Moving From Knowing About God's Love to Knowing It

There is a meaningful difference between knowing about love and actually knowing love. Consider two people who could describe love with great precision. One has studied psychology, read every book on human attachment, and can define love in clinical detail. The other grew up in a home where they were cherished, sacrificed for, and shown patient, joyful devotion through hard seasons. Both people possess knowledge of love, but only one of them has been transformed by it. Only one of them will find it natural to love others deeply in return.

That distinction is not just interesting. It is the difference between spiritual life and spiritual death.

The Question That Cuts to the Heart
In Mark 12:28-34, a scribe approaches Jesus with a question that scholars and religious experts had debated for generations. The Jewish tradition counted 613 commandments in the Old Testament, and the question of which one was most important was not a trivial one. The scribe was not asking which commandments he could safely ignore. He was asking which commandment, if neglected, would make all the others meaningless. Which one gives the rest their significance?

Jesus answers by quoting what is known as the Shema, drawn from Deuteronomy 6:4. The passage calls God's people to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love their neighbor as themselves. Jesus declares these two commandments inseparable. They are tied together at the root. You cannot truly keep the second without first keeping the first.

The scribe is impressed. He affirms Jesus, showing real theological understanding. He recognizes that loving God and neighbor surpasses even the religious rituals of burnt offerings and sacrifices. Jesus looks at him and says something remarkable: "You are not far from the kingdom of God."

Not far. But not there yet.

One Word Changes Everything
If you compare what Jesus says to what the scribe repeats back, something quietly significant surfaces. Jesus quotes the Shema as it was written: "The Lord our God, the Lord is one." When the scribe responds, he says, "He is one and there is no other besides him." Theologically accurate. Precisely correct. And yet one word has vanished.

Our.

The scribe understood God as a theological fact. He affirmed monotheism with confidence. He knew the commandments, could rank them, and could interpret their meaning with skill. But somewhere in all of that expertise, the personal had been lost. He spoke of God as one who exists, not as one who had rescued him, claimed him, and made a covenant with him. He was polishing the window rather than looking through it to behold the God on the other side.

The great Shema was never primarily a statement about monotheism. It was a declaration of experienced love. It was spoken by people who had been slaves and were now free, who had cried out in affliction and been heard, who had been carried through the wilderness and brought to the edge of a land flowing with milk and honey. When they said "our God," they meant something visceral and personal. They meant the God who saw us, who heard us, who saved us, who is still with us now.

Is He your God? That is the question that separates being close to the kingdom from being inside it.

Love That Flows Downward
The book of Deuteronomy is a covenant document, and the Shema sits at its center. On one side of it is the history of how God rescued His people from Egypt with a mighty hand. On the other side are the commandments He gives so that His people will flourish. The Shema connects the two. Love for God flows from remembering what He has done, and it flows outward into trust that what He commands is good and wise.

Deuteronomy 26 gives a striking picture of what this looked like in practice. When the people harvested their crops, they were to bring the first portion to the temple and recite before the priest the story of how God had saved them from slavery and brought them into the land. To take money you have earned and immediately give a portion of it away as an act of worship requires two things working together: genuine thankfulness for how God has already provided, and genuine trust that He will continue to do so. Without both of those, you will find clever reasons to keep what is yours.

That same dynamic plays out in every area of obedience. When sin takes root in a heart, it almost always traces back to one of two failures: either a loss of gratitude for what God has done, or a loss of trust that what He commands is truly good. Often both are present together.

This is why the second commandment cannot be separated from the first. Loving your neighbor as yourself, especially a neighbor who fails you, who wounds you, who disappoints you, requires a reservoir of forgiveness and mercy that you cannot generate on your own. You cannot summon new affections out of nothing simply by trying harder. You have to look upward before you can look outward.

The Apostle John makes this plain in his first letter. Love originates with God. He demonstrated it by sending His Son into the world so that we might live through Him. The love of God was not a response to our love for Him. He loved first, and we love because of that. Anyone who claims to love God while harboring hatred for a brother is contradicting themselves, because the love of God, once truly received, cannot be contained.

That is the source of all transforming love. Not a theological proposition about the nature of God, though sound theology matters deeply. Not a self-improvement effort, though discipline has its place. The source is a personal, experiential knowledge of a God who saw you in your slavery, heard your cry, and sent His Son to bring you out.

When you know that love, you cannot conceive of showing your neighbor anything less.