How to inherit eternal life, part 8: loving God with all your mind

And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" And He said to him, "What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?" And he answered, "YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF." And He said to him, "You have answered correctly; DO THIS AND YOU WILL LIVE." (Luke 10:25-28 NASB)

We are continuing our study on how to inherit eternal life by loving God. In previous posts, we looked at how to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength. Today, we look at how to love God with all our mind. (You can click on the links to open a new window and review those posts.) 

The word translated as "mind" is dianoia". This is a profound word that we, in the body of Christ, need to embrace. Dianoia is literally a "thinking through". To love God with our mind, then, is to spend time pondering, reflecting on Him and on His Word. To do this, we must know His Word by studying it and "thinking it through" so that we understand it and its implications for our life. This love by dianoia involves knowing Him and meditating on His attributes.

It may be that loving God with all our mind, dianoia, is critical for loving God with all our heart, soul, and strength. When we make the effort to know Who God is, we have a better understanding of this One we serve. Understanding the majesty and might of our God should bring us to a position of humility and love before Him. When we love Him with our mind, studying His Word to know what He expects of us and the relationship He offers us, it should change our life. 

We use our minds to "think through" this life of faith, and it is with our minds that we make the choice to follow Him. If we truly understand something of our relationship to our loving heavenly Father, we must desire to please Him, honor Him, and obey Him, for knowing God must bring us to loving Him. It is only through dianoia that we gain this knowledge. 

To review, the initial question was "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" When Jesus asked the lawyer how he understood the law, he replied, "Love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself." Jesus replied, "You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live." Inheriting eternal life involves "doing". It is not the doing of walking down an aisle, being baptized, or filling out a commitment card that brings us eternal life. All of those acts may be a part of our walk of obedience, but it is the "doing" of loving God that brings eternal life, and it is accomplished through relationship with our triune God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

Loving God, then, begins with dianoia, this thinking through so that we have understanding. It is a "thinking through with results", rather than a pointless, pie-in-the-sky pondering. Dianoia requires that our pondering have change as its objective, so that we might understand God better and live in ways that please Him more. It requires that we be still and learn to know our God. Loving with our mind is the way we begin to love Him with every fiber of our being because it is the way we learn to know the God we love. 

Selah. Pause and consider.

Then, dear ones, love Him with dianoia.
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There is much to learn of faith and following from the story of Jairus, who trusted Jesus for the life of his daughter when it seemed that all hope was gone. The story is examined with dianoia in The Waiting: When the Answer to Your Prayer is Delayed and Your Hope is Gone, and is available here. Also available in Tupelo at Joyful Creations and Park Place Salon.

How to inherit eternal life, part 6: loving God with our soul

And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" And He said to him, "What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?" And he answered, "YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF." And He said to him, "You have answered correctly; DO THIS AND YOU WILL LIVE." (Luke 10:25-28 NASB)

In the previous post, we looked at loving the Lord with all our heart. (You can click on the link to read it.) Today, we consider loving the Lord with all our soul. 

The word translated as "soul" is psychē, and is used here to indicate "the seat of the feelings, desires, and affections". (BLB) The soul is the part of us that is eternal and cannot be destroyed. To love God with all our feelings, our desires, and our affections is not a whimsical kind of love. It requires the kind of "taking every thought captive" that Paul wrote about in 2 Corinthians 10:5. We cannot love God with feelings that are sinful, with desires that are perverse, with affections that are ungodly. Loving God requires us to take ungodly thoughts, feelings, desires, affections captive and sacrifice our desires to His. 

When we read the words of the Psalmist, we assume God will give us what we want. Look again at those words.

Delight yourself in the Lord; 

And He will give you the desires of your heart. 

Psalm 37:4 NASB

The promise is not that God will give us whatever we desire. The promise is that He will give us new desires. He will give us His desires as our own, and when He does, that seat of desire, our soul, can love Him more fully, more completely. In fact, in this place deep in our hearts, we  cannot love as we ought unless the Lord Himself places His desires in our hearts. That placing happens when we take delight in Him. As we love, He equips us to love more. 

Perhaps that sounds as if we are impotent bystanders, but nothing could be further from the truth. It is a constant work of submission to wrestle the seat of our feelings, desires, and affections into submission to God, but when we forge ahead in that work which must be done, we find a love that is greater and more complete than any other. 

We are not to be ruled by feelings; instead, we are to act our way into new feelings. Do we feel cranky and irritable? Perhaps. Instead of acting out on that irritability, however, we must, with God's help, choose love instead. By responding in love rather than reacting in irritability, we love God with our feelings. 

When we want the things of the world, we must relinquish our desire for what tantalizes and choose the things of God instead. By relinquishing our desires, we love God with our desires. It is the same with affections. Do our relationships, our affection for the things of this world help us love God more or draw us away? We must choose to place our affections on "things above", loving the things God loves, the people God loves. In loving what God loves, in loving those whom God loves, we love Him with "all our soul". This loving those whom God loves may be the hardest part, but it is worth it! When we love the unlovely, we love as God has loved us, for who could be more unlovely that we ourselves? 

Oh dear ones, all this relinquishing and submitting sounds like a dreadful job and a devastating loss, but it brings the sweetest joy imaginable. Let us not forget that it is in loving God with every fiber of our being, Christ said, that we live, both now and in eternity. It is a radical, unpopular love, but therein is life. Love Him, friends, love Him with all the feelings, desires, and affections in your heart and you will find joy immeasurable and hope overflowing.

How to Inherit Eternal Life, part 4: Lordship

And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" And He said to him, "What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?" And he answered, "YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF." And He said to him, "You have answered correctly; DO THIS AND YOU WILL LIVE." (Luke 10:25-28 NASB)

The lawyer (expert in Mosaic law) asked Jesus a simple question. "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus asked him what the law said and he responded with two verses that are the essence of the law. "Love God. Love your neighbor." Jesus replied, "Do this and you will live." The love of which the lawyer spoke is the kind of love that will lead us to abundant life in this world and eternal life in the next. This love, however, is a beautiful and all-consuming love, and we will look at the kind of love we should have for the next few days. 

You shall love the Lord Your God

What does it mean to love the Lord Your God? Let's start with the word translated as "Lord." The word here is kyrios and is used to indicate the owner of a thing (or person) or the master. The kyrios has the authority to make all decisions concerning the one owned. The term is used as a title of both respect and reverence. The kyrios is the one in charge and what he says goes. Loving God appropriately begins with understanding who He is and who we are not. Almighty God is the One in charge, not us. We must defer to Him in every decision, trusting His Will for us and our lives. 

Until we understand and submit to God as Master, Owner, Planner, and Decider of every aspect of our lives, we will not love Him as we should. The problem comes when what we want is different from what God wants, doesn't it? If we look at the example of Christ, the Suffering Servant who became the Sin Sacrifice for all mankind, we get a glimpse of the extent to which God went for us. It also gives us a glimpse of the will of God and causes us to fear incredible sacrifice of our own. We dare not hold back from the One who gave everything for us, yet we do, mostly from fear of having to submit our will to His Will. 

I struggle with this, as do we all. This business of submitting to the One who has the authority to make every decision concerning us is difficult. We put our faith in a God we cannot see to direct the circumstances of the life we can see, and how blessed we are when we do this, for it is then that we begin to see the evidence of our Lord at work in our lives. The problem, of course, is that we want to direct our own fate, despite the fact that we do a poor job of it. 

We have a choice to make, right at the start. We can submit to the Master and allow Him to BE our Master, or we can direct our own lives and live in rebellion. We cannot have it both ways. Jeremiah 29:11 promises us that the plans God has for us are good, that they will be for our good and not for evil, and that those plans will give us a future and a hope. When we understand that, when we believe that, it becomes a simple choice to allow the One with good plans to proceed. 

Dear ones, the choice is simple, but it must be made. Will we allow our God to be our Lord, or not? The time to choose is now. Loving God demands it.