Read Matthew 22:34-40

“³⁷ 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 first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.””

Jesus breaks down the entire Judeo-Christian commandments by guiding us to love UP (love God) and love OUT (love those around us). Rather than being simplistic and childish, Jesus offers a profoundly fresh perspective on what it means to live the life we were designed for.

While both commands are well-known, the first commandment to love God with your heart, soul and mind often plays second fiddle to the second commandment. This may be because it’s less practical and sometimes hard to measure or define. When you love others, people notice, but when you love God, you’re the only one who can be sure of what’s happening within yourself. 

However, my suspicion is that we overlook the depths of this commandment because it challenges our core beliefs about ourselves. We prefer to assume that our heart’s intentions are good, our soul is pure and our mind typically arrives at good conclusions. We so easily say, “Of course I love God”. And yet Jesus is reminding us that in fact, all of us see evidence of different loves rising and falling in our heart, soul and mind.

The reality is that for many of us, unless we follow Jesus’ command to intentionally love UP, our love easily drifts to whatever, or whomever, we are surrounded by: “I love my job”, “I love my spouse”, “I love cars”, “I love food”! As good as work, romance, cars and food are, if we are not intentionally directing our heart UP, it becomes enraptured by whatever and whoever we are surrounded by. These people and things, rather than God, then dictate the direction and flavour of our lives. This is why this commandment is the first and primary commandment. Jesus speaks directly to the core of our being, inviting us to align our deepest loves with God himself so that this love might shape every detail and direction of our lives.

All that we will ever visibly do for God in this life, comes out of this simple mandate to love God first. The challenge is not to love God more than other people appear to but to offer as much of our heart, soul and mind as we are able. As any newlywed or parent has experienced, the sensational “honeymoon phase” does fade, but in its place, we have the opportunity to cultivate a richer love by offering new parts of our our heart, soul and mind to our loved ones.

Similarly, we should learn to love God just as we started out, going ‘all in’. In this way, we never compare ourselves with others, or consider ourselves “not good enough”. We simply love God with every part of ourselves that we have to offer. What part of your life are you yet to give to God?