Day: October 4, 2026

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God”

God commands us to love him. And so we must, for his command does not issue from any lack or insufficiency on his part. God does not need our love. His command proceeds instead from his very being. He is active Love, everlasting love, as we are constantly reminded in the recurring refrain of the Trinity season: “God is love and he that abideth in love abideth in God and God in him.” Thus God’s command to love him equally extends to his command to love others and ourselves for his sake, for this is the perfecting of his divine image in us. It is really all about grace as what defines and perfects our lives. The Gospel illustrates what is said in the Epistle about “the grace of God which is given [us] by Jesus Christ; the grace that enriches [us] in all utterance, and in all knowledge,” and that confirms us unto the end, our end or being in Christ.

“The end of the matter, all has been heard,” Ecclesiastes concludes. It is the most philosophical book of the Hebrew Scriptures. Having surveyed all the forms of human endeavour under the sun and found them wanting, for “all is vanity” or empty, the Preacher finishes with the words, “Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.” It became the title of Richard Allestree’s famous treatise, The Whole Duty of Man (1684), which along with William Law’s A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728), profoundly influenced Christian life and witness in the 18th century, praised by such different personalities as Samuel Johnson, Edward Gibbon, and John Wesley. Fear means awe and wonder; in short, love for what is greater than all else. As Jesus says, “there is none other commandment greater than these.”The whole duty of the Christian appears in this command to love. “For when the love of God precedes, the love of neighbour follows” (Augustine). Love of God and love of neighbour sum up the whole of the Old Law and, in Christ, they become both the fulfillment of the Law and the very heartbeat of Christian life. God’s life in Christ “shall confirm you [keep your steadfast] unto the end,” say St. Paul. That divine life is the “grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil” and the reason for “pure hearts and minds to follow thee the only God,” as the  Collect says.

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