"..Love the Lord your God.." - Matthew 22:37-39 (TPT)

The love of God is our first commandment; it seems odd that our God has commanded us to love Him when His love for us has already been expressed in the extreme. God has sacrificed Himself by going to the cross and dying that He may redeem us back to Himself. 

With God there is no time as we know time, everything is in the present, the creation that we read about in Genesis is as fresh to Him as if it happened this morning, and the crucifixion of Jesus just as if happened at noon-time. We serve an all-powerful God who transcends time and space to make all of the created order of His present reality; this, too, is part of His omnipresence where God can be in all places at the same time. He can also be at all places in our history at the same time.

As I have expressed before, omnipresence is a hard concept to put one’s head around because of our limited understanding of space and time, and the God who resides outside of the boundaries of that reality but chooses to communicate with us none the less. Our God lives in a different dimension than we live; that dimension exists in the same space that we occupy called the spiritual realm, it is a reality that exists, which is entirely aware of our natural world. Our natural world has had an awareness of the spiritual dimension (or the fourth dimension) since the beginning of recorded history and humankind has been attempting to communicate with that realm ever since.

Paul mentions a person he knew who had a dimensional encounter, which he attempts to describe by using terms that made sense to him in 2 Corinthians.

“I know a follower of Christ who was snatched away to the third heaven fourteen years ago. I don’t know whether this happened to him physically or spiritually. Only God knows. I know that this person was snatched away to paradise where he heard things that can’t be expressed in words, things that humans cannot put into words. I don’t know whether this happened to him physically or spiritually. Only God knows.” 
2 Corinthians 12:2-4 (GW)

Like Paul says: “Only God knows,” and it is that knowledge that which is holy (or separateness) from other gods or spiritual entity’s which makes our God unique, there is no one like our God.

The fact that our God created us to love us is astounding; His love created awareness in us of our need to pursue Him, that awareness is what others have called a God-shaped hole that only He can fill. Maybe, we are commanded to love Him, because we have this hole in our soul that only He can fill.

The Greek word used for that love he is agapaō, we are commanded to love with a love that only God Himself can provide, so if the truth is told, Jesus puts the love in our hearts with which to love Him. Again it is profound that it is God who allows us to love Him and even enables us with His love with which to love Him; it is beyond words and imagination.

  

“And hope will never fail to satisfy our deepest need because the Holy Spirit that was given to us has flooded our hearts with God’s love.” 
Romans 5:5 (VOICE)

It is the beauty of God’s love, knowing that we have nothing to do with it other than to receive it.

We are also told to love our friends as ourselves. 

Paul uses the analogy of how a husband loves a wife to describe how we are to love each other with that same type of concern and connection.

“In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they love their own bodies. The man who loves his wife loves himself. No one ever hates his own body, but feeds and takes care of it. And that is what Christ does for the church, because we are parts of his body.” Ephesians 5:28-30 (NCV)

So the command to love is based on the fact that we need to receive God’s love to be able to love Him back. If we could love Him from our flesh without His empowerment, then we could say that our righteousness has enabled us to love Him, which is not the case, we receive the righteousness of Jesus to love Him back.

“Death once held us in its grip, and by the blunder of one man, death reigned as king over humanity. But now, how much more are we held in the grip of grace and continue reigning as kings in life, enjoying our regal freedom through the gift of perfect righteousness in the one and only Jesus, the Messiah!” 
Romans 5:17 (TPT)

Thank God! He has made way for us to love Him, which is beyond our natural abilities. We can trust Him to provide us with more than enough love not only to fill us with an understanding of His love but the ability to love Him as He desires to be loved. 

And we still have enough to share that same love with our friends and family.

Be Blessed;

Stephen Barnett