God at Work in You

Mark 12:28-31 - "And one of the Scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, “What commandment is the foremost of all?” Jesus answered “The foremost is, ‘Hear O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your  strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”"

This isn't the only time in the New Testament that we read about the first and the greatest commandment, but in this passage the Lord Jesus was asked the question "which commandment is the foremost of all?" In other words, which is the most important? And the Lord Jesus answers by saying that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Loving God is the most important commandment. And the fact that it is a commandment means that it's not optional. Remember, a lack of love for God is a sin, and if we're not doing it then we are in the same condition that the church at Ephesus was in and we need to repent. Not loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength is a sin. This is such a high commandment, how could we possibly keep it? Some of us realize that we are not loving God as we should. We recognize our need to love Him with all we are and all we have, but we don't know how to do it. It seems impossible. How am I to love God the way that He commanded me? I know the condition of my wretched, deceitful heart, how am I to love Him with a heart like that? We can identify the problem but we don't know how to fix it. Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that if we just try our best and make up our minds to love Him with all we are and all we have then we will be able to do it because we're committed to it, but that will never work.

The answer to this dilemma is that God has to work this in and through us. We can't do it on our own. When it comes to loving God, we can't even love Him like we should unless He does it in and through us. We cannot manufacture love. So what we want to consider right now is the work of God in our lives of producing a love for Him.

In John 15:5 the Lord Jesus says - "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing." I just want to emphasize the last part of this verse "Apart from Me you can do nothing." The Lord Jesus did not say "Without Me you can't do quite as well." He said "Without Me you can do nothing." I actually looked up this word "nothing" in the original language and it literally means nothing. This is not a difficult verse to understand. When He says "Apart from Me you can doing nothing." That actually means that apart from Jesus we can do nothing. 

In Philippians 4:13 we read - "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Contrast this verse with the last one. Apart from Christ we can do nothing. Here we read that through Christ we can do all things. Once again, not a difficult verse to understand. So the difference between "nothing" and "all things" is Christ.  I can do nothing apart from Him but through Him I can do all things, and this includes loving God. We can love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength through Christ who strengthens us.

We read in Philippians 2:13 - "for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure." God always works inside out, and we see that once again in this passage. God is at work in us first to will, that is, to make us want the right thing, and to do of His good pleasure. We don't always want the right thing, we don't always want to love God like we should, so God has to work in us to put in us the desire to love Him. And then, not only does He work in us to want the right thing, but also to do, to carry out His good pleasure. He doesn't only work in us to give us the desire to love Him, but He works in us to enable us to love Him as we ought, with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.

1 John 4:19 - "We love Him because He first loved us." This doesn't simply mean that we have the desire to love of because He first loved us, but He enables us to love Him from the fact that He loved us first. We draw our ability to love Him from the fact that He first loved us. We love Him because He first loved us. He empowers us to do this. I cannot manufacture or conjure up love inside myself. God has to be working all this in and through me

So when God commands us to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength we need to recognize that He enables us to obey that commandment. It's been said many times that the Lords commands are His enabling's. In other words, He never commands us to do anythings that He doesn't also enable us to do. In looking at my own life I know that I can't love God the way I should, it is impossible for me to do it in my own strength. But God specializes in the impossible. I need to stop focusing on my own incapacity and lack of ability, and focus on the fact that God can do it in and through me.

Mark 12:28-30 - "And one of the Scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, “What commandment is the foremost of all?” Jesus answered “The foremost is, ‘Hear O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your  strength.’”"