R.C. Sproul

Please, Mary, I said, tell us what it is about John.

She said, well, I love John because he's, I love him because he, I love him because, I love him because he's, because he's, he's John.

I said, yes.

Yes.

I said, when you ran out of the specific qualities that you could enumerate, in order to capture the essence of this person, you went to his name.

Because to you, everything that John represents is bound up in his name.

And so it is with God.

The name Yahweh is the name of our God, and we love Him not because He's intelligent, and we love Him not because He's strong or because He's polite, courteous, or kind.

Beloved, we're not to love God simply for all of the wonderful gifts and benefits that we receive from His hand, but we're to love Him for who He is.

in himself.

We don't really progress in the Christian life until we understand that, that to love God is to love him because he is lovely, he is wonderful, and he is worthy of the creature's unqualified affection.

So in the Shema,

Israel is commanded to love God, not simply with all of the heart, but the idea here is that the love is to come from the heart.

It's not just a superficial affection, not just a casual or cavalier endearment, but an affection that comes from the very root of our being, where this affection is not surpassed by any other affection that we ever experience in this world.

It's an undiluted, unmixed love for God.

And it's a love that is to come from the soul, from the very center of our being.

Remember the judgment and warning that Jesus gave to the Laodicean church.

He said, I wish that you were either hot or cold.

But because you're lukewarm, I will spew you out of my mouth.

When we love God with all of our souls, there's nothing lukewarm about that affection.