love the Lord your God
with … all your soul
Deuteronomy 6:5
If we’re to love God with all our soul, we first need to understand what the soul is.
Based on traditional scriptural understandings, the soul is the self. It’s the seat of our motivations and of our will. It’s the part of us that makes us us. (Have you ever said that while the body may die, it’s the soul who goes to heaven? Well, if that’s the case, then doesn’t it make sense that part of us that goes to heaven is the part of us that makes us us!)
What is the soul? Well, it’s been said that while the heart yearns for love, the soul yearns for truth.
To say that another way, the heart yearns for relationship; thus loving God with all our heart means pursuing a deep and satisfying personal relationship with God. But to love God with our soul means something different. It’s a call, instead, to desire God’s character and yearn for his ways. To love God with our soul means to hunger for God and his Truth.
To use an analogy, I love my wife with my heart. I treasure a rich relationship with her. But I also love her soul with my soul. I respect her character. I am guided her wisdom. And when she speaks truth – and my bride loves and proclaims Truth – my soul often soars.
Westerners often limit love to the romantic. Romantic (and relational) love is powerful! Wonderful! But while Scripture offers us rich relationships, it also offers us further forms of love too.
Do you love God in ways that absolutely revere his character? Do you love God in ways that submit to his Word, his wisdom, his commands? When you encounter God’s Truth, is your soul hungry? Indeed, do you see God’s Word of Truth, and when you do, does your soul soar?
So … what does it mean for you to love God with everything in you that makes you you? (And … did you catch that spiritual part of you is indeed what makes you truly you.)
In Christ’s Love,
a guy who wonders
how you would have
described the soul
(I confess, I had
to look it up!)
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