How does God want me to live my life?

One of the very first questions I received when I announced this series on Ultimate Questions was: How does God want me to live my life?

Once we have answered the questions: is there a God and what is God like? Then this question naturally follows. That is to say, it naturally follows, if you think that God cares about how we live. There are some people who believe there is a God who created the universe, set things in motion, and then left everything to operate according to natural law. We call this view deism. The God of the deists is not really involved in our lives on a day to day basis. But if you are a theist, then you believe that God not only created the universe, but he is also actually involved in sustaining the universe from day to day. We call this God’s providence. And the God who has revealed himself in Jesus of Nazareth is definitely a God who cares about us, our everyday lives and how we live. In fact, this God cared so much that he became one of us. That’s how close he has drawn to us. And I believe he did that to show his love for us, and to show us how to live.

Now, the question, “How does God want me to live my life?” is never actually asked in the Bible. But we do see Jesus, in the Gospels, being asked many questions by many different people. And one particular question he was asked, during the last week of his life before he went to the cross, comes very close to our ultimate question for today. And I believe Jesus’ answer definitely addresses our question. So, let’s take a look at that question and answer from Mark 12:28-34. Listen for God’s word to you…

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” ²⁹ Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; ³⁰ 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.’ ³¹ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” ³² Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; ³³ and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” ³⁴ When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question. (Mark 12:28-34)

Tom Wright asks,

If the house is on fire, what will you grab as you escape?

Your children, of course, if they can’t walk themselves.

Your wallet. Your computer. Your passport and personal documents.

A precious photograph. The wristwatch your grandfather gave you. A stack of letters from someone you love dearly.

You look on from a safe distance as everything else is burnt to ashes. You realize the significance of what you’ve just done. You have made some important choices. These things are more valuable to you than tables and chairs, china and glass, clothes, books … and all the thousand other things that find a place in a home. You have discovered where your priorities really lie.

The question the lawyer asked Jesus was like that. Faced with the whole volume of Jewish law, which commandment really matters? Which one will you grasp on to in a moment of crisis? And what is the significance of that choice?[1]

This really gets at the heart of how we are to follow Jesus and really live.

If you were to read through this entire section of Mark, you would see that the Jewish religious leaders were asking Jesus trick questions to try to get him in trouble. But here we see a Jewish scribe asking Jesus a real and very important question. This man who posed the question really wanted to know the answer. 

The question that the scribe asked Jesus was one that was often debated in rabbinic schools. Judaism of old had two tendencies. One was to multiply the law into thousands of rules and regulations. The other was to try to sum up the law in one sentence. The famous Rabbi Hillel was once asked by a student if he would teach him the whole law while he stood on one leg. Hillel’s answer was, “What you hate for yourself, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole law; the rest is commentary. Go and learn.”

The Talmud says that there are 613 commandments in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible). David reduced those 613 to 11 in Psalm 15. Isaiah reduced the 613 to 6 in Isaiah 33:15-16. Micah reduced this to 3 commandments in Micah 6:8. Finally, Habakkuk reduced the commandments to one in Habakkuk 2:4.

Jesus was following this summarizing tendency of Judaism when he answered this scribe’s question. Jesus was not saying anything new. What Jesus did was to take two great commandments from the Torah and put them together. 

Love God

The first commandment comes from Deuteronomy 6:4-9,

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.^[a] 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. ⁶ Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. ⁷ Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. ⁸ Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem^[b] on your forehead, ⁹ and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

That first sentence, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one,” has been repeated by every devout Jew on a daily basis down through history. It was the sentence with which the service of the synagogue would begin. This is known as the Shema, based on the first Hebrew word in that sentence which is translated as “hear”. The Shema is carried in little leather boxes known as phylacteries which Orthodox Jews wear on their foreheads and on their wrists. The Shema is also contained in a little cylindrical box called a Mezuzah which is affixed to the front door of every Jewish house and sometimes to every door within the house. The Mezuzah is intended to remind the Jewish people of Yahweh in their going out and their coming in. When Jesus quoted this commandment as the most important, all his fellow Jews would have agreed with him.

So, God wants us to love him with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. But what does it mean to love God? 

The word that is used here in the Greek is the word “agape”. It is the same word that is used when the New Testament talks about God’s love for us. 

As we have talked about before, there were three other words that the Greeks used for love. φιλίαwas the word that the Greeks used for friendship. It has migrated into English in such words as Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. Forms of this word appear a number of times in the Bible, most famously in John 21 where Jesus asks Peter if he loves him (with agape love) and Peter tells Jesus that he is his friend (φιλία).

Then there is the word στοργή that refers to the kind of affection that parents and children have for one another. This word only appears a few times in the Bible. 

Thirdly, there is the word Ἔρωςfrom which we get our English word, erotic. Eros has to do with falling in love, and by connection, with sexual love. So far as I know, this word does not appear in the Bible at all.

וְאָ֣הַבְתָּ֔

Finally, there is the word ἀγαπήwhich appears in various forms some 143 times in the New Testament and many times in the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. You see, the people who translated the Old Testament into Greek had to find a Greek word that could carry the same meaning as the Hebrew word for God’s covenant love in Deuteronomy 6: 

So, the translators of the Septuagint chose the word agape. It’s meaning up to this point in time was sort of vague and colorless. In his Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Kittel says, the Septuagint:

…almost always renders the ohabof the Hebrew text by agapan[the verb form]. Eros and philiaand derivatives are strongly suppressed. The harmless agapancarries the day, mainly because by reason of its prior history it is the best adapted to express the thoughts of selection, of willed address and of readiness for action. But the true victor is the ancient ohabwhich impresses upon the colourless Greek word its own rich and strong meaning.

So, what is the meaning of agape? Paul tells us in the beautiful but perhaps overly familiar passage that is read at many weddings…

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶ it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. ⁷ It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Now here is the key question: which of us has ever loved God with this kind of unconditional love, with no strings attached?

We can spend a lifetime trying to love God in this way and yet never achieve it perfectly. Personally, I believe Jesus is the only one who has ever fulfilled this commandment. The good news is: Jesus can help us to fulfill it too, not all at once, but over the course of a lifetime we can grow in loving God.

Before Becky and I came to this church, when we were living in Virginia and I was searching for a church to serve, one day I had a total stranger say something that really struck me. I happened to tell this man about my job search, and he said, “I hope you will find a church where you can grow as a human being and grow closer to God.” 

That is what life ought to be all about for all of us, whatever our job might be, don’t you think?

Jesus says we are to love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. Some manuscripts of the Septuagint have heart, soul, and strength. Others add “mind”. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus brings all four together.

For the Jewish people of old, the heart (kαρδία)represented the entire inner person, not just the emotions. The Greek word for soul is ψυχή from which we get our English word psyche—again, denoting the inner person. The Greek word for mind is διάνοια. The corresponding Latin word is ratio, referring to the rational mind. διάνοιαis a term used by Plato for a type of thinking, specifically about mathematical and technical subjects. It is the capacity for, process of, or result of discursive thinking. The Greek word for strength (ἰσχύος) refers not just to physical strength but spiritual strength as well. Put it all together and Jesus is saying that we are to love God with everything we have.

Love Your Neighbor

The second commandment Jesus quotes is from Leviticus 19:18, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”

Thus, in its original context, Leviticus 19:18 had to do with loving your Jewish neighbor as yourself. But Jesus quotes it without any limiting boundaries. 

The new thing Jesus is doing with these two commandments is that he is putting them together. In effect he is saying, you cannot do one properly without doing the other. And in Matthew 22:40 he says, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” In other words, if you do these two things, you are fulfilling all the rest.

Also, in Matthew, Jesus says that the second command is like the first. How is loving your neighbor as yourself like loving God? Well, when we truly love our neighbor as our self then we love the image of God in our neighbor.

It is interesting to note in the parallel story in Luke 10, when Jesus makes this statement, the scribe asks a follow-up question:“And who is my neighbor?”In response, Jesus tells a story…

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. ³¹ Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. ³² So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. ³³ But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. ³⁴ He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. ³⁵ The next day he took out two denarii,^[k] gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ ³⁶ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?³⁷ He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:25-37)

In short, Jesus tells us that the right question is not, “Who is my neighbor?” but rather, “To whom can I be a neighbor?” And in answer to that question, Jesus excludes no one. By God’s grace, we can be good neighbors to everyone with whom we cross paths.

Love Yourself

But getting back to Leviticus 19:18, notice that the command actually implies two loves in addition to, or related to, our love for God. We need to love our neighbor, but we also need to love ourselves. If we do not love ourselves, it is impossible to love others. And the only way we can truly, fully, love ourselves, I believe, is if we receive God’s love for us through Jesus, a love that offers forgiveness when we fall short of being all that God wants us to be. Once we receive God’s love and forgiveness through Jesus then we can love and forgive ourselves, and we can begin to love others.

Notice too what Jesus does not say. He does not tell us to judge others. In fact, elsewhere Jesus specifically tells us not to judge others (Matthew 7:1). Jesus knows that judgement is too heavy a load for us to bear; we need to leave all judgement to Jesus. He can handle it; we cannot.

When we judge others we are putting ourselves above them, at a distance. We are not really loving when we do that. How can we love others at a distance? No, we must come close to others to love them. We must get to know another person before we can really love them, before we can do for them what they need, and be for them the person they need us to be.

God’s love for us was demonstrated not in his standing at a distance and telling us how life should be lived. God’s love was demonstrated in him coming close to us in Jesus and identifying with us in all of our pain and joy. I believe God wants us to show the same kind of incarnational love to others. And Jesus alone can help us to do that. The best way to learn about agape is not to look in a dictionary but look to a person, Jesus Christ. And if you are ever in doubt about how to live your life to please God, asking and answering this one question, might give you the best guidance you could ever receive: What would Jesus do?

I believe that to focus on growing in our love for God, our love for others, and our love for ourselves—engaging in these three loves—is the most important thing we can do in life. To focus on these three things, and drop the rest, is really a relief and a release into new life.

In February 2014, the Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died from an apparent heroin overdose. Hoffman was found dead in his apartment with a needle in his arm. He was 46. A year earlier, Hoffman played the part of Willy Loman, the disillusioned and empty salesman from the classic play “Death of a Salesman”. In an interview with NPR, Hoffman said Willy Loman represents “The idea that you have a vision of what you’re supposed to be, or going to be, or where your kids are going to be—and that that doesn’t work out.” The role had a very personal influence on Hoffman. He said, “It really seeps into why we’re here. What are we doing, family, work, friends, hopes, dreams, careers, what’s happiness, what’s success, what does it mean, is it important, how do you get it … ultimately, what gets you up in the morning is to be loved.” In the end, Hoffman said, the play is about our yearning to be loved.[2]

My prayer for you today is that you would not get to the end of your life on this earth without at least beginning to realize how much God loves you. He loves you so much that he became a human being and died on a cross for you. He rose again to give you new life. And that new life is all about receiving his love and responding to his love by loving him, loving others, and loving yourself. If you begin to do that with Jesus’ help, when you get to the end of your life here on this earth, you will finish your race, not with a note of despair, but of fulfillment…

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[1]Tom Wright, Mark for Everyone, London: SPCK, 2004, pp. 169-170.

[2]NPR Staff, “Philip Seymour Hoffman: Broadway’s New ‘Salesman,’” NPR (4-12-12); submitted by Andie Moody, Chicago Illinois