September 9 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading:

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.

Devotional:

Nothing so offends the Christian soul as the superficial fencing and excited boasting about love which is still counted good form in our loveless social life. This playing with what is highest both in heaven and on earth, becomes specially offensive when, in unbelieving and semi-believing circles you hear time and again the high ideal of love abused, especially by entirely or partly emancipated women, in order effectually to resist therewith every honest confession of the Gospel.

Love is then said to be the whole of religion. Nothing more is needed. The Old Testament is far too unmerciful. Paul with his anathemas could at times be far too harsh, and has saved his honor only by his hymn of love in the thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians. John, the Apostle of Love, alone is a man one can idolize, for it is probably not true that he wanted to see fire come down from heaven to destroy the opponents of Jesus, and that he should have advised not even so much as to receive in one's house a person who denied the doctrine of Christ, is certainly recorded in the tenth verse of II John, but his epistles are unauthentic. Moreover, as lovers of love, they hold themselves alone to Jesus, who never allowed Himself to be led by anything except gentle, tender love. Though it is true that Jesus could be hard, even sharp, with the Pharisees, but this they themselves are too, for the Pharisees now are the orthodox Christians, and these they themselves do not spare. In their opinion, these slaves of the letter stand outside the law, hence also outside the law of love.

Do you not feel, and taste, that this false love-mania is inexorably judged by Jesus in what He said concerning the first and great commandment?

Oh, surely love alone—and nothing else than love counts. Love is what is highest, love is the one and all. But upon one condition, to wit: that all your love goes out from your love to God, that is to say, that in your love-life the love for God stands in the foreground, and that this love for your God shall so dominate all your love, that you love Him with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind.

Yea, as though this were not expressed clearly and definitely enough in such a way as to cut off the least misunderstanding and misapprehension, Jesus adds to this still a fourth claim, and binds it on your conscience, that this love for God only corresponds to the high ideal when it is a loving of God with all your strength.

Thus Jesus does not do what, altogether wrongfully, many a professed Christian does. He does not say: Yes, God is love, but you must also count with His holiness. No, your Savior places nothing above or beside love. Love to Him is all-sufficient. Only, He objects that this love as a rule is only shown towards the neighbor. He demands and wills that in your love, the love for God shall be the all-dominating starting-point, and He does not let you go until you understand that to your love for God no boundary may be put, and that it must also be a love for God with all your strength.

Love for God with all your soul, all your heart, and all your mind, may yet stop at the feelings, or be confined to the ideal, but when you must love God also with all your strength, then it claims your actual life, your whole personal existence, all the output of your person and life.

Strength is everything that goes out from you, by virtue of the endowment God has entrusted you with; as the expression of the talents that have been given you, of the powers and qualifications you have at your disposal, of the means at your command, of the influence you exert, of the time that is granted you, of the circumstances which make the exhibition of your strength possible.

And all these powers at your command, which are entrusted to you, under responsibility to Him Who gave them, Jesus demands that you shall exercise in such a way that in the working of them all the love for your God shall be the dominating element.

Do not take this in a false spiritual sense.

The idea is current that, in the virtue that goes out from us, the love for God only finds expression when we apply our strength exclusively to religious and spiritual things.

Consequently it is thought that he who becomes a Minister of the Word, loves God more than he who studies law or medicine; that he who devotes himself to Missions is more consecrated to God than he who spends his powers on the press; that an institution for saving unfortunates is of a higher order than an institution for scientific investigation. In brief, that love for God is more adequately expressed by service in the realm of particular grace, than by life in the broad domain of common grace.

This is all wrong. God's greatness and almightiness do not limit and bind themselves to the narrower domain of salvation of souls, but permeate our whole human life; and with every one of us, according to our talents and calling, love for God must express itself in every department of life with equal zeal and power.

A painter or sculptor can and should, just as consciously and just as intentionally, glorify God from love, as a missionary or a philanthropist. Nothing, not even the humblest calling, is here excluded. A farmer who holds a church office, should serve God from love with all his strength in stable and granary, as well as in his duties as church official. A mother in her family has as sacred a calling to love God with all her strength as a trained nurse in the home or as a woman missionary in the foreign field. False dualism, which relegates mother or servant to common life, and pronounces the nurse sacred, does not cherish love for God, but corrupts it.

Three sins here ensnare our life; the non-use, the wrong use and the abuse of powers entrusted to us. In each of these three the love of God is denied.

As there is no star in the firmament that is not called to shine for God's glory, so God has imparted no grain of gold to the soul of any child of man, but that the glow thereof must be brought out and glisten for God's honor.

But what the stars do not do, indolent man does do. Again and again you see people who have talent but bury it rather than make gains with it for God. Where then is the love for the Eternal Being? Surely it would require effort and self-denial to improve each latent talent to the full. But where is their love for their God when they can not afford this effort, this sacrifice, this self-denial for the sake of their dear God?

God's honor would be exhibited far more gloriously, even among Christians, if all these grains of hidden gold glistened in public sight instead of remaining covered by the dust of self-sufficiency and indolence.

The wrong use of talents is different, but it is equally sinful and loveless before God. In this case no efforts are spared, no sacrifices are counted too great, but the object is to secure position for oneself, to get on in the world, to please others, and to become rich, not toward God, but in public esteem.

Then one works and labors early and late, but without God; and from selfish motives—not from love of God. It is not a "working while it is day," and as a child from love for his Father, knowing that this Father shall supply all his needs; but it is a slaving that one may himself provide for his needs. It is all for the sake of lucre, and not for God.

And along this line one comes so easily to the third and still worse sin, namely: the abuse of one's gift, in opposition to God and His holinesses. Oh, who can count the men who might have shone as stars of the first magnitude, in honor of God, and who have abused their brilliant talents to break down what is holy, to attack the Word, to oppose religion, and at length, in rash arrogance, even try to destroy the faith in God of others? Who does not know them, the singers and artists, who have abused their talent to encourage wantonness and vanity and to draw souls away from God? How much wit has been abused to mock what is holy and make it appear ludicrous? How much keenness of insight has degenerated into cunning and slyness by fostering lies and dishonesty? How much maidenly beauty and loveliness have been sinned away in impure intention and passion to please?

Not love for God, but enmity against God has come to baneful expression in all this abuse.

Over against all this non-use, this wrong use, and this abuse of gifts and talents loaned to us, Jesus places before you nothing else than the claim of love for your God.

He binds this claim not upon the conscience of the world, for the world does not know the real love, because it does not know God, and all real love goes out from the love for God.

But Jesus puts this full claim unabbreviated and without any limitation before you who confess His holy Name; and He does not let go of you until the scales fall from your eyes and you begin to see that it is a sinning away of your life if you do not know homesickness for this full love for the Eternal which can not rest until it loves God also with all its strength.

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.