This article will attempt answer the question from the last article Our purpose in life, Fear God and obey His commands for this man's all or duty (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).
So, what are God's commands? How do we know if we are in obedience to the Lord? That is an open ended question I believe, but lets see how far we get shall we?
The first command is found in Exodus 20:3, you shall have no other gods before Me.
How many of us really contemplate the heaviness of this command? People then like now are polytheistic; meaning they are idol worshippers - giving obeisance to created things. God commands us all to monotheism, the worship of Him alone. If one never acknowledges their Creator as Lord of all, they will never obey Him. Our wicked nature needs the power of the Word of God to subdue our evil resistance so that we can submit to Him in reverence.
Remember, God's commands are just that, His commands. They are never suggestions. The Lord commands obedience because He loves and knows what is best for us.
Jesus Mary and Martha
Now it happened as they went that He entered a certain village; and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus' feet and heard His word. But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Him and said, "Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me."
And Jesus answered and said to her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her" (italics added for emphasis; Luke 10:38-41).
Can you see the tenderness and love Jesus has for Martha? Notice He did not tell her to stop what she was doing and sit at His feet like Mary was doing. But, Mary had her priorities in check. If God Almighty came to your house for a visit wouldn't you stop whatever you were doing to worship and listen to His every word for dear life?
Then again, perhaps many wouldn't.
This is how we are to love the Lord our God: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength (Deuteronomy 6:4).
God through His servant Moses is commanding the children of Israel that they are to love the Lord with every fiber of their being. God delivered them from Egyptian slavery and made them free. God was telling them they now have a new Master, God Almighty. Pharoah was no longer their master.
Why should we love the Lord our God?
God described Himself to Moses in this way when He was up on the mountain received the second set of the ten commandments: And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the inquity of the fathers upon the children and children's children to the third and fourth generation" (Exodus 34:6-7).
What I had to learn about why we should love the Lord is because He is good and His mercy endures forever (Psalm 136). The rub for the unbeliever is they look at the misfortune in their lives and ongoing tragedy in our world and draw the wrong conclusion that there is no way God is merciful, gracious and longsuffering and good. It is easy to make God the fall guy when one looks at life through a secular worldview verses a Biblical worldview. You see a humanist worldview offers no real hope or solutions for life's problems. The word of God provides all solutions for every human being. Here is the command: Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to you children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call" (Acts 2:38-39).
Notice Jesus never offers an apology for the evil in the world. Why? Because man is responsible for his sins not God. We are the reason the world is a cesspool of degenerecy and debauchery. That is why God commands man to repent. This is a loving invitation from the Lord to us so that we can escape His wrath and enter into His joy.
This is why God can describe Himself as: merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.
The only way one can prove their love for Jesus is to obey Him. Jesus said, "If you love Me, keep my commandments" (John 14:15). The same John said in I John 5:3, "This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome."
The Command to love one another
As Jesus was nearing His death, He taught the disciples this command, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:34-35).
Jesus clearly practiced what He preached. Remember what Jesus said when He was dying in agony on the cross and all were mocking Him, "Father, forgive them, for they do not what they do" (Luke 23:34-36). Love always forgives and it never forgets. Why does love not forget? Because if love forgot, why would one need to forgive anything?
The apostle John wrote these sobering words. They are a loving warning to us as Christians, "We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethern. He who does not love his brother abides in death. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him" (1 John 3:14-15).
John is providing clear instruction here. The outside world will never know if we love God if we hate one another. Hating one another proves one has not experienced the New Birth; that person is still in their sins. That is not why Jesus died to redeem us - so that we can continue to practice evil and live like the devil.
Here is another poweful text by John, If someone says, "I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he loves God must love his brother also" (1 John 4:20-21).
The text is clear again, we cannot hate who God loves. Just like Christ died for you, He died for your brother and sister who also repented of their sins and believed in Him. We are eternally connected with Church / The Body of Christ.
Summing it up
A Pharisee who was a lawyer asked Jesus a question testing Him and saying, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 22:35-40).
Jesus replied to the lawyer saying, If you love God with all your might and loving your neighbor, you have fulfilled the entire law of God. Think about it. If anyone does these things, what else in life is left? The person that obeys these two commands is a light bearer in this dark world. That person is fearless and lives a life of truth and righteousness. They will never be defeated by circumstances because God's love is spread abroad in their hearts and they will be able to handle the difficulties life brings them.
This is the character of an obedient life, love God and love your fellow man.