"I will love thee, O Lord, my strength"
Psalm 18 v 1
God should be the loved by us supremely. We are commanded by God, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might" (Deuteronomy 6 v 5). However, mankind loves various things but doesn't love God, or loves God less.
- Loves various people, it maybe family or friends. Nothing is wrong loving them, God tells us to do so, even to love our enemies. When however, we love them more than God, or love them and don't love God, we are guilty of loving the creature more than the creator. How strange to love the people God gives us and not love God who gave them.
- Loves self, living to please, serve and ultimately worship self and not God. It's common to be preoccupied with our own interests and be guilty of self idolatry.
- Loves nature, loving all the various things within God's creation. People can love the stars, mountains, lakes and different animals and yet not love God who created them.
- Loves the world with it's money, success, learning and pleasures more than is a lover of God.
God ought to be the first object of our love and is certainly the most worthy object of our love. God should be loved intensely, fervently from the depths of our hearts. Forgiveness for not loving God as commanded happens in the way we can be forgiven all our sins, by faith in Christ alone. On faith in Christ and experiencing God's love saving us, we then love God in return, "We love Him because He first loved us" (1 John 4 v 19). Two hymns sum it up well, "Love I much? I've much forgiven", and "What though my flesh and heart decay? Thee shall I love in endless day."