Ministries
Resources
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.
if it begins to trouble you, yea, to become guilt, that after all the years that you have lived, you have made so little advance in this loving of your God, then consider with more care than you have yet done the rule your Savior has given you regarding it.
You have known the great commandment from your childhood. You have learned it by heart, and no word of it is unknown to you. And in your conscience you have admitted unconditionally that your Savior was right. O, surely, in your love for God nothing could be wanting. It has to be a love with all your heart, your soul, your mind, your strength. A love without bounds. Everything for your God, even as for yourself you have to expect everything from God.
But Jesus did not make it a general declaration. Jesus did not say: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God in everything." No, Jesus has made distinctions—distinguished the heart, the soul, the mind and the strength. And did you do well to pass this by? In this distinction Jesus had a purpose. He has deemed this distinction necessary for His whole Church. He has willed that the ministers of the Word should bind this love for God, severally with the heart, the soul, the mind and the strength, upon the conscience of the congregation of the Lord. And likewise He has willed, that every child of God should continually examine himself, whether his love for God has been practised in this fourfold way.
The root of true piety would have taken hold far more vitally in the sub-conscious life of the Church, if both preaching and self-examination had applied themselves more seriously to the cultivation of this rich, warm love for God, and had drawn vital strength from the keeping of the first and great commandment.
There is no holier power that can inspire us than love; and of all love, the love for God wears the crown.
Therefore love is the bond of perfection, provided you do not volatilize it into a vague conception of ideal love, without rule or object.
All that is noble and lofty in love, and can be lauded and celebrated in song, has reality in it only when it is a love that first loves God, and for God's sake loves the neighbor.
It at once attracts the attention, that in commending the love for God, Jesus puts the heart first and not the soul; any one of us would have done otherwise.
We would first have named the soul as the center of our whole inner life, and after that, from the soul as the center, we would have gone on to the loving with the heart, with the mind, with all the strength.
Jesus, on the other hand, begins with the heart, then comes to the soul, and only then points to the mind and to the strength.
From what the Lord by Jeremiah says to Israel, this difference between heart and soul can be made plain.
It is in the fourth chapter of Jeremiah that at one time it is said to Israel, that the terrible outpouring of God's wrath shall reach her heart, and that at another time it shall reach her soul; but with a sharply marked distinction.
When the suffering, that comes upon Israel, is outlined in its first threatening reality, it says (vs. 18): "This is thy wickedness, it is so bitter that it reacheth unto thine heart."
When the suffering continues, and at length becomes fatal, then it says (vs. 10) that: "the sword reacheth unto the soul."
Thus the heart is the seat of the emotions and sensations, the soul the seat of the life itself.
Now apply this to love, and here also it is the heart that receives the impressions and causes the stirring feeling of love to flow forth; but it is in the soul that the love which is received settles, and from the soul springs the impulse of the stirring of love.
Without the heart there would be no enjoyment of love and no exercise of love conceivable, but neither the love enjoyed nor the love exercised would touch your self, if there were not behind and underneath your heart something deeper, even the source itself of your life, and if the tie did not operate which binds up your heart with your soul.
You can not hear save with your ear, nor speak save with your voice; but it is nevertheless the soul which uses your ear as instrument of hearing, and likewise it is your soul which must speak in your voice, if your word is to be heard.
And so you can not drink in love and can not show love save with your heart, and yet it is the soul which uses your heart as the instrument, by which with its deepest and hidden life to enter upon the wealth of love.
Hence it will not suffice for you to say that you love God with your heart.
With the heart one can feel himself sweetly affected by the enjoyment of love, and be conscious of the rise within himself of reciprocal feelings of love, without any really true love, simply because the soul does not enter into it.
In art, especially, this is strongly evident.
One hears in music and song a touching recital of human suffering, and is at the time deeply moved and carried away. One has felt the sensations of mortal agony, which were uttered in song, go through his heart. One has lived and suffered along with it. But presently the play is over. For a moment the impression remains. But an hour after, everything is forgotten, and, as though nothing had happened, we pursue our course. Not that the heart had not been affected, for even pseudo-feelings touch it. But the soul had no part in it, and therefore it did not touch us.
You constantly see this thing in life. With many a mother it happens that she can not endure the sight of a tear in the eye of her child. When she sees it she is at once deeply moved, and at the moment will do everything to make her darling forget his trouble and to comfort him. But this also frequently amounts to no more than a pressure of the heart. When the child that wept laughs again, everything is right once more, and because her love for her child does not spring from the root of her soul, she does not know how to love the soul of her child, and instead of saving him, she ruins him!
There is also a loving of God with the heart which makes it burst into flame when God's honor is attacked, which enjoys tender emotions toward the Eternal Being, and which still holds self in sight and not God, because, though there is love, it is not love that reaches the soul.
Your soul is in your self, and your self stands before the face of your God. Therefore in your soul the question must be settled, whether your God exists for the sake of you, or whether you exist for the sake of your God alone.
If, now, you say: "The latter is my case"—Glorious! But now comes the second question: Is such the case with you from submission, from the sense of your own insignificance in the face of the Majesty of the Lord, or is it thus from love?
Do you will to exist for God alone, because you can do nothing else? Or, did it come to this with you, that you would not will it otherwise, since God is the dearest Object of your love, and because you feel your whole existence to go up into this love for Him?
By the heart it will then be enjoyed, and through the heart it will come to utterance. For this you received this costly instrument of your heart. But he who uses this heart and plays upon it in blessed love, is your own self, in the center of your soul, where your person lives in the holy presence of the Triune God.
Have you perceived something of such a love for God within you? If so, do you then understand what it means to say that you love God in the inmost of your being, of your self, of your person, with all your soul?
Not that there are merely times when this is so with you, but that this love has become altogether continuous.
Not that with a part of your soul, with a part of your self, you give yourself up to this love for God, so that, for instance, you want to be saved in order yourself to be happy, rather than to glorify your God forever.
And, likewise, not with a division of your soul between your God and your self, so that you still continuously commit robbery in your soul, by withdrawing a part of your desire, of your future, of your self-perception from God.
The demand is so awe-inspiring, it is so all comprehensive: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul," i. e., there shall no more be the least outgoing of life from you, except such as springs from love for God.
And to this you reply: "I should have to be an angel and no man to do this in all its fullness;" and you are right, provided you add: "no sinful man."
But for this you have your Savior, Who as Man has accomplished this perfect love for God in your behalf; and there will be peace in your soul, in spite of all your lack of love, if by a true faith you are hidden in this Savior.
* * * * * * *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.
© 2025 The Orthodox Presbyterian Church
