The First Commandment: Love Gives All
I. WHOLEHEARTED LOVE FOR GOD
37 Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' 38 This
is the first and great commandment.” (Mt. 22:37-38)
A. Loving God with all of our heart is the great commandment because it is the one that encompasses all else. It is
the one that steadily takes over every area of our lives, from our thought life, our words, relationships, to the way we
spend time and money. If we truly give ourselves to loving Him entirely, we will in time love our neighbor as ourselves
and be given to extravagant service, yet with a heart burning in the sustaining fire of intimacy.
B. The only way to fulfill the Great Commandment is to fall in love with a real Person. Simply put but true nonetheless,
we cannot love Him unless we love Him in a very personal way. Love is the only way into such extravagance. This
command demands a holy lovesickness, a fierce passion for Jesus. Only those who are pierced by the passion of love
for Jesus in a personal way eventually will overcome the hindrances of love in heart, soul, mind, and strength.
C. That which is most important in the heart of God is to bring us into the utter yieldedness, the unreserved,
unrestrained love that gives everything and withholds nothing. And what He’s whispering night and day is: “this is
how I have loved you.”
II. THE SELF-GIVING NATURE OF LOVE
A. The Father gave everything to us in His only Son: The Father gave of His only, the Son of His love, the only begotten.
He drew out of the bowels of His eternal being and spared not that which He held most precious, most costly, and most
beloved. In the giving of His only Son, He gave all without reserve (Rom. 8:32; Jn. 3:16). The Son gave everything to us
in His own life, death and resurrection: Christ, the Son, poured Himself out in love unto me, giving Himself up for me utterly,
not just in the giving of His physical life unto death, but in the free offering of all of His excellencies, His beauties, His
preciousness and His own righteousness, indeed the essence of all that He is, He has entrusted to me, giving me His
Holy Spirit (Gal. 1:4, 2:20; Eph. 5:25).
B. The nature of the God of love from everlasting—both in the love shared within the Godhead and the love poured
forth unto mankind— is found in its utter emptying of itself for another. Greater love has no one than in the laying down
of the whole of his life for another (Jn. 15:13). It is not just that He has loved us in everlasting duration. It is not only that
the quality of His affections is immeasurable, but that the amount of His love is entire.
C. God is love and He alone defines love. He defines love first by the giving of His only Son and then by the call to
lay down our lives for our friends.
“By this we know love because He laid down His life for us…In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us
and sent His Son…” 1 Jn. 2:16; 3:10
Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. Jn. 15:13
III. JESUS HAS GIVEN ALL FOR LOVE
Therefore when He came into the world, He said: Sacrifice and offering You did not desire but a body You have prepared for
Me…Then I said, “Behold I have come—in the volume of the book it is written of Me—to do Your will O God. (Heb. 10:5 - 7)
A. The Baby that we find in the manger was the same One who was eternally the Possessor of All, the Author of Life,
the uncreated One who was with God from everlasting (Jn. 1:1; Mic. 5:2). He did not consider His eternal exaltation as
something to be grasped and used for His own gain, but rather He chose in transcendent love to empty Himself of so
great an exaltation, making Himself of no reputation and taking on the form of a bondservant (Phil. 2:6–7).
B. At times, our familiarity with the story is our greatest enemy of growing in love for God. We recite the drama so
effortlessly that our own knowledgeableness keeps us from greater entrance. For love to grow, wonder must pervade
every part of our lives.
C. The heart of Jesus in His self-giving is declared when He says, “It’s My delight to do Your will!” (Heb. 10:5,
Ps. 40:6 - 8)
D. When He gave us entrance into His own inheritance, it is not as though He drew a line in the sand and said,
“Thus far and no more.” Rather, He opened wide the riches of His glory and said to all those who are His, “All that I
have is yours” (Jn. 16:15).
E. In the pouring out of His soul unto death, love was given an eternal depiction, as if God the Father, who is Love,
were to say for all eternity, “Look upon this rendering of My affections and therein come to recognize My love” (1 Jn. 3:16; 4:9).
F. In the Cross Jesus fully embraces the poverty of human dependence. He was scourged, spit upon, beaten,
and mocked. In meekness He did not shield Himself from drinking the cup of rejection, suffering and death. He loved
us fully to the end (Jn. 13:1).
G. The Cross of Christ, the climax point of Love’s story told brings to a crescendo the thunder of God’s love.
What He bore in His body, the wounding and the marring, the piercing and the heaving, were the external telling of
the internal Self-giving.
H. Upon that hill called Calvary the fierce arrogance of mankind in all of his dark depravity, shook his fists in the face of
God, even tore His flesh and sneered boldly before His hanging frame. And there to convene and duel with that hideous
arrogance hung Love incarnate on a tree…Christ crucified. To every sneer, He countered with unfailing mercy. To the
deeds of highest hatred, He responded, “Father, forgive them…” over and over at every turn He proved the potency of
His love and demonstrated the nature of its resoluteness.
I. In our desire to love Him, one of the things we must do is to consider with loving devotion what He has eternally
given in the gift of Himself. What begins as familiar language must strike our hearts in wonder once again. We must take
that familiar cross to our hearts and meditate upon it day and night, until the dullness that we know is replaced with a
sacred devotion—until we can begin to see, with hearts flooded anew in love, why this Cross stands at the center of
human history, the climax of our story, the focal point of Love for all the ages (Song of Sol. 1:13).
IV. HE WANTS MY ALL FOR HIS ALL
A. For those of us that might have heard this beckoning of God in the great commandment with any tinge or tenor
of harshness; if this command has approached our hearts with a feeling of being too difficult or too extreme, we have yet
to understand the Person behind the plea, the heart behind the appeal.
B. When the piercing eyes of Jesus address me and beseech me to love Him with all of my mind, heart, soul and
strength, He asks of me with a beseeching born out of His own living (Matt. 22:37). He wants my everything for His
everything, my all for His all.
C. With this understanding of how He has emptied Himself for love, His highest command rings in my heart with the deep
undertones of His own obedience of this same command. He invites me to keep His commandments just as He Himself
has kept His Father’s commandments, calling them good and not burdensome (Jn. 15:10; 1 Jn. 5:3).
V. RESPONDING TO HIM IN UTTER GIVENNESS
A. Bernard of Clairvaux stated, “It is true that the creature loves less because she is less. But if she loves with her
whole being, nothing is lacking where everything is given.”
B. God has loved us with all that He is, emptying Himself in love to the uttermost, and though I am yet weak and
broken, when I love Him in this same way, giving Him all that I am in the here and now, nothing is lacking where everything
is given.
C. The Father has willed from eternity to bring us in to the same glorious love that He Himself possesses, causing
the very love with which He has loved His Son to also be within us—love unspeakably full in its utter givenness
(Jn. 17:26). Jesus prayed that the very love that God has for Him would be in us. He told us that the very love with
which the Father has loved Him, He has loved us with and we are to abide in and know that love. This is an invitation
not to imitation but to participation---participation in God’s own everlasting love.
D. We love because He first loved, and as we become ruined in a holy way by His unrestrained love, we in turn will give
ourselves to love Him in the same way.
I count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all
things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ. Phil. 3:8
If a man were to give for love all the wealth of his house, it would be utterly despised. S.S. 8:7
E. There is an unmistakable and profound joy coming to the heart that withholds nothing from God. Though there
is a measure of enjoyment found when we love Him with a good percentage of our lives, He gives to us a pleasure
incomparable when we give to Him those final fractions, that last small percentage of our everything. Joy unspeakable
is found in love unrestrained.
These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full...Greater love has
no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. Jn. 15:11- 13
VI. MARY OF BETHANY: A PORTRAIT OF GIVENNESS TO GOD
“Being in Bethany…as He sat at the table, a woman came having an alabaster flask of very costly oil of spikenard. She
broke the flask and poured it on His head. Some were indignant…and said, "Why was this…oil wasted? It might have
been sold for…300 denarii and given to the poor." They criticized her sharply. Jesus said, "Let her alone…She has
done a good work for Me…Wherever this gospel is preached…what this woman has done will be told as a memorial
to her.” Mk. 14:3-9
A. Mary Anoints Jesus
1. As all were gathered a¬nd conversations ensued, Mary entered the room carrying her most valuable possession, a flask
of spikenard containing the wealth of her entire inheritance, of worth of $40,000 in our day. It was her very future,
enclosed in a bottle, kept for her dowry, now brought to break open and pour over Jesus (Matt. 26:7; Mk. 14:3). At the
breaking of the flask, a bursting gasp of shock was swallowed by the tense silence that followed, a hushed atmosphere
thick with allegation and yet permeated in fragrance (Matt. 26:8–9; Mk. 14:4; Jn. 12:5).
2. As the bottle was broken, the oil emptied upon Jesus, and the fragrance wafted generously through the room,
the pulsating silence was seared by severe charges of the indignant disciples. “Why this waste?!” went forth their
accusation, “This perfume could have been sold and given to the poor!”
B. Jesus Vindicates Mary
7 But Jesus said, “Let her alone; she has kept this for the day of My burial. 8 For the poor you have with you always,
but Me you do not have always.” (Jn. 12:1-8)
1. Finally Jesus speaks and His words come with a cutting silencing to the indignation of His disciples. He vindicate
Mary with a demand that these men leave her alone in their charges and He commends her love in pouring out her
inheritance, calling it a “good work” because it flowed out of profuse love.
2. I believe that as Jesus looked into the heart of this young woman and perceived her intense resolve of love and sacrifice,
He recognized an eternal attribute of His own love—a love that gives entirely. Mary’s voluntary sacrifice to give Jesus her
security for the future resounded with the characteristic of love reminiscent of His own sacrifice—the love that gives
everything and withholds nothing. His is a love that volunteers itself with sacred excess and holy, unnecessary
abundance. I believe it was this same sort of profusion that Jesus beheld in Mary’s offering.
Wherever this gospel is preached…what this woman has done will be told as a memorial to her." (Mk. 14:9)
3. Jesus voiced His command that this portrait be included in the telling of the true Gospel (Matt. 26:13). The great
story of the eternal ages is about the unnecessary, wasteful, excessive offering of love. With this love God has loved us,
and with this same kind of love He wants to be loved.