Love—a deep affection or intense feeling of care toward someone or something—is a beautiful and powerful force. We all love someone. We love our families, our friends, and even our pets. Love keeps us connected and gives us a sense of belonging. It motivates us to act, inspires us to grow, and corrects us when we falter.
The highest form of love, agape, is selfless and sacrificial. God demonstrated this perfect love through Jesus. In John 3:16, Jesus reveals the depth of God’s agape love: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Love, in its purest form, reflects God’s very nature—for God is love. So, there is nothing wrong with love itself.
But Satan, aware of our deep longing to be loved as God loves us, preys upon this need, distorting it for his own purposes. He convinces us that we can find that type of love in other places or with other things. The Devil deceives us, telling us that God wants us to find that kind of love anywhere we can because God would want us to be loved on earth like God loves us in heaven. Satan misleads us by telling us that God doesn’t care who or what we love because He is love, and God loves love. Yet, all of that is a lie. Satan disguises all kinds of sin behind the mask of love.
Instead of examining every command or teaching in Scripture about who and what we can love, I’d rather focus on the deeper issue hidden behind the mask of love. When we choose to seek love or give love to something or someone God has clearly told us not to, we are prioritizing ourselves and our desires over God. It is a difficult teaching and command, but one that is repeated throughout the Bible: we must love God more than ourselves (and our desires), and we demonstrate that love by obeying His commandments, no matter the situation.
Let’s examine some Scriptures that teach us that, above all, we must love God first and be willing to give up anything or anyone that causes us to stray from Him.
Do not love the world or anything that belongs to the world. If you love the world, you do not love the Father. – 1 John 2:15
Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” – John 14: 21
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Deut. 6:5
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. – John 14: 15
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. – Galatians 2:20
“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and man. – Matthew 6:24
For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. 1 John 5:3
Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. – John 14:23
And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good? – Deut. 10: 12-13
You shall therefore love the Lord your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always. – Deut. 11:1
Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart. – Psalm 119:2
Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God. – Joshua 23:11
These are just a few examples highlighting the connection between loving God and keeping His commandments. However, the Devil knows that if he places someone or something in our path, offering love that contradicts God’s commands, it will still tempt us because we were all created with a deep-seated desire to be loved and to show love. These temptations are exponentially harder for us to turn down. This temptation presents itself in the form of friends, partners, family, and more. We all long to be loved and the Devil knows it.
When the Devil presents us with those temptations, we must remember we are already loved. God loves us more than any person or anything can.
But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. – Romans 5:8
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. – 1 John 4: 9-10
For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—Ephesians 1: 4 -5
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. – 1 John 3:10
The Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. – Jeremiah 31:3
So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. – Eph. 3: 17-19
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 8: 38-39
Because God loves us in this way, we are called to love in the same manner. God sacrificed His only Son to save us. In the same way, we should be willing to sacrifice something or someone we love if it hinders us from loving God and obeying His commands. After all, we cannot love God and the world. #SinsGreatMasquerade
Adonai's Appeal 