by CCW | 4 October 2026 10:00
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.
God’s command to love is a matter of awe and wonder, a display of divine largesse, a showing forth of the super-abundant goodness of God. Just think how wonderful it would be, if God even permitted us to love him. Perhaps, some few brave souls might take the opportunity of his permission. Even God’s permission would be some sign of his love, some small gesture of motion towards us, a token, at least, of toleration. Just think how more wonderful it would be if God should not only permit us, but should invite us to love him. Surely, there would be a greater number who would respond to his invitation, “Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden,” though, of course, there are always our endless excuses, our constant refusals of his grace. “Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back, /Guiltie of dust and sinne” (Herbert, Love III).
Yet God commands us to love him and all things in him. How much more wonderful beyond divine permission and holy invitation is God’s commandment. His command is the motion of his active love towards us. To respond in faithfulness is to let that active love move in us. He commands us to love him because our true end, our good, and human dignity lies in union with him and with one another. Simply put, “There is none other commandment greater than these.”
The idea of duties or obligations may seem unfashionable yet duties are part of the ethical understanding that is essential to human dignity and are a dominant feature of the Scriptural traditions. In the BCP Catechism, the Apostles’ Creed precedes the Commandments. This follows a biblical logic: God reveals himself to Moses in the burning bush as I Am Who I Am before launching him into the Exodus and the revealing of the Law. Thus Jesus in the Gospel begins with what is essentially a creedal or doctrinal statement. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord,” he says, (Lord is a biblical circumlocution for God’s self-revelation) before declaring the twofold commandment to love God and neighbour. The Creed is explained in the Catechism in terms of two things: God as the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, made known to us in Christ, and the activities of Creation, Redemption, and Sanctification associated with each. For as the whole tradition of classical orthodoxy testifies, “these things all the Persons work equally and inseparably in respect of the cause and effect: for what one does, all do” (William Nicholson’s Exposition of the Catechism, 1686).
In the Catechism, the Ten Commandments are explained in terms of our duty towards God and towards our neighbour. The Creed, the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer were sometimes displayed on the walls around the Altar and were known simply as The Faith. We are being reminded of the things that belong to the restoration of our human dignity through the grace of Christ.
Austin Farrer, one of the greatest Anglican theologians of the 20th century, puts it best:
He commands us to love him, because he will have us all to do so. He will not be deprived of any man’s love. Nor will he be deprived of any part of our love, for he commands us not merely to love him, but to love him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. The love of God holds out two hands to catch and take us: one is the commandment that we should love, the other is the act of his own love in the sacrifice of Jesus. He does not mean that we should escape him; see, he has taken us between his two hands.
God’s commandment is the one hand of God’s love towards us. The other hand is Christ’s sacrifice. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son.” The twofold love of God in commandment and in fulfillment moves in us as the active principle of our love for God and for our neighbour. The two are intimately related. God’s love is the basis for our love. Divine love begets human love. “For it is from one and the same love that we love God and our neighbour; God, however, for his own sake, ourselves and our neighbours for God’s sake,” (Augustine, de doctrina Christiana).
What, then, does it mean to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength? Let us hear what St. John Chrysostom tells us.
To love God with your whole heart means the heart is not inclined to the love of any one thing more than it is to the love of God… which we cannot do unless we withdraw our hearts from the love of worldly things. To love God with your whole mind means that all the faculties are at the disposition of God: he whose understandingserves God, whose wisdom concerns God, whose thought dwells on the things of God, whose memory is mindful only of his blessings, loves God with his whole mind. To love God with your whole soul means to keep the soul steadfast in truth and to be firm in faith.
To love God “with all your strength” is to love God in everything that we do with all that lies in our power to do. There is always the struggle, the struggle to discern the truth and the struggle to act with charity. The struggle is life-long, the struggle to let God’s grace define us as who we truly are in God.
God calls us into communion with himself. With the one hand, he commands us to love him and all things as in him, and, with the other hand, he unites us to himself through the sacrifice of Christ. “See, he has taken us between his two hands.”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity 18, 2026
(an extensive revision of 2005)
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