It will help us to form a proper conception of the value of God’s commandments, to reflect on the marvelous results that would take place in the world, if all the populations of earth would simply keep the first great command, to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and mind, and strength. Nearly every person we meet has a theory for the betterment of mankind, and for ameliorating the ills of this world, but not one person on earth has a correct theory on this subject, unless he has obtained it through the revelation of God’s Word.  

No individual can live a real, peaceful, happy, and useful life, without being regenerated, and sanctified, and loving his Creator with all his heart. Ever since the Gospel has been given to the world, only a small proportion of men have been willing to submit perfectly to the very law which conduces to their highest good. . . .  

But if the sons of men would from the heart, keep the first commandment, what heavenly changes would in a few weeks pass over the face of the world. All the politics of every nation on earth, as they now exist, would entirely cease. Jails, penitentiaries, court houses, police forces, armies and navies, would pass away. Thousands of occupations for greed, or ambition, or sinful pleasure, would never more be pursued. The industries of men would be simple, perfectly honest, without guile, without overtaxing the worker, and filled with happy labor. The educational institutions would turn the intellect away from false philosophy into the true science of creation, and open up beautiful fields of knowledge in every direction, finding God everywhere.  

Even though sickness and death should remain, yet so much would be done to care for the poor, and sick, and so many prevailing prayers of faith offered up to God, that trouble and sickness of all kinds would be reduced to a minimum. Only think what immense changes would take place on earth, by the worldwide keeping of only one commandment of our God. This helps us to get a larger view of Who God is, of what His Word is, and of what His love is; when one single short commandment has enough in it to turn this almost demonized world into a veritable paradise.  

If it had not been that our souls have been degraded by sin, God would never have had to command us to love Him. But for sin, we would see it was a blissful privilege to love our God, and instead of having to be commanded to love Him we would rather have begged Him to permit us to love Him. It is sin that has necessitated the giving of the law. When we are properly enlightened, the loving of God with all the heart is the sweetest joy in all creation, and if we only knew enough about Who God is, and what He is to us, we would be on our knees imploring Him for the privilege of loving Him.  

The reason why so few people love God is because they do not have in them by nature the kind of love to love Him with. God can only be truly loved with His own love. We must have Divine love imparted into our hearts, by the operation of the Holy Spirit, before we can truly and Scripturally love God.  

There are two words in the Greek Testament for love. One word, philos, signifies any natural human affection, which all men have. The other word, agape, signifies Divine love, the feelings and character of God. Just as we get human affection by our natural birth, so we get the Divine love by our spiritual birth into the Kingdom of God. Multitudes of religious teachers fail to distinguish the great difference between the philos love and the agape Divine love, and thereby are led into many foolish blunders concerning spiritual things. Even after Divine love has been imparted to us, we need to be thoroughly sanctified, and baptized with the Holy Ghost and fire, in order to give this Divine love perfect liberty, and ample sweep through all our capacities.  

There are seven phases of love which we can return to our blessed Creator and Redeemer for His love to us.  

1. Grateful Love. The love of gratitude is one of the first forms of Divine love that springs up in the newly converted heart. The love of gratitude is filled with thanksgiving. It sings that sweet song of love uttered by Jesus, “I thank thee, Oh Father, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them to babes.” It takes a timbrel, and joins Miriam in her joyful song that God has triumphed and the enemy is overthrown in the sea. It sings with Hannah at the dedication of little Samuel, to “the Lord Who hath raised up the poor out of the dust, and set them to be Princes in His Kingdom.”  

The love of gratitude delights in counting over the mercies of God in the past, and turns them over and over in fond recollection, like a miser counts his gold, yet with the very opposite spirit of the miser, for it is unselfish praise to the Giver of all good. The love of gratitude, like Mary, “ponders things in its heart” that others think lightly of, and appreciates what others would call little blessings, trifling mercies, insignificant answers to prayer. Grateful love sees the magnitude of God in a thousand little things unnoticed by those who have not yet learned to look through eyes of love.  

This phase of love is very humble, and full of the spirit of repentance, and meek submission, and feels unworthy of so much Divine goodness. It measures all its blessings by the preciousness of the Hand that bestows them. Love of gratitude is forever sending up to God the sweet incense of thankfulness, and like Saint Ann of Toronto, says a hundred times a day, “Thank you, Father,” “Thank you, Father.”  

2. Elective Love. This phase of loving God is that by which we compare Him with all other beings in creation, and contrast the superiority of God above and beyond all the creatures with which we are acquainted, considering the excellence of His ways, His authority, His care, His compassion, His mercies. It is this form of loving God that shows us more clearly the emptiness, the deceitfulness, the transitoriness of everything that seems good in the world.  

It is this elective love by which we compare our own God with angels, and saints, and our common fellow creatures and then choose God over and above all others as we would choose a diamond in preference to a lump of clay. We rejoice in the more excellent treasure, feeling a contempt for all things, for all honors, for all pleasures, that would intrude to take the place of God.  

This kind of love would despise an angel if that angel attempted to take the place of our own God. It is this love by which we elect the living God to be all our own, and by which we spurn all other gods and all false prophets, and all false religions. Our hearts burn with indignation against anything that would attempt to usurp the place of God, or to share in the least the honor and praise due only to the Lord.  

It is this elective love that the Apostle refers to when he tells us “to sanctify the Lord God in our hearts.” It is this elective love by which we dash every idol and snap every tie, and turn from any pursuit, and break any friendship, and spurn any earthly honor, or any churchy ambition that interferes with the claims of God. By elective love we extol the sovereignty of God, and trample on everything that comes in competition with His glory. It crowns Christ Lord of all. Detachment of spirit from the things of earth is the special fruit of this kind of love.  

3. Complacent Love. This is the kind of love which is peacefully contented and satisfied with God, and delights in all His blessed perfections. This is the kind of love referred to by the Psalmist, “Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none upon the earth I desire beside thee.” It is what Solomon sings about, when he saw the Divine Bridegroom in vision, and said, “He is the fairest among ten thousand, and the one altogether lovely.” The love of complacence loves God because of Himself alone, because it perceives the eternal beauty of His nature, the sweetness of His character, the unutterable vastness of His attributes, the delicacy and perennial charm of all His perfections.  

The soul very seldom gets even into the outer edges of this form of loving God for His own infinite blessedness, until it is deeply sanctified and illuminated by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Blessed are the pure in heart, because they shall see, even in this life of faith, the blessedness of the character and person of God.  

While elective love looks at other beings and things to contrast their nothingness with God, complacent love is so taken up with God Himself, and so satisfied with His perfections, that it seems to forget everything and everybody else. It is as if the purity, and presence of God, for the time being, filled the entire horizon with such a soft, beautiful light, that nothing else was visible.  

The love of complacence rejoices that God is just what He is, and that He never can change. It fairly dances with delight, that there never will be, to all eternity, any other God; and that, as it looks out over the endless future, not the least shadow of change will ever pass over the all-radiant character of God. The value of a treasure depends on its perpetuity. A small amount of wealth, secured to us for a life, is infinitely preferable to a vast fortune, our title to which would last only one hour. Hence the joy of complacent love is not only in what God is to us now, but in the assurance that He can never be, to endless ages, any other than the ever blessed God that He is now, and ever has been.  

Would the happy fishes in the sea want any change in the ocean? Would the songsters of the air want any change in the chemistry or density of the atmosphere? How much more the true lovers of God will never want any mutation in the person, or the character, or the ways of God. Complacent love finds a secret delight in all the attributes of God, and admires the way He does things, and reposes with unspeakable tranquility upon the character of God.  

4. The Love of Desire. It is by this form of love that we thirst and pine after God. This is the kind of love David felt when he said, “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple”; and again when he said, “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, Oh God.”  

There are three kinds or degrees of spiritual thirst; the first is for pardon, the second is for purity, and the third is for the fullness of the living God Himself. To properly desire God, the heart must be in a condition to appreciate Him, to have a congenial union with Him, and to enjoy the traits of His character.  

It would seem that Daniel had this love of desire for God in an eminent degree. Where we read that the angel told Daniel “he was a man greatly beloved,” the margin reads “he was a man of desire,” that is, a man of intense longings after God. No one can be a Christian without a true heart-hunger after God, but there are countless forms and degrees of this desire in different souls.  

It is love of desire that draws the soul out in a stretch to know God in His three Divine Persons, to know His communion, and to be filled with each attribute and perfection in the Divine nature. Nothing in all creation can satisfy our immortal spirits but the living God Himself. It is this sweet pain of thirst for God that draws us to much secret prayer, to study what God is, to neglect other things as trifles that we may win the light of His face and the flow of His Spirit. It is the intensity of this desire for God that pulls hearts out of mere ordinary religion, and entices them to climb the steeps of true holiness, where they can rest on the upper summits of the mountains of grace, where the day breaks soonest in the morning, and where the mellow light of evening lingers the longest.  

The tide of all creation, except where it is perverted by Satan, sets with resistless currents toward the throne of God. All things apart from God, sooner or later, weary us. He alone is forever fresh, and to loving hearts He is always like a new discovery to the eye.  

5. Sympathetic Love. It is by this kind of love that we feel for God, and espouse His interests, and become intensely jealous for His honor and glory. The Greek word for “sympathy” means to “suffer with,” to take partnership in feeling the injuries and wrongs done to another. It is this love of sympathy that feels keenly the insults that wicked men and demons offer to God. It is this kind of love that David felt burning like a fire in his heart, when he said, “Do I not hate them that hate thee, I hate them with perfect hatred.”  

It is this kind of love that sees God ignored, and wronged, and outraged, by the brutishness and the wickedness of men all around us. It is this love that cannot endure to hear God’s Name taken in vain, to hear His Word denied, or trifled with, to see His Sabbaths degraded, and to hear His blessed character impugned, or caricatured. It feels like weeping over the way God is neglected, and left unloved, and unthanked, and untrusted, and unappreciated by His creatures.  

This is the kind of love that burns like a furnace in the heart of reformers, when they clad themselves in zeal like a coat of mail, and thunder at wickedness, in Church or State, in men or parties. Such put their lives in jeopardy, and would rather die than to see their blessed God insulted, and trampled upon. This love of Divine sympathy is that which Phinehas had, when he flamed with indignation at those who insulted God, and took his sword, and slew them. God rewarded him by saying, “It was counted unto him for righteousness unto all generations” (Psa. 106: 21-31).  

It is this kind of love for God that sees His interests everywhere, and is keenly sensitive to His rights, and His honor in all things. It is this beautiful, hot jealousy for the glory of God that cannot bear false Christs, or false prophets, or to see professed ministers putting on religious pomp, and lording it over God’s heritage, and taking the place of Christ in judging their fellows.  

This love of Divine sympathy is very prompt, and wide awake, and can detect false doctrine, and gross infidelity, where others see no harm. It is this kind of love that makes heroes, and martyrs. Its heart sickens with the miserable goings on of men, and it would fain screen the infinite God by its own affectionate compassion and sympathy for His honor. It was this kind of love that once in the Middle Ages, during a great worldly display, made a pious old monk cry out with tears, “Poor God, poor dear God, everybody is honored except you; you are the only One Who is most neglected, and ignored, in all the world.”  

6. Benevolent Love for God. This is the overflow, the surplus as it were, of love, by which the soul wishes that God may have all the praise, and the glory, and the happiness, which it is possible for Him to have.  

The poor panting heart wishes it could in some way be a blessing and a benefit to God, although it is conscious that it is nothing, and that God is so perfect that nothing can be added to His infinite happiness and blessedness. We must remember that God has two kinds of glory; first, the glory that is inherent inside the Divine nature, and then the glory that is external to God, in His creation of worlds and creatures. The glory that resides inside the Divine nature consists in His natural perfections, in His eternity, His sanctity, the communion of the Three Divine Persons, and the infinite joy which He has in Himself. The external glory of God consists in the magnitude, the variety, and the splendor of created worlds and the various ranks of angels, men and the lower orders of sentient creatures. Added to this is the glory which He obtains by redeeming fallen men by the systems of grace, of providence, of rewards and punishments, of the application of His mercy and justice to His creatures, and the praises, the love, and the worship that are rendered back to Him from His creatures.  

Now you see, it is impossible for God’s inherent glory in His own blessed Self to ever be increased. But His external glory can be ever widening in extent, and increasing in luster, from the application of His grace and truth to His creatures. This is the field over which benevolent love for God spreads itself, and is always wanting God to reap larger harvests of praise, and glory, from creation.  

7. Adoring Love. It is this kind of love for God that worships, and adores, and gazes with fond delight, lost in wonder, love, and praise. This kind of love sits in silence, and contemplates God with a sacred awe, and a deep passive appreciation of Himself. It does not stop to search into the separate attributes of God, which is the pleasing task of meditation, but it sees as it were all the perfections of God merged into one ocean of spotless white, of serene, unruffled majesty and glory.  

Adoring love is the culmination of all other kinds of love. To worship God is more than prayer, or theology, or law, or duty, or service, or faith. It is a supreme delight in God. In adoring love, the soul basks in His light, smiles at His favor, sweetly trembles at His majesty. It is charmed with His beauty, drinks in His sweetness, and finds no words adequate for praise, but just to look, and wonder, and hold its breath, and admire, and love, and love, and wish for ten thousand hearts to love Him more and more.