We Love Because He First Loved Us

I've been doing this really great study from Deuteronomy that is encouraging and convicting and inspiring all at the same time.  I've especially enjoyed how much the Lord addressed love, both His for His people and their commanded love of Him, throughout the Law.

I would have never made the connection that the teacher, Beth Moore, made between I John 4:19 and two well-known passages from Deuteronomy, but I've been pondering this connection for several days.

In Deuteronomy 6:4-9 we are commanded to love God and to teach our children to love Him.

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."

As Beth said, "the loving drives the living" making God the center of every thing.  Sobering to me was the point that we "can't impress upon our children what we don't have."  I must love Him first before I will be able to effectively point my children to Him.

We love. . .
because as Deuteronomy 7:6-9 explains, He first loved us.

6 “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,

According to the study, there are three different Hebrew words in the above passage that are translated into the English word 'love'.  What I got from the word study is that God loves us with a love that is steadfast, faithful and loyal and also with a love that has an emphasis on emotion and delights in us (as a parent delights in a child).  Sometimes we get hung up on one or the other, but God has both.

Some people err on the side of loving God in the sense of faithfulness--duty and obedience--over emotional connection and adoration of Him.  Still other times, we are tempted to be all touchy-feely about the Lord and think our extreme emotions replace the need for obedience.  As in so many other areas, it seems to me the pendulum is intended to hang in the middle and incorporate both rather than swinging from one side to the other.  God's example is certainly the one to emulate.

Because He loves us and gave His Son in order to reconcile us to Him, we have the privilege of loving Him.  He loved us while we were yet sinners, not because we are so amazing or righteous or easy to love.  I'm prompted to not only love because He first loved me, but also to love as He first loved me.