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MarK 12:30:
30And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
To the superficial mind nothing seems so easy as to love.
One naturally loves himself; to love God requires no slightest effort. And the only thing that at times costs trouble is to love one's neighbor as himself; and this not because will and power to love are lacking, but because the neighbor at times can almost be repulsive.
Yet he who so reasons is altogether mistaken.
To love God is far more difficult than the loving of one's neighbor; and it may safely be said that to ten who really show that they have love for their neighbor, there is at most but one who is consumed by love for God.
Jesus has therefore expressly put the loving of God in the foreground as the first and great commandment, and more than about the lack of brotherly love, Scripture complains constantly about forgetfulness of the Holy One. And that this was no Jewish exaggeration the Apostle shows full well when he repeats to those in Rome the bitter complaint of the Psalmist (Psalm 14:3): "There is none that seeketh after God, no, not one."
This does not exclude the fact that love for God can be imparted to the soul. You sometimes clearly see how this love which at first was small, afterward becomes stronger and more tender. But take a man by himself, as he grows up by nature, not only from among good-for-nothings and criminals, but even from among cultivated and honorable people, there is no love alive in that man for God. He does not seek God. Nay, there is no one who really loves God, as God wills them to love.
For a long time this seemed different, but this semblance was deceptive.
At the beginning of the last century, it was still the rule among the rank and file of our people to favor religion and to abhor every form of atheism.
Without desiring to be called pious, no one cared to be thought irreligious, and on solemn occasions the Name of the Lord was still held in remembrance.
Are most people in these selfsame circles now worse than formerly? Certainly not. They have become more emancipated. But taken in general, people now are what people were before.
Only with this great difference, that unbelief is preached now more unblushingly from university chair and pulpit, in the press and open meeting. And what has been the consequence? Has one serious protest been made on the part of honest and cultured people against this profaneness?
Not in the least.
On the contrary. In one generation all faith has been abandoned in ever widening circles, and with it there is a shameless lack of resentment at the imputation of free thought.
And this is by no means anything new. This selfsame condition prevailed in Israel in the days of its spiritual apostasy.
This is convincingly evident when, by Isaiah (57:2, Dutch Version), you hear God Himself reproach His people of those days: "Thou hast lied, for thou hast not laid me upon thine heart."
It is so necessary, therefore, to enter more deeply into the meaning of the love for God. Supremely necessary in the case of believers, for even among these there is so much that glitters like the gold of love, which is nothing but imitation-gold.
The first step is, then, that you begin to see that to love God is not the lightest but the heaviest task to which faith calls you.
Ordinarily love is taken to mean that we practice much consideration for others, and that we do all we can to make them happy.
This is seen on every hand, where philanthropy is practiced. Love then directs itself first most generously and easily to the unfortunate, and it is a matter of great gladness that this generously expressed philanthropy flourishes so vigorously in our days.
This teaches us to make sacrifices, it invites devotion, it alleviates much suffering.
But of course with this side of love one does not touch God.
Your God is blissful. In no single particular is He in need of anything. In no way is He in need of you. And there is nothing you can bring him. The feeling of pity from which this kind of love springs, can for no single moment govern your attitude to God, the Blissful One.
Here a wholly different kind of love is concerned; a love which springs from the sense that you belong with God. That you belong with Him by reason of your origin and your existence itself. That you belong with Him because you are His creature, and that therefore you have no other reason for existence and can have no other destiny in your own future, save in Him.
Every vain notion in you, as though you had a reason for existence in yourself, is therefore robbery committed against your God. It is the wheel which loosed from the wagon wills to roll on by itself.
And when in this way one has actually loosed himself from his God, and now from his imagined independence turns himself to God, in order to love Him as something beside himself, and calls this "love," then this is worse than a caricature and a mockery; is the outrage of love, and does not make us pious in God's eyes, but accuses and condemns us.
To love God is to take away everything that makes separation between us and Him and thus to come to an existence in which we live for God alone.
Love for God is the drawing back to God of what in the creature became separated from Him.
It is a motion born in the soul, when the magnetizing power goes out from God, which draws us to Him.
It is a pressure, an inclination in us, which allows us no rest for a single moment, and always pushes aside, pushes back and drives out everything that separates or draws us away from God, and so leaves us free again to have fellowship with Him.
In prayer we observe this first. "Take heed," says the Apostle (1 Peter 3:7) "that your prayers be not hindered." You observe this yourself, when you want to pray and can not, because there are things that stand between your heart and your God. Then you must first detach your thoughts, inclinations and perceptions from all this, dismiss it all from your spirit, and then God comes back to you, then there is fellowship once more, and you can pray again.
And this very thing, which you experience for a moment in prayer, must be extended throughout your whole life; and when this happens, the true love for God begins to awaken in you.
It is this that Jesus willed and had in view, when he explained it to you as follows: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.
These four together constitute the whole inner organization of your spirit. These four become implicated ever and anon in other egotistical or worldly interests. Then they operate conversely. Then they operate away from God. Then they separate you from the Holy One. And this now is love, that again and again you loosen all four of these from these wrong implications, and turn and direct them, not in part, but altogether, toward the Lord your God.
This is no sacrifice in the real sense, for by sacrifice we understand that there is something of our own, which we could keep for ourselves, but which we willingly give up in behalf of some one else. But this can not be spoken of in this sense here.
Your heart is God's, your soul is God's, your mind is God's, and all your powers are God's property.
Hence you bring God nothing. You merely return to Him that of which you had robbed Him.
And if you do this, and do it in such a way, that all these four—your heart, soul, mind and strength—direct themselves to Him again, and altogether serve Him, then the separation is broken and love celebrates her triumph.
Then it becomes the shamefacedness of the thief, who returns what he had stolen, and now makes no boast of anything, but prays to be forgiven.
This is what the Prophet calls: To lay God upon the heart.
Love is a tender, gently stirring motion, which loves symbols. Hence among lovers it has long been the custom to carry each other's picture, or any costly ornament one had given the other, on the heart.
The idea of this is, that one has given heart and hand to the other, and now carries this symbol on the heart as a continual reminder not to let the heart thus sealed go out to another for one moment, but faithfully to keep it for the one it loves.
And so, to lay God upon the heart means that one has made the choice, that one has come to give his heart to God, and now puts the symbol of God's Name upon the heart, in order to seal his heart for God, and strictly to see to it that his heart continues to be kept for God and for God alone.
Thus it is always the same.
Not to love God thinking thus to bring God something, but quite the contrary, to lose oneself in God because we are His property, and because only by consecrating ourselves to Him to Whom we belong, can we realize the end of our existence.
And to do all this, not in a coldly calculating way, but through a melting of ourselves in the glow of tenderest love. This is the first, this is the great commandment, this is to know the Lord, to feel oneself as a child with his Father, this is to be inwardly consumed by the love of God that is poured out into our hearts.
All that remains is the question, how many there are, even among the pious in our land, who have thus laid God upon their heart.
* * * * * * *This devotional classic offers 110 meditations on a single thought from Psalm 73: "As for me, it is good to be near to God." The author states, "The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality ... it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence."
The meditations reflect the blending of spiritual vigor with doctrinal loyalty so consistently expressed in the life of Abraham Kuyper. These are devotions with true substance, avoiding the extremes about which Kuyper adds a word of caution: "Stress in creedal confession, without drinking from the Living Fountain, runs dry in barren orthodoxy, just as truly as spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism."
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch political leader and Calvinist theologian. Elected to parliament in 1874, he became Prime Minister in 1901 and served in that capacity until 1905. As a theologian, he revived a systematic, orthodox Calvinism. He founded the Free Reformed Church and the Free University of Amsterdam. His other works include Principles of Sacred Theology, Lectures on Calvinism, and The Work of the Holy Spirit
Further information about Abraham Kuyper's life can be seen in the translator's "Biographical Note"; further information about To Be Near Unto God can be Abraham Kuyper's "Preface" to that book.
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