How do I love God Supremely?
Luke 10:25 And behold, a scholar of the Law stood up and was putting Him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 And He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered and said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”
Well, if you are paying close attention, you might have noticed that we did not read from the book of Judges this morning. We actually finished the story of Samson last week. There are still a couple of chapters left in the book, but frankly, they are depressing. Israel’s descent into sin worsens. I’m going to cover them, but a few weeks down the line. There were a couple of things that influenced that decision. First, considering that next week is Mother’s Day I didn’t want to be preaching about murder.
And second what happened was I got to thinking about all the challenges that each of you, each of us are experiencing right now, and kind of wanted to speak to them here. So, I decided to start a short series on love.
Many of us have challenges regarding people that you love. We have challenges with parents, children, spouses, etc.
So, I decided to do a series, seeing what Scripture has to say about how we are to love the different people in our lives. Of course, we cannot start a series on our commandment to love without considering the mandate to love God. That’s what we will consider today. And on Mother’s Day we will consider loving parents. After that we are also going to talk about loving your children, loving your spouse, and loving your enemies.
Today we start with loving God as the foundation of every other love.
Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
We are very familiar with that command in Scripture. And most of us would agree that that should be our priority. But I think that most of us would also agree that making our love of God Supreme over all our other loves is no easy task.
We have so many things competing for our love don’t we?
Now most of us recognize that some things that we love, are in direct contradiction to our love of God.
1 John 2:15–16 “Do not love the world nor the things of the world… If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
John 3:19 “Men loved the darkness rather than the Light…”
1 Timothy 6:10 “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil…”
2 Timothy 3:2 “Men will be lovers of self…”
2 Timothy 3:4 “Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.”
John 12:43 “They loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God.”
3 John 1:9 “Diotrephes… loves to be first among them.”
Psalm 11:5 “The one who loves violence His soul hates.”
But I think we also recognize that we can love the right things, but be wrong because they take precedence over God.
Matthew 10:37 “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me…”
Luke 14:26 “…does not hate… even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.”
Matthew 19:21–22 The rich young ruler walked away because of his possessions
1 Corinthians 8:1 “Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies.”
Deuteronomy 8: 11 “[a]Beware lest you forget Yahweh your God by not keeping His commandments and His judgments and His statutes which I am commanding you today; 12 lest you eat and are satisfied and build good houses and live in them, 13 and your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, 14 and your heart becomes [b]lifted up and you forget Yahweh your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of [c]slavery.
So that is what we are considering today. How do I love God Supremely?
prayer
So, we are going to look at a few points this morning. The first is to establish the background for this commandment from the Lord, then we will define that Supreme love with the phrases, all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.
I. The Foundation Command: Love God Completely
In this passage Luke 10:25–28, the command to love God comes in response to a lawyer’s question. A lawyer stands up during Jesus’ teaching and asks this question; “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Now Jesus responds to the lawyer’s question with another question.
“What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” or “How do you recite it?”
The way in which Jesus phrased this, He is directing the man back to the Law—specifically the Deuteronomy 6:5 Shema—
4 “Hear, O Israel! [b]Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one! 5 You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
And Jesus asks, “How do you recite it?” because every good Jew did exactly that. Twice a day, in the morning and in the evening, they recited the Shema.
4 “Hear, O Israel! [b]Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one! 5 You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
So, this guy comes to Jesus asking how to have eternal life. How I go to heaven, and not go to hell ? And there are several passages in the Gospels recording individuals approaching Jesus with questions that reflect that same concern for doing what is necessary to inherit eternal life. Which law is most important.
Remember, the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:16–20 asks what good thing he must do to obtain eternal life. The Pharisees also questioned Jesus about the greatest commandment. In John 6:28–29, the crowd asks what works they must do to accomplish the works of God. Even John 3:1–10 shows Nicodemus, a Pharisee, approaching Jesus with assumptions rooted in the Law, only to be told he must be born again.
This question about which law is greatest was a prominent one. Why was this so prominent a question?
Because, you see, Jewish teachers had taken God’s law in the Old Testament, and turned it into a long list of specific requirements. The Jews divided the law into six hundred and thirteen laws covering every aspect of life. Let me give you an example.
Numbers 15:38–39 “They shall make for themselves tassels on the corners of their garments… and put on the tassel… a cord of blue… so that you may look at it and remember all the commandments of the Lord.”
By the time of Jesus, what began in Numbers 15:38–39 as a simple, heart-oriented reminder—“wear tassels so you will remember the commandments”—had developed into a highly detailed system of regulations. Teachers began specifying the exact number of threads to be used in each tassel (traditionally eight), along with a required number of knots (often five), each tied in a particular sequence. There were also prescribed patterns of windings, where one thread—often the blue one—was wrapped around the others a certain number of times between knots, sometimes even assigned symbolic numerical values connected to the Law. Considerable debate arose over the blue dye (tekhelet): what shade was correct, what source was legitimate (often tied to a specific sea creature), and whether a tassel was valid if the proper dye could not be obtained. In addition, there were rules about how and when the tassels must be worn—whether on outer garments or undergarments, how visible they should be, and whether they were required at all times or only during certain activities.
So, they took God’s law, and turned it into the keeping of minutia. They broke down God’s law into 613 separate commandments. Why 613? Because that's the number of letters in the 10 Commandments. They further divided them into 248 positive commands and 365 negative commands. Why 248? Because that's the number of the parts of the human body according to them. Why 365? Because that's the number of days of the year.
Now the idea behind this is right. They were seeking to follow the law down to the letter applying it to all of their body and to every day of their life.
But their extreme specificity ended up obscuring what was most important. So, when this lawyer asks Jesus which is the greatest commandment in the law, Jesus takes him directly to his own practice, “What is written in the law?” “How do you recite it?” In other words, “What is the command that you recite twice a day, every day?”
Which is the great commandment?
Matthew 22:37 And He said to him, “‘You shall love the [a]Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
Now, that’s the background for this answer. To love God Supremely is the greatest commandment. But let’s break that down into its component parts; with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.
II. Loving God with All Your HEART (καρδία)
What does it mean to love God with all your heart? Well, let’s look first at some other passages of Scripture that talk about the heart.
Matthew 15:18–19 “But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart… For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries…”
Jesus tells us here that the heart is the command center of the person. If a person is a murderer or an adulterer, that inclination did not come from outside the person, it came from the heart of the person. In the gospel of Luke it says something similar
Luke 6:45 “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil. ”
Talking about giving Paul says later..
2 Corinthians 9:7 “Each one must do just as he has purposed in his heart…”
The Greek word kardia describes the seat of moral decision-making; the heart is where choices are ultimately made.
The heart here was the part of you that directs the actions. The heart is presented in Scripture as the control center of life—the inner person where thoughts, desires, and the will reside—not merely the seat of emotions, but the command center that directs everything we do. Proverbs 4:23 underscores this reality:
“Watch over your heart with all diligence For from it flow the springs of life.”
So, how does that definition of the heart as the command center apply to the command that we love God with all our hearts? It means that the love of God, our love of God, has invaded the very command center of our lives. It is not just a directive for us to follow. It is the primary directive upon which all other priorities are judged.
To love God with your heart, then, means that He becomes the object of our deepest desires, that our affections are consistently directed toward Him, and that we truly treasure Him above all else.
It is the command center; the place of first impulse. All of our impulses, the commands out of our heart, will be first directed toward loving God.
To Love God with all of one's heart is to have that first impulse from the control center always be directed toward the love of God no matter the circumstance.
And it is important to note that “all your heart” is mentioned first. All of the others; soul, mind, and strength proceed from the heart. But frankly, after that definition of heart, my first thought is...
I can’t do that! How can I control my first impulse! I’m only human.
But therein is the beauty of this conversation Jesus had with this lawyer. If any person really begins to think about just this simple command, “love the Lord with all your heart, soul mind and strength there is only one reasonable conclusion they can come to; I can’t do that! And that really is the point. Paul would later point out that the law was not given so you can keep it, and have eternal life. The law was given so you could see that you can’t keep it, and would be driven to your knees pleading for God’s grace and forgiveness.
And when you do that, a miracle happens.
Ezekiel 36: 25 Then I will [h]sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness and from all your idols. 26 Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to do My judgments.
III. Loving God with All Your SOUL (ψυχή)
The Greek word for soul is psyche. It is often translated soul or life. So, let’s look at some other passages that have that word so we can come to a better understanding of what he means, to love God with all your soul or life.
John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”
Here, the word psyche is used to describe the temporal life that we have on this earth. He is describing a person being willing to die for his friends.
Luke 12:22–23 “Do not worry about your life… For life is more than food…”
Here we have a similar meaning. The psyche is the sum of the physical existence of a person. And Jesus is teaching that we are not just physical beings, dependent on food, but we are spirits.
In the next passage we add a wrinkle to the understanding of the word psyche.
Matthew 16: 24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. 25 For whoever wishes to save his [w]life will lose it; but whoever loses his [x]life for My sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and will then [y]repay each one according to his [z]deeds.
Here we can see that the word psyche is referring not just to this physical life, but to eternal life. He is comparing the temporal psyche with the eternal psyche. You can lose your temporal life, but gain eternal life. You can be abundantly wealthy and healthy in your physical life, but lose eternal life.
So, the psyche, soul or life represents the whole of life and being. The Greek word psychē refers to life, the self, and one’s identity—the totality of who a person is physically and spiritually. To love God with your soul, then, means loving Him with your very life itself, a willingness to belong completely to Him, and a surrender not just of activity but of identity. It is yielding who you are at the deepest level.
And I think that it is interesting to note that often, in the New Testament, when the word psyche is used, for life, there is also a reference to death.
Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother… yes, even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.”
John 12:25 “He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal.”
John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”
Luke 12:22–23 “Do not worry about your life… For life is more than food…”
Lexical insights from BibleHub note that this term often refers to life itself—even to the point of death—highlighting the depth of this devotion to God. So, this kind of love is marked by a commitment that holds nothing back.
Love the Lord with all your soul, your life, to the point of even dying.
To love Him with your soul means recognizing that your very life is His, not yours to control. It also raises a sobering question—would you still obey Him if it cost you everything? This kind of love is not conditional or convenient but marked by a willingness to follow Him no matter the price.
With all your life. Well, how many of us wonder if we would be able to do that? Maybe we, like Peter would say that we would go to death with Christ, but we know our weaknesses, and fear that we would deny Him, even as Peter did.
But let me share with you what I think is a helpful passage.
Luke 9:23 “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.”
I wanted to point out that word “daily.” What that word says to me is that I have to lay down my life daily. To love God with my soul, is to build an altar in my mind, where each morning, I place my life as an offering to God. When I arrive at work, I go again to that altar, and lay down my day, my life, as a sacrifice to God. When I walk into my home, that altar is still there, and I choose to lay every waking breath at His feet as an offering.
You might say, “I can’t do that.”
Philippians 2:13 “For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”
2 Corinthians 12:9 “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.”
IV. Loving God with All Your MIND (διάνοια) Phylacteries on head
So, let’s look again at Scripture for a definition of mind. Here are a couple verses that use the word.
Ephesians 4:18 “Darkened in their understanding alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them,
The mind takes in your capacity for understanding.
1 John 5:20 “The Son of God has come and has given us understanding…”
Hebrews 8:10 “I will put My laws into their minds…”
“The mind (dianoia) is your ability to understand truth, process reality, and direct your thinking—and loving God with it means bringing every thought under His truth.”
The mind speaks to the way you think—your understanding, reasoning, and intellect. The Greek word dianoia refers to the faculty of thinking, perceiving, and processing truth. To love God with your mind, then, means thinking rightly about Him, pursuing truth and sound doctrine, and consistently meditating on His Word.
This term involves deep thought and understanding, not shallow or casual thinking. Loving God includes doctrinal clarity, not ignorance—knowing who He truly is according to Scripture.
With all your mind.
The mind forms habits through repeated patterns of thought and behavior, and over time those patterns become physically reinforced in the brain. When you repeat an action or way of thinking, neural pathways strengthen—making that behavior feel more automatic and natural. Conversely, when you consistently refrain from a habit, those neural connections begin to weaken and recede because they are no longer being used. At the same time, when you introduce and repeat a new habit, new pathways begin to form and grow stronger. This process, often referred to as “use it or lose it,” shows that the mind is not fixed but highly adaptable. In practical terms, this means that change is possible: old patterns can fade, and new ones can take their place—but only through intentional, repeated practice over time.
This is why passages like Romans 12:2 call believers to be transformed by the renewing of their minds, and Colossians 3:2 commands us to set our minds on things above, shaping our thinking around eternal truth rather than the patterns of this world.
And just as we are directed to love Him with all our hearts, all our life, it also says all our mind.
The application calls for honest reflection: do you actively pursue knowing God with our minds, seeking to understand His truth more deeply, or are we content with a surface-level faith driven mainly by feelings? Loving God with your mind means engaging Scripture, growing in sound doctrine, and allowing truth to shape your thinking, not just your emotions. It challenges you to ask whether you are truly growing in truth or simply relying on how you feel in the moment.
I can’t do that.
Philippians 4:8 8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is dignified, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is [c]lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, consider these things.
Romans 12:2 “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”
V. Loving God with All Your STRENGTH (ἰσχύς) Phylacteries on hands
What does it mean to love God with all your strength?
Ephesians 1:19 “…the surpassing greatness of His power… according to the working of the strength of His might.”
2 Thessalonians 1:9 “…away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power.”
Strength is the expenditure of energy. Loving God with your strength speaks to your energy and resources—everything you are able to do. The Greek word ischys refers to strength, power, and ability, encompassing all physical effort and capability. To love God with your strength means serving Him through your actions, using your time, energy, and resources for His purposes, and loving Him not just in what you feel, but in what you do. True love for God is made visible through obedience and service.
I think there was a common truth being taught to the Jews when God told them to put the law on their hands.
1 Thessalonians 2:9 “Laboring and toiling, we worked night and day…”
Galatians 6:9 “Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.”
This is why John 14:15 connects love with obedience—“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments”—and 1 Corinthians 10:31 calls believers to live in such a way that whatever they do is done for the glory of God.
The application brings this into everyday life: how are you actually spending your energy—your time, effort, and abilities? When someone looks at your life, do they see a clear investment in the things of God, or is your strength consumed by everything else? Loving God with your strength means that your actions, priorities, and daily efforts reflect a desire to honor Him, so the question becomes whether your life truly shows intentional effort toward God’s glory.
To conclude: These expressions—heart, soul, mind, and strength—are not four separate compartments of love, but one unified reality. Jesus is not dividing our devotion into categories; He is describing the totality of it. Every part of our being—our desires, our identity, our thinking, and our actions—is to be aimed at one object: God. This is a complete, integrated love where nothing is excluded and nothing is held back, a life fully oriented toward Him.
I can’t do that.
Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”
“God calls you to love Him with all your strength—but He also supplies the strength to do it. Your role is to give your effort, your energy, your obedience—and His role is to sustain you, empower you, and carry you when your strength runs out.”
This leads to the conclusion: love God first, because everything else flows from it. The order matters.
In Luke 10:27, Jesus continues, “and your neighbor as yourself,” showing that love for others is secondary and dependent upon love for God. You cannot rightly love people if you do not first love Him. This is reinforced in 1 John 4:19, which reminds us, “We love, because He first loved us.” Our love is not original—it is derived from Him. love for God is evidence of true regeneration, and all genuine obedience flows from that root. This truth applies directly to every area of life—marriage, parenting, ministry, and relationships—because if God is not first, every other love becomes distorted, misdirected, or even idolatrous.
So, the final challenge is clear: do you truly love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, or are there areas of your life you are still holding back? This is not a question of partial devotion, but of total surrender. And the reality is this—if we get this wrong, we get everything wrong. But if we get this right—if we truly love God with all that we are—then every other love in our life begins to fall into its proper place. Love for a spouse, love for parents love for children, love for neighbor—it all flows from this one source: a heart fully devoted to God.