Love for God

I have recently been wrestling with idea of love for Jesus and the list of duties that come from it. Many times I have rejected the thought that in loving Jesus I must do duties. I keep thinking that to love Jesus is not a duty and to love Him, I can just, well, love Him. But, I have recently been reading through the book of Deuteronomy and have found many times in the book that a love for God (Jesus) is connected to obedience, which could be said to be a duty. Here is a list of some of the references that Moses makes to a love for God and obedience; 6:1-8, 10:12-13, 11:13, 11:22, 19:9, and 30:6-8. As I have been reading through this book I have realized that love of God must always be connected to obedience to God and His law. (When I mean the law in reference to Moses I mean the moral law that has come to all humans from God, not His civil or ceremonial law that He gave Israel.)

But I become surprised by the fact that a love for God must be connect to obedience. And as Deuteronomy 6 says we must put everything we have into this obedience and love for God. We cannot hit the cruise button on our obedience when we obey like everyone around us, we must strive for more love and more obedience in spite of others around us. And to make this duty of obedience harder, love for God must be the only motivational tool in obeying Him. We should never obey God in fear or with the idea that we can get something from God. We must obey God simply becasue we love Him. And obeying God leads us to delight in Him, which grows our love for Him which then should drive us to obey Him even more. Our motivation for obedience, which must be love, is just if not more important to God than is our level of preformace in that obedience. We must love God and show Him we love Him by obeying what He says.

So a love for God is connected to a duty becasue the only way we can show our love is by doing the duty of obedience.