“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Deuteronomy 6:4
Moses is speaking to Israel, and he describes the Lord as our God. They are God’s people because:
1. God chose them. “The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth” (7:6). They are God’s people, not because they made God theirs, but because God made them his.
2. God redeemed them. “Has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation…which the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?” (4:34). “It is because the Lord loves you…that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery” (7:8).
3. God made a covenant with them. “The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb” (5:2). God bonded these people to himself forever in a unique covenant that goes back to the promise he made to Abraham (see Gen. 12:2-3).
The command to love God is never given to God’s enemies. The message to our unbelieving friends or family members is not, “Love God with all your heart.” They can’t do that. They don’t have it in them. Rather, our message to the world is, “Repent and believe the gospel.”
But to those who do repent and believe, to his redeemed people, God says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart.”
Are you trying to do something (love God) that’s not in you? If so, repent and believe the good news of the gospel today. But if you are already one of God’s people, don’t tell yourself that you don’t have it in you to love God.
