Measuring My Love for God

According to God's law, our love has its norm in God’s love. 

• God’s love for us however is love for His own sake. 
• Also in God’s love for us He seeks Himself, even as in all things He reveals Himself. 
• Thus, God’s love for us is the norm of our love for Him. 

God’s love for us does however include our salvation, 

• and in this way God’s love is indeed a norm for us. 
• The law of God does command us to have a certain self-love, 
• yet God must always be first in the intent of our love.

With that love of God for Himself we must measure our love for Him.

• Love for God for God’s sake ought to be the dominating factor in our life. 
• Without that supreme motive all in our life is vain. 
• Not only must there be love for God but also in order to be pure, He needs to be our objective in the first place. 
• We may never lose sight of God, even as God never forgets Himself. 

Therefore, it needs to be a love that takes hold of us completely: 

• and thus, a love in the first place with all of our heart – the heart of which Scripture says: Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life (Prov.4:23). 

The primary and deepest motivations in our life should simply be love for God. 

• Thus it needs to be a love with all of our soul. 
• Scripture equates our soul with all my inmost being (Ps.103:1).
• Our soul means all our inner sensitivities. 
• All that affects us in life should produce in us nothing but love for God. 

We must also love God with our whole mind – 

• that active, that deliberating, 
• that thought pattern-determining faculty in us, 
• must not know any other guideline than the love for God. 

We must engage all our strength in the service for God, 

• and when we do that God’s love in us will grow. 

That is righteousness with respect to God. 

• Righteousness means that we give to each person what is theirs.
• We only give to God what is His when we give ourselves to Him fully and without reservation. 

In that relationship to Himself, governed by the law of love, God has placed us in His covenant. 

• We need to remain in that every day. 
• This is the first and great commandment – 
• the commandment that governs the one of the second table of the law.

In light of that love for God we must see and love our neighbor, and in the same way ourselves. 

• The law is also covenant law in the second table. With such love for ourselves and our neighbor, we will remain in covenant with the Lord. 
• We will not dispossess ourselves of the Lord’s covenant with self-love, and neither our neighbor with neighbor-love. 

The second commandment is like the first, is given with the first, and is not different than the first. 

• In ourselves and in our neighbor we must love God. 
• Yet, according to the flesh, we can neither love ourselves nor our neighbor. 
• Still, the commandment is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, 
• and then both because of God’s will as seen in the light of God’s love for us and for our neighbor. 

Adapted Excerpt from The True Faith by Simon Gerrit De Graaf (1889-1955)