What does it mean to love God? That is a vital question! There is a lot of confusion about this in the world. Everybody would answer that question differently. Remarkably, even among God’s people today, there is confusion about what it means to love God.
If you are baptized, you made a personal covenant with God. You said you would be willing to give up your family, to give up even your life—to give up anything for God (Luke 14:26, 33). For us today, that even meant being willing to give up our church.
The sad truth is, a great many people who have made that covenant have proved themselves unwilling to do that! They simply don’t love God that much!
How about you?
Stop and think about this: Are you determined not to compromise with or break even one word of God? Are you willing to die for God’s truth? Does your love for the truth empower you to face such a test? Do you love God that much? Will you give up anything and everything for God? You will—if you truly know what it means to love God!
Before we explore areas where we can examine our love for God, let’s see how God views this subject and how He feels about those whose love has gone cold.
Test of Love
This question is extremely important to God. So much so that He administered a searing test of love to His own people.
After Herbert W. Armstrong died in 1986, the Worldwide Church of God came under corrupt leadership. The leaders cast God’s truth to the ground, and the members allowed it to happen because they didn’t love the truth. Scripture says so!
In 2 Thessalonians 2, Paul prophesied that, just before Jesus Christ’s Second Coming, there would be a great “falling away” among Church members (verses 1-3). How could such a spiritually catastrophic event occur? Verse 10 explains: “And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish [‘are perishing’ is the proper translation]; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.” These are people God wants to save and give eternal life to. Yet they are perishing because they don’t love God and His truth the way they should! Unless something like the Great Tribulation jolts them and they turn their lives around, they will not be in God’s Kingdom. These are high stakes!
Clearly, God’s people must know what it means to love God!
Notice how God tested their love: “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie” (verse 11). God sent His own people strong delusion! Some find it inconceivable that He would do such a thing. However, the Bible is clear about this.
Why would God send strong delusion? To determine who really loves Him and who doesn’t.
When this happened in the Worldwide Church of God, many people remained in the Church, pinning their hopes on Jesus Christ straightening it out. They reasoned that He wouldn’t desert the Church and would surely remove the rebellious leaders. But that didn’t happen. Those leaders remained and plowed ahead toward disaster.
What did happen? What happened was what was prophesied: Christ removed His lamp from that Church and raised up another one. This crucial history is explained in my free book Malachi’s Message to God’s Church Today.
You must know about those events and view them the way God does. If you do, you can understand why God did what He did. The Church is the Bride of Jesus Christ! Christ deeply loves His Bride, and He wants to know that she loves Him back—loves Him more than anything else. God must know how much you love Him!
Message of Love
The message from the Prophet Malachi is very different from that brought by Haggai and Zechariah. Those prophets came and straightened out the problems among the Jews. That is similar to how, in the 1970s, on more than one occasion, Mr. Armstrong straightened out the Church. The message of Malachi is different; it is about people who will not listen—people who actually argue with God!
Notice this warning: “The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. I have loved you, saith the Lord. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? …” (Malachi 1:1-2). Why is this message a burden? Because many of God’s people won’t listen to what God says about love. That is the issue of the book of Malachi: God’s people simply will not listen to what God is telling them about their spiritual condition. These words are a burden—and so are the consequences. God is saying, If you don’t correct these things, I’m going to deal with you in a way that’s going to be a great burden! This is serious business God has called us into!
Understand: God is going to judge you on how much you love Him and His Word! He is deeply concerned about that.
If you were an affianced groom about to take a bride, you would want a woman who put you above every other man. You wouldn’t want a wife who wasn’t excited to marry you! Jesus Christ feels the same way about His Bride. God wants you to love Him with all your heart, soul and might! (Deuteronomy 6:5).
In God’s Church, rebellious ministers offer God polluted bread—bread not taken from God’s Word (Malachi 1:7). They offer it to God’s people and tell them it’s good. They even act like they ought to win God’s favor by giving it. God says, No way—I’m not accepting that!
There is a lesson here for each of us. What do we offer God? He wants the best you have to give!
He wants your best energy in prayer and study. He wants the best sacrifice you can offer. God is that way: He gives us His best (e.g. John 3:16). He wants our best, and He has the right to ask for it.
You are a spiritual sacrifice for God today—good or bad (Romans 12:1). So many of God’s people today are offering substandard spiritual sacrifices. What does God think of that? “And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? and if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith the Lord of hosts” (Malachi 1:8). This isn’t talking about physical animals—it is talking about prayer and study, spiritual matters! Malachi is depicting the Laodicean attitude (Revelation 3:17-18). They are blind and lame spiritually.
If Christ had been a sick and lame sacrifice, you and I would have no future! God wants us to imitate His sacrifice (Philippians 2:5).
Are you giving God a lame sacrifice? A sick sacrifice? Or a royal, Christ-like sacrifice? God isn’t interested now in animal sacrifices. He is deeply concerned about you as a sacrifice.
Christ prophesied that in the end time, the love of many of God’s people would wax cold (Matthew 24:12). It is love that God is concerned about. They don’t know what the love of God is. Yet with so many of them, the less love they have, the more they talk about it! Their love is a counterfeit of God’s agape love.
God’s law is love. Keeping that law is what love is all about. “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments …” (1 John 5:3). Human reasoning will never tell you what true love is. God’s law will.
Purification of Love
God does not like what the Laodicean ministers are doing, so He is going to purify them spiritually. “[H]e is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap: And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness” (Malachi 3:2-3).
This is good news. The very fact that God says He purifies these precious metals shows there is good gold and silver to come from the process. What good would it do to purify if there weren’t some gold there, some character there? God says there is something of value—it just must be purified.
We all need to be purified spiritually. If we don’t allow God to purify us, then we have a problem.
Love has to be purified. We must be purified, and our love must be purified. We need the kind of love where we are totally passionate about living by every word of the Bible—to the extent that we are fanatics, as the world would view it! Our love must be so pure that we would very happily give up anything for God, including our own lives if we had to. That is real love! This is the pure love Christ is looking for in His Bride.
Many biblical figures, especially Abraham, proved they would give up anything for God. Mr. Armstrong was a modern-day example of total devotion. A love so pure primes an individual for the Kingdom of God.
“Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord, as in the days of old, and as in former years” (verse 4). God is going to return people to the zealous state they were in before their love waxed cold, when Mr. Armstrong was leading the Church of God.
“And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the Lord of hosts” (verse 5). Here is the foundation of their problems: They do not fear God.
That leads to all sorts of problems. The Laodiceans are committing spiritual adultery. The rebellious ministers have oppressed God’s children, the widows, the orphans, those called to labor for God. Those ministers used financial pressure to persuade the people to accept their lies; if you didn’t go along with what they said, they would cut you off. If you talked about Mr. Armstrong, they became very oppressive. That is a terrible lack of godly love!
Love God Even in Trial
“Your words have been stout [or arrogant] against me, saith the Lord. Yet ye say, What have we spoken so much against thee?” (Malachi 3:13). The Hebrew word translated “stout” is the same word used for “harden” in Exodus 4:21. These leaders hardened their hearts against God like Pharaoh. Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg translates the verse, “Ye do violence to me with your discourses” (Christology of the Old Testament).
These people have an arrogant attitude. It’s not like they have a weakness in faith that God can work with. This is a problem where they arrogantly speak out against God! They need humility! They must be refined. You can’t take what God says lightly, speak back to Him, and then pass on as if nothing happened. Their condition shows that they don’t love God like they should.
“Ye have said, It is vain to serve God: and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinance, and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of hosts?” (Malachi 3:14). These people know they have served God, but they say, Well, what did it profit us? They exhibit a terrible attitude. They have come to believe serving God is “vain”! They see God’s way of life as useless. In reality, they have succumbed to the pressures of our society. They have fallen back to Egypt.
The truth is, the Laodiceans never fell in love with God’s doctrines and way of life.
God’s way produces real joy! We should be on a spiritual high most of the time, but these people are walking around mournfully because of their attitude. If we go through life mournfully, something is wrong; we’re not using God’s Spirit the way we should.
Of course, we have trials and may fight depression at times, but we should not have a mournful way of life. When you find yourself in a trial, what do you think about God? How much do you love Him then? Some people don’t see God’s purpose in trials. Those who are self-righteous and arrogant wonder why God is trying them.
If we really see ourselves and our sins as we should, we know we need trials at times! We don’t like it, but we know we need them. And we ought to love God for it because, through trials, He purifies us.
Reviving Love
Malachi then describes a faithful remnant who truly loves God. “Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name” (Malachi 3:16).
Hengstenberg says, “The then [in the Hebrew] shows that the latter were occasioned by the former and were opposed to them.” The “then” shows that those who spoke often one to another opposed those who didn’t fear God.
Those in the Philadelphia Church of God refused to go along with the Worldwide Church of God’s doctrinal changes. They took great exception to the termination of Mystery of the Ages. They were furious over the treatment of Mr. Armstrong. They began to speak out against it. They began to talk to one another as they realized something was not right in the Church.
Why did they speak up? Because they loved God. They loved His Word. We reveal our love for God in our love for His Word.
Love caused them to remember. They remembered because they love God. Nothing will pull them away from God!
“And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts …” (verse 17). How loving God is toward these people! This is the way God reasons: You are mine, He says; you are my Bride!
Here is what God will do: “… in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him” (verse 17). “Jewels” means these people are special, most prized, among all of God’s possessions! God loves them so very much! God has tender love for His people. Every father wants to spare his son. God will spare those who reciprocate His love.
And these people feel the same way about God as He does about them. God is their most precious jewel! He is their life. They swoon over His attention and the fact that they are His. They love being His!
Does this describe you? If you fear God and remember Him, God sees that and says these very romantic things about you! That makes you God’s special treasure!
God is working through the Philadelphia Church of God today to revive the law of love. He wants us to show people what true love really is. While the Laodiceans cause others to stumble at the law, we must correct that. He wants us to remember and revive the true love of God. That is why we are here.
Here are four areas in which we must examine our love for God. See these subjects from God’s perspective, and it will deepen your understanding of what it means to love God.
1. Love God’s Government
How much do you love God’s government? Do you want God to govern your life? God governs His people directly through the Holy Spirit, but He also does so through the government structure He has put in place within His Church (e.g. 1 Corinthians 12:12-30; Ephesians 4:4-16).
Some people don’t like any form of government; they can’t get along in any church. But if we love God, we ought to profoundly love His government.
Here is how God describes the work of Herbert W. Armstrong: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse” (Malachi 4:5-6). God is mainly addressing the ministry here, but remember that the subject is family love—turning the hearts of fathers to children and children to fathers. That is not just talking about physical family, but about God’s Family.
God has turned His mind toward us—we need to turn our minds toward Him and love Him. If people can love God, they will love their children, their family and everybody. That will revolutionize our lives, turn everything around, and change the whole world!
Note the warning at the end of that passage in Malachi! Of the word curse, Hengstenberg wrote, “[E]very thing terrible, which can be conceived, is contained in this one word,” and said those so cursed “could in no way again be redeemed” (op cit). These people are about to receive the ultimate curse and lose their eternal lives! God says, Anybody who reaches the point where they turn away from me and they don’t love me, I have no use for them!
To avoid that curse, we must turn our hearts to God and love His government.
“Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present truth” (2 Peter 1:12). This verse says we must remember past truth “and be established in the present truth.” We must regularly review foundational truths, like those God restored to His Church through Mr. Armstrong, to make sure we don’t let them slip. We also must be established in present truth. Anytime God reveals new truth, He does so through His government, and He uses His government to proclaim that truth. To get established in the present truth, we must have government.
God calls people who are adept researchers who prove His truth. That is a good, healthy trait; God commands that (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Some people, however, have gotten carried away with endless research and begun to rely more on their own reasoning and interpretation than on recognizing how God has used His government to teach us (e.g. Romans 10:14). Satan has wedged his way in and drawn them away from God.
So in 2 Peter 1:12 God says, First let’s make sure we have the right foundation. Always be in remembrance of the truths you have already been taught. That gets you grounded. You have solid direction as you study present truth.
Don’t become a religious hobbyist who hops from one point to another to another and never really digs in and gets established in what God has given—past and present truth. We must do things according to God’s direction through His government.
Through His government, God provides a leader to stir us up and help keep us in remembrance (verses 13-15). He used Peter to establish His Church, and He has used a human leader ever since. To have a Work, we must have leadership. Through God’s government, we have unity.
God’s people would have chaos and confusion if we lacked leadership. The reality is, Satan is always attacking God’s government. He seeks to disrupt God’s Work, discourage God’s people, and attack those whom God is calling. So it is crucial we be deeply grounded in God’s government and show our love toward God by loving His government.
“Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy [Spirit]” (verses 20-21). We cannot privately interpret; God must do it. That is not an easy thing to do, though. God has to show us how to do that.
God has always used human leaders. He has always had a government that He moved and stirred with His Spirit. And He uses a loyal following to back and support that leadership in establishing present truth.
God will spare those who submit themselves to His government. There is coming a time when God is going to take His people to the place of safety where He can spare them. To know how that will be done, we must have government in God’s Church. That is the way Christ has always worked.
2. Love God’s Law
Over and over in the Bible, we see the command to show our love for God by obeying His law.
Moses said, “And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, To keep the commandments of the Lord, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good?” (Deuteronomy 10:12-13).
The Prophet Jeremiah wrote, “And I will delight myself in thy commandments, which I have loved. My hands also will I lift up unto thy commandments, which I have loved; and I will meditate in thy statutes. … Therefore I love thy commandments above gold; yea, above fine gold. … Thy word is very pure: therefore thy servant loveth it” (Psalm 119:47-48, 127, 140).
Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). That’s simple enough: Keep God’s commandments! Obedience is key.
“He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. … If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him” (verses 21, 23). Keep these words, and Jesus Christ and God the Father will live in your life! Keep these words, and you will do astounding things! God will use you in a way that will amaze you.
It’s not always easy to keep those words, especially when someone criticizes you for it or a family member threatens to leave you. But we must keep God’s words. Jesus Christ is saying, I want my words, this Bible, to be the absolute master of your life. The person who is totally ruled by God keeps His words.
“He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings …” (verse 24). In this end time, most of God’s own people have not kept His sayings! That shows they don’t love Him! Rather, they act like harlots toward their Husband.
“If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love” (John 15:10).
The law defines the love of God. The Apostle John wrote, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous. … And this is love, that we walk after his commandments. This is the commandment, That, as ye have heard from the beginning, ye should walk in it” (1 John 5:3; 2 John 6).
Jesus shows that God’s entire law is about love. “And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And 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” (Mark 12:29-30). The first of all the commandments is about love directed toward God. The second (verse 31) is about love toward man—though even that shows love toward God.
Do you love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength?
Fearof punishment can move people, but that isn’t the motivation God wants in us. He wants love. Think about a man and his bride. Should fear motivate her to do good things for him? No! Hopefully her motivation is that she loves him! She wants to serve him because she loves him with her heart, mind and being! It’s the same way with God. He doesn’t want you to obey out of fear or out of duty. He desires a spiritually romantic relationship with you!
God tells us in the First Commandment to have no other gods before Him (Exodus 20:3). He doesn’t want you to put anything before Him, and that includes yourself.
The Second Commandment forbids idolatry: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God …” (verses 4-5). God is saying, I’m a jealous Husband. I don’t want my wife dabbling her foot in the sewer of this world. I’m jealous, and she is special to me, and I want her to be holy like I am.
How jealous over God are you? Surely you would speak up and defend your spouse if somebody came along and began to slander him or her. God wants that same feeling toward Him. We get upset when somebody begins to slander God’s holy name. He is our Husband. If anybody, even our own human reasoning, tries to slander Him, we must stand up and put a stop to it! That is the kind of romance that God wants with us.
3. Love God’s Sabbath
The Fourth Commandment says, “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy” (verse 8). Read the remainder of the Sabbath command in verses 9-11.
Do you keep the Sabbath holy? How you keep the Sabbath expresses your love toward God. The Sabbath is law. Therefore, we must be very careful how we keep it. If you water down God’s Sabbath day and the way you keep it, you show less love for God.
The Sabbath should be a delight (Isaiah 58:13-14). It’s a day of spiritual rejuvenation. God says it is fine to do good deeds on the Sabbath day (Matthew 12:9-13). It is a day for giving and feasting with great opportunities to get together and serve others. You can visit someone who is sick. Fellowshiping with other Church members is a way we show love toward God, but our fellowship with God comes first and foremost. Satan can use a wrong focus in fellowship to diminish the vital spiritual impact of the Sabbath. He wants you to go about your Sabbath in a ritualistic way where you are not really gaining the benefits God wants you to.
The Sabbath enables you to draw closer to God. You need to spend more time with Him. You have more time for more prayer and study, and your time in prayer and study on the Sabbath will be more effective because His presence is in this day in a special way. In your study, you show your love toward God and get to know Him better. You can carry that spirit forward and have a good spiritual week.
The important question is, how much do you love God on the Sabbath? God is evaluating each of us. He doesn’t want us to be unbalanced and self-righteous. He wants us to be balanced. Ask Him for pure motivation in your Sabbath-keeping.
4. Love God’s Word
“But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him” (1 John 2:5). If you keep this Word, you will grow in love. If you get away from it, life will not work.
It’s not natural for human beings to have and express God’s love. God’s love will lead you to do things that are humanly unusual.
Jesus Christ demonstrated this love. For instance, He looked at Judas Iscariot, knowing he had betrayed Him, and called him friend (Matthew 26:50). That is a love that is not natural.
The tragedy of so many turning away from God in this end time is reminiscent of those who turned away in the first century. “From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him” (John 6:66). Many of His disciples didn’t keep His Word, and their love faded. Humanly it is not natural to stay with God.
“Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life” (verses 67-68). Peter recognized the words of eternal life. He saw no value elsewhere. He wasn’t influenced by those who turned and walked away. He said, Let those guys go. You have the words, and I’ll stay here. That is to Peter’s credit, and that’s why God recorded this.
What place do the words of eternal life take in your life? Are you prepared to give up your family to keep God’s Word? Are you willing to leave whatever church you grew up in or joined? Are you prepared to even give up your life? When you have the words of eternal life, to whom shall you go?
Is your love for God’s Word so strong that you will endure any opposition against it? If you cannot see through the agenda of those who persecute this Work, that is to your great shame.
Most of God’s people in this Laodicean era have let down in their love for God’s Word, God’s truth. If that is you, you must remember the baptismal covenant you made with God. You said, I will give up anything; family, life, anything, because of these words. Don’t let yourself forget that contract you made with God.
We have these words of eternal life. In an age when so many have turned away, a faithful few remain who love God’s Word and who are not about to let it go. We base everything on God’s Word and live according to His Word.
Be among those faithful few. That is what it means to truly love God!