The Greatest Commandments — The Role of Sanctification Part 1

The Holy Laws of God

In the Torah, the nation of Israel had been given the righteous and holy laws of God through the prophet Moses — 613 of them, to be exact. The Israelites were to keep these laws as commanded by God in order to reflect who He is and love Him. However, the Israelites failed to keep the whole law over and over, and therefore they continually sinned against God because they disobeyed his commands (sinned like Adam and Eve did in the garden, Genesis 3:6–7). They had to continually provide sin offerings over and over, since the Bible says the wages of sin are death. Sin is so serious of a crime against God that it requires death as punishment (Romans 6:23) (physical and eternal). The law was never meant to be kept by any mortal human being and was in fact there to reveal the wretched sinfulness of man and the perfect holiness of God (Romans 3:9–20). It was there to show humans how far away we are from God due to our sins committed against him.

Who is able to keep the laws of God in their entirety?

Even in today’s day and age (or any time and age really), NO ONE (besides Christ) would be able to keep every single law of God in its entirety without sinning in some manner like the Pharisees (Matthew 23).

If we are to truly and fully love God, we must strive to fully know Him and obey all of what He commands of us. However, we fail in both aspects even as Christians because the flesh is still sinful and hinders us from being able to fully know and obey God at this present time.

So now we have this dilemma:

1. No one but Christ can keep the law of God in its entirety (Christian or non-Christian)
2. Loving God entails knowing him and obeying what He commands in order to please him and bring him the glory He deserves

Does that mean we don’t truly and fully love God as a result of our failure to obey his commands in their entirety? The answer is yes or no.

If you are Christian who believes in the gospel and the finished work of Christ and have truly repented of your sins (1 John 1:9), while living an imperfect life striving to be worthy of the gospel. You can confidently say you truly love God. It’s no in the sense that we cannot fully love God yet, for we are still being sanctified.

So, as Christians, we can be very sure that we truly love God, but we must know that we do not and cannot fully love God yet.

What is the natural response of love from another? and from God?

When you love your parents, you naturally want to obey and honour them because of all the love they have given and shown you. How much more should we want to naturally obey and honor God, our Creator, who loves us so much and infinitely more?

If you love God and desire to love him more, you will seek to know Him and learn what He loves and what He hates. You do this in order to be able to better obey Him and therefore better love Him. We ought to give Him our whole self as a living sacrifice, that is pleasing and acceptable to God, as an act of spiritual worship (Romans 12:1). If we recognize sins in our lives and desire to repent of them, and then actually repent of them, it shows that we have a desire to obey and love God. You turn away from what God hates and turn to what He loves, which is what is good and is revealed to us in his Word. You can only do that if you know Him and continually seek to know Him.

We can love God because of the cross of Jesus Christ

We are free from the law of the Old Testament given to the Israelites in the Old Testament because of the finished work of Jesus Christ. He is the fulfillment of the entire Old Testament and all the laws associated with them and has created a new covenant with His people (Romans 8:1–4, Luke 22:20, Jeremiah 31:31). So now we are living in this new covenant and following the new law provided by Christ (Romans 7:4–6). The new covenant is the promise that whosoever repents of their sins and believes in Jesus Christ the Risen Lord will not perish but receive eternal life (John 3:16).

How can we love God?

So, I want to talk briefly about how we, as believers, can love God better. First and foremost, it should come from and be driven by our current level of love for Christ, that should be ever growing. A love that finds its roots in the Gospel, is a love that is important in helping us discern the current states of our hearts before God. It is very important to check the current state of your heart before God, especially when serving. As it helps us to avoid legalism (i.e., ask yourself, why am I doing this?).

As stated above, to love God is to know Him and do what He loves, and not what He hates. We do this by obeying His commands given to us in His word as consistently as possible (2 Peter 1:3). So that could be through spreading the gospel, showing hospitality to others, reading the Word daily, praying, seeking God’s approval alone, seeking His kingdom first in your life, and so on.

The more we seek to obey God, the more we love God, and the more we love God, the more we will obey Him. It is a cycle that continues until the moment we die; it’s continuous throughout our whole life. Abide in Him so He may abide in you and so you may bear much fruit (John 15:4), which will bring Him glory. You can look back all the fruit in your Christian walk and assess how much you have grown. All this is for the glory of God.

We can only love Him because He first loved us
For only God alone can reconcile sinners to himself through Christ

How can you know yourself? Who am I?

So, my question to you reading is, how do we love God and love others better? First off, it starts with God, the creator of all things in the universe, whether it be you, me, the trees, the bees, the air, the bears, or whatever it may be (Genesis 1). He is holy and perfect, and we are not. For we must remember that we are sinners who have committed great evil against a holy God, unable to function in the way we were created for (image bearers of God) due to our sin. Yet God made a way for us to return to Him and pardon our sin through the cross of Jesus Christ.

As I briefly shared at the retreat, the prerequisite for loving your neighbors as yourself is clearly loving yourself (loving yourself has a prerequisite too). How can a person love themselves if they don’t know who they truly are, what they love, what they hate, and what their life purpose is? The world’s ideas about what makes a person a person are constantly changing. This means:

1. The basis for one’s self-identity shouldn’t be rooted in worldly wisdom
2. The world, being lost in sin, doesn’t understand or remember that they were created to bear the image of God and bring Him glory

So where can you find your true self-identity? Find your identity in the one who created you — God the unchanging and holy one. He knows you better than anyone, even yourself (Genesis 2). In Him, you are fully known and fully loved. I hope you take great comfort and peace in that knowing that.

Loving yourself better NOT MORE, how to do?

Loving yourself is simple and a given, but is not easy. It can be most effectively done through knowing God. Since He knows you through and through and knows exactly what your needs are as He is our creator! (Genesis 2). So, loving yourself comes from being able to love and know God better, and through that process, we can love and care for ourselves much better in all aspects (spiritually, physically, emotionally, and mentally).

1. So how can we love and know God better?
   We must spend time alone with God — in His Word and prayer

This is why devotions and prayer are so important for our well-being as a person (soul, body, and mind). I implore and exhort you to preach the gospel to yourself every day. Every Christian should take the time to review its parts. Remember it through all your days; surrender yourself daily to its power and the one who made the gospel possible.

We can never go beyond the gospel; we must come back to it over and over, day in and day out. My hope is that the gospel will become more and more deeply rooted in your hearts and minds each and every day. We must remember that we have sinned against a holy and perfect eternal God and therefore deserve eternal punishment in hell that is so unfathomably severe. It is reserved only for the worst of the worst — God’s enemies.

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us while we were dead in our sins, made us alive in Christ. By grace through faith in Christ, we have been saved” (Ephesians 2:8–9).

Remember who God is, what He has done for His children, and what He continues to do, so surrender your all to Him.

What can we conclude?

So, love others the way you love yourself naturally. The same kind of care you show for yourself automatically, show that to others. For God has commanded that and created us to reflect His image.

So, take care of yourself and spend time with yourself and God. Go on a self-dates, go to coffee shops, go on food adventures and do things you like with yourself. Exercise, eat healthy, sleep enough, spend time with God, and fellowship with others. Figure out what you things you enjoy, your gifts and what makes you the unique person God created. Then share that with others in the church and in fellowship.

If you can’t balance everything in your life, don’t worry! Work on it — figure out ways to manage your time, for we are called to be stewards of what God has given to us: time, money, resources, and gifts.

So, love yourself better by reflecting on who God has created you to be and what He has given us through Christ. It’s important to be mindful and aware second by second, day by day, of who you are (a child of God, adopted by Him through through His grace) and what you are striving towards, which is to be ever-Christlike — the goal of sanctification.

So now that we have discussed why we should love God and ourselves, and also how. We can go back to the command of loving our neighbors as ourselves and really understand why loving God and yourself are such important prerequisites. The process by which we improve at loving God, ourselves, and our neighbors and become more Christ-like is called sanctification. That’s where Part 2 of this blog post goes into more depth. Stay tuned.

Hold to Christ the sure and steady anchor, always

Kevin Long 4B Kinesiology