Your Name, perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from Me, you evildoers!’
Can we truly love someone without knowing them? Our Father in heaven wants us to both “know” and love Him. The Pharisees clearly knew about God, some tried to sincerely follow His commandments as we can see from Nicodemus in John chapter 3 but revelation of the Father’s love and character to the heart seemed to elude them. Many have set out to try and define precisely what “with all of your heart and soul and mind (or strength)” means. I was going to discuss some of these thoughts here but I think that it will suffice to reference Joachim Neander’s hymn:
Praise to the Lord! O let all that is in me adore Him!
All that has life and breath, come now with praises before Him.
Let the Amen sound from His people again;
gladly forever adore Him.
So, what is our response to the commandment “to love the Lord our God” and Jesus’ endorsement of it? Way back in the beginning humankind clearly had close personal conversations with the Almighty “in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3 v 8). All that changed when man disobeyed and fell. Thousands of years later Jesus finds Philip asking “Lord, show us the Father; that is all we need.” (John 14 v 8). Jesus’ reply was “For a long time I have been with you all; yet you do not know Me, Philip? Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father. Why, then, do you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe, Philip, that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words that I have spoken to you,” Jesus said to his disciples, “do not come from Me. The Father, who remains in Me, does His own work.
So, Jesus came to show us the Father and take us to the Father: “No one can come to the Father but through Me” (John 14 v 6). Of course, although many people have testified to seeing Jesus or a vision of Him since He returned to heaven, Jesus is no longer here in a human body. Peter recognises this when he writes in his epistle: Talking about Jesus he says: “… whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory (1 Peter 1 v 8). How is it possible to know and love someone we have not seen? Well just as Jesus indicated to Philip that knowing him (Jesus) meant that he had also been seeing and knowing the Father, so the Holy Spirit was sent so that in receiving Him we would also get to know Jesus. In John 16 v 13 Jesus says:
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So, love works in that God showed His love to us by sending His Son to die for us while we were still sinners so that our debt of sin was paid. Through Jesus we can get to know and love our Father in heaven. We get to know and love Jesus through the Holy Spirit who comes to reveal Jesus to us. The Holy Spirit does this through revealing Jesus through His words and working in our lives so that “all that is in us” can adore Him.
Jesus is just longing to reveal Himself and His love to us. He has promised to draw near to us when we draw near to Him. He has petitioned the Father so that we can be where He is and He will be able to show us His glory and share His kingdom (John 17).
As with many things in the bible there is the Lord’s part and our part. We have just been talking about some of the things that He has done. What is our part? To respond when He asks us to spend time with Him – ‘when you said unto me “seek my face” I responded – “I will”’ (Psalm 27 v 8). To long to sit with Him and do as Adam and Eve did – talk with Him at good times in the day. To spend time in His presence – letting the Holy Spirit reach into our innermost being and reveal His love to us. Jan (my wife) and I had an opportunity to walk for a while and then sit in the sun this afternoon – it was a lovely time just sitting. Jesus wants this opportunity too – to sit and just spend time. The Holy Spirit has been given to us as the channel to reach the Father – we have been warned not to grieve Him but instead let’s welcome Him and give the space and time for Him to do His important work in our hearts – lets purposefully and consciously ask Him to do it and give him opportunity to do it?
At one time I thought that the time that we needed to spend seeking the Lord was the “price that we needed to pay” for Him to act and pour out His Spirit. I don’t believe this anymore. The time that we spend - isn’t it for us – to be more intimate with Him and for Him to work on stuff within us? Do we tend to think that the 10 days that the disciples spent in the upper room when Jesus told them to “wait for the power from on high” was the end of their “waiting”? Was this the only time that they would prepare in this way individually or collectively? Would they have been “in one accord” if they had waited alone? Having experienced what God would do with them when they sought His face and found unity together and felt the Holy Spirit flowing through them do we think that this was the only time that they wished this to happen? Maybe having learned the secret of what would happen when they waited on the Lord they couldn’t ‘wait’ to do this again?
Author: Chris Pearson
May God bless and enrich your life
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