About 15 years ago, I heard the song Falling in Love with Jesus by Kirk Whalum and Jonathan Butler. Candidly, I was confused by this idea of “falling in” love with Jesus. All the sermons about the different types of love came to mind, and I had to question the type of love he was singing about. The song is in the smooth jazz genre and has a romantic feel to it that just doesn’t lend itself to my thoughts about loving God. This song, however, challenged me. It is simple with just a few words, but the heart of the song is simply pure worship. Worship where voices and instruments collide at the feet of God and declare outright and unashamedly that “falling in love with Jesus was the best thing I’ve ever done.” It is a song that glorifies being in God’s presence. There is a spontaneous outbreak of “hallelujahs” with restrained emotion that, frankly, makes me envious of his relationship with the Most High God.
In Matthew 22:37–38, Jesus explained that the first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord, your God, with all of your heart, soul, and mind. I didn’t really understand how to live this out and so, I looked to other Bible verses to explain the concept of love. I found John 14:21 where Jesus says that to love Him is to obey Him as well as John 21:21 where Jesus directs Peter to “feed his sheep” as the appropriate sign of love. Love, in the context of those two verses from John, is composed of concrete actions that I can take or refrain from taking. I can feel confident that I’ve reflected my love for God when I am able to check those boxes. While those actions are biblically sound, the interpretation falls a tad short of the idea of loving God with all of my heart, soul, and mind. And, just like that, I have (unintentionally) diminished the first and greatest commandment to nothing more than my actions done with the “right” heart posture and established a low standard for loving God.
A Low Standard of Love
This low standard of love makes me question the truth of any proclamation of my love for God. I can review the Greek to dig deep and try to find the meaning of the words heart, soul, and mind to flush out the precise standard that God has set for appropriate love, but that overcomplicates this. This is a simple idea being presented, and I have to conclude that loving God with all of these things amounts to something more than my action or inaction. It is higher than an emotional outpouring, and more substantial than an intellectual understanding. At a minimum, it is all of these things. One commentary explained, “Our love of God must be a singular and superlative love. [We] must love him more than anything else.”1 Yikes!
A Superlative Love
Loving God with my total being as a superlative love is a standard that feels unreachable. Intellectually, I know that God would not demand this of us if He had not given us the ability to satisfy this requirement, but I have my doubts. Can I even love God more than I love anyone else? Can I love God more than I love myself? Can I love God more than my children? Can you? I know the temptation is to decide that loving anything more than God is idolatry and to repent and then brush it aside. But, let’s go further and really consider how we love other things or people. To do this, I will reflect on my love for my kids. I give my kids time, money, and attention out of my love for them. I show up to events that I have absolutely no interest in attending because it is important to them. I watch odd social media videos or TV shows because they thought it was hilarious. I can (sadly) decipher “riz”, “opps” and “ate up and left no crumbs” because this is the language of the middle schooler. I hear their opinions on a variety of subjects (for hours on end) and have even made changes in our home as a result. Every so often, I just stare at them. I stare at them in the weird mom way that sometimes bubbles up as a smile and sometimes trickles out as tears.
In reviewing the way I love my children, I realized my love for them has evolved, deepened, and matured. It is too much to outline here but suffice it to say that I haven’t always loved my kids as I do now. It is this realization that encourages and instructs me in my love for God. My love for my children is not static but dynamic. As we have gone through life experiences, my love for them has grown deeper. While the word love may stay the same, the depth of feeling and meaning behind that simple word changes as I spend more time with them. This is the challenge and secret of the first and greatest commandment.
In the last few years, I have re-discovered the first and greatest commandment, and this song, Falling in Love with Jesus. I desired a deeper relationship with God and wrestled with this idea of love. I can’t confidently tell you that I love the Lord with my total being as the commandment requires, but I can tell you that I continue to seek the Lord’s help to fall in love with Him. As I spend time quietly in His presence and reflect on how He orchestrates certain situations, I am better able to simply “stare at Him” in full amazement of His love for me. I am better able to feel the wellspring of life bubbling up in smiles, tears, and utter adoration. I am able to worship Him with less restraint because I can see His hand in my life. I am more apt to understand the Psalms because David expresses his range of emotions in the context of his meetings with God. He said he desired one thing—to dwell in the presence of the Lord all the days of his life and to gaze upon His beauty. (Psalm 27:4) Even as I write this, I realize the grace of heaven’s nod that allows me to connect my staring at my kids with David’s desire to gaze upon the Lord. How amazing is that little “coincidence”? How much more achievable is this first and greatest commandment when you invite the Most High God to be your professor?
I hope this invites you to question the appropriate depth of your love for God. Don’t engage this question as a form of condemnation or inadequacy but as a challenge or conviction to explore the depths of this love relationship with the God who loves you so much that He gave His only beloved Son (John 3:16). Ask God to help you fall in love with Him so that you can truly live by the first and greatest commandment. May we all fall in love with Jesus.
FOOTNOTES
1Matthew Henry’s Commentary- Verses 34-40, www.biblegateway.com, visited June 19, 2024.
