How Do We Love God?

22 August 2025  Matthew 22:34-40

“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Matthew 22:37

It is a good thing to know what everything depends on.

Jesus says that the whole Bible rests on just two verses: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (cf. Deuteronomy 6:4-5) and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). Everything depends on these two commandments, Jesus says (Matthew 22:40), and falls apart without them.

So how do we do that? How exactly do we love God with everything we have, and our neighbors as ourselves?

Jesus points us to the oldest prayer in Judaism, which is still a central feature of Jewish prayer: the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). The part that comes after “You shall love the Lord, your God…” describes five steps that form disciples in the love of God and the love of neighbor.

1. “These words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart… (Deuteronomy 6:6). The word of God in scripture must be our great preoccupation. We won’t see anyone or anything clearly apart from that, and without clear understanding love is misunderstood and misplaced. Love of God and neighbor means we are thinking about the word of God all the time.

2. “And you shall teach them diligently to your children…” (6:7). The most effective evangelists people ever have are their parents, and so parents must be clear and intentional about teaching the young what the Bible says. If parents don’t know what the Bible says, then they have to learn, too. If churches have parents who don’t know what the Bible says (and they all do), then churches have toteach it.

3. “And you shall speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise…” (6:7). Sharing the word of God must be clear and intentional, wherever we are, and whatever we are doing. Love of God and neighbor means seeking ways constantly for the effective sharing of the gospel: “Always be ready to make a defense to anyone who asks you to account for the hope that is in you” (I Peter 3:15).

4. “And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be an emblem between your eyes…” (6:8). To this day orthodox Jews pray with small leather boxes containing a text of the Shema tied to their arms and foreheads (they are called phylacteries). Our devotion to the word of God must be obvious, not a hint; explicit, not implicit. If people have to wonder whether we are believers, then we are keeping too much hidden.

5. “And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house, and on the gates of your cities….” (6:9). Our testimony to the word must be proclaimed as public truth, not private opinion. You don’t need to know anything to have an opinion. The word of God is not our opinion, but public truth, and we need to learn the ways to proclaim it as such. This is likely to be offensive to the many who regard religion as just a hobby, so we need to be ready with the reasons why the gospel is public truth.

If everything depends on love of God and love of neighbor, then everything depends on these five steps, too.