None Greater

"We love because He first loved us," the apostle John penned (1 John 4:19).  "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" Paul explained to the Roman church (Rom. 5:8).  We have countless examples of God's love toward us, but how do we show our love to Him?  A king, a preacher, and a zealot were all loved by God, and their lives and actions testify to their love for God in return.

"'The LORD has sought out a man after his own heart,'" the prophet Samuel told King Saul (1 Samuel 13:14).  Paul affirmed this title for David when he told the Christians in Antioch that God had said, "'"I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after My heart, who will do all My will"'" (Acts 13:22). Always a zealous follower of God, David is first mentioned in the Scriptures when he was anointed by Samuel the prophet while Saul was still king.  Instead of violently grabbing the kingdom with his own two hands, David patiently waited for God's timing - even when Saul unlawfully sought David's life.  Armed with a sling, some stones, and a strong faith in the God of his fathers, the teenaged David struck down the giant Goliath, who had held the entire Israelite army in fear by his sheer presence.  David claimed the victory for God.  Later in David's life, David wanted to build a Temple for God, as he told Nathan the prophet: "'See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells in a tent'" (2 Samuel 7:2).  However, God told David that it was not for him to build the Temple of God, '"for you are a man of war and have shed blood'" (1 Chron. 28:3).  While obedient to God's command to wait and let David's son Solomon build the Temple, David still drew up the plans for the Temple - wanting to have some part in the building of the house of his God.  David wrote most of the Book of Psalms in the Bible, many of them listing the great things God had done for him and David's love for God in return: "I love you, O LORD, my strength" (Psalm 18:1).  David put God first in what he did and sought the things of God before the things of man.

The apostle John called himself, "the disciple whom Jesus loved" (John 20:2).  That doesn't mean that John was the only disciple that Jesus loved, but it does mean that John and Jesus had a close bond.  When Jesus died, He put His mother into the care of John (John 19:26-27).  Drawing from his own time with Jesus, John wrote extensively on love.  In the book of 1 John alone (a mere five chapters!), the word "love" appears thirty-six times.  1 John includes a description of love: "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 4:10).  "For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome...And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us" (1 John 5:3, 3:23).

Peter was the most headstrong and zealous of all Jesus' disciples, and often swung violently from one extreme to another.  When Jesus washed the disciples' feet, Peter objected, '"You shall never wash my feet.'" Jesus replied, '"If I do not wash you, you have no share with Me.'"  Peter emphatically declared, '"Lord, [wash] not my feet only, but also my hands and my head!'" (John 13:6-11).  He refused to believe that Jesus would one day be killed (Matt. 16:22-23).  When the mob came to take Jesus to the high priests, Peter heedlessly cut off the high priest's servant's ear (John 18:10; Luke 22:49-51). However, once the Spirit descended on him and he understood Jesus' purpose in coming to earth, Peter changed from his overly dramatic and zealous earlier days.  After Jesus' resurrection, He asked, '"Simon...do you love Me?"'  "'Yes, Lord, You know that I love You,"' Peter replied.  "'Feed My lambs,"' Jesus commanded Peter (see John 21:15-17).  If we love God, we will love and care for His children.  Six times in 1 and 2 Peter, the wise apostle entreated those receiving his letters to "love one another earnestly from a pure heart" (1 Peter 1:22) and "[l]ove the brotherhood" (1 Peter 2:17).  The man who once cut off a man's ear now entreated his friends to love each other.

Peter and John were probably present when a scribe wisely agreed with Jesus, '"And to love [God] with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices'" (Mark 12:33).  As King David showed us, to love God is to put Him before everything else.  We are not truly loving God when we are only performing the required minimum.  God wants us to love Him with all our heart, understanding, and strength - He wants to be first in our lives.  As the apostle John wrote, to love Him is to obey Him.  And as the zealot-turned-pastor Peter counseled, to love God is to love those He loves.  As the disciple whom Jesus loved said, "We love because He first loved us" (1 John 4:19).  Let us love the LORD our God with all our heart, our mind, and our heart, and love our neighbors like we love ourselves, for Jesus taught, '"There is no other commandment greater than these'" (see Mark 12:30-31).