Loving God is a standing order (Deuteronomy 6:5) tied to seeking Him (Matthew 6:33) and building an intimate relationship with Him, because eternal life lies in that relationship. Knowing God depends on loving, since God is love, and whoever does not love does not know Him (I John 4:7-8, 16). Christians therefore must understand love as John intended it, the Greek agape, which has little in common with the world's casual, emotional, or self-focused uses of the word. Satan, the old deluder, works to blur and dilute love's meaning so that people cannot recognize God's nature or fulfill their responsibility to love. The world reduces love to preference, feeling, or reward, and the self-love movement reverses love's direction from outward to inward. Carried to its conclusion, that teaching places love for self above love for God. Such love is selfish and destructive, and it prevents a person from knowing or loving God and others as He commands. God then cannot finish re-creating that person in His image. Believers counter this by reading, studying, and comprehending Scripture and by resisting Satan. God has revealed His nature through creation, His commandments, Christ's incarnation, His Spirit, and the inspired Word, showing what love has to do with it (John 14:21-23).

The world today is driven not by love, but by Satan's way of living, marked by greed, hatred, lust, and self-seeking—the way of get, the way of self. What the world truly needs is not the fleeting, worldly idea of love or the passionate entanglements of youth, but the true love of man reflected across all mankind, bringing peace, harmony, joy, happiness, fulfillment, purpose, and brotherly love to heal this entire world. A lack of this true love reveals a deeper void, for hatred, animosity, greed, and wrath stem from another source: the prince of the power of the air. Those who fail to reflect God's love in their lives do not know Him, regardless of their knowledge of Scripture. In the end times, as lawlessness abounds, the love of many will grow cold, influenced by cruelty, persecutions, betrayals, and false teachings. This crumbling world, coupled with brethren drifting apart or losing zeal, puts pressure on us to abandon the fervor of our first love. The danger lies not in a lack of knowledge or understanding, but in a lack of application of what we know we should be doing. A lack of confidence or persistent fear—of job loss, illness, the economy, wars, or the unknown—demonstrates that our love and trust in God are not as complete as they should be. Perfect love casts out fear, and we must work to perfect our love, faith, and trust in Him, knowing He will help us. If we harbor hatred toward our spouses, fellow workers, or others, we do not possess the love of God. The world fails to grasp the depth of love Jesus desires from His disciples. Like the Ephesian era of the church, we risk losing our first love by focusing on the details of our calling while drifting from imitating the heart of Jesus Christ in our relationships with family, church members, and neighbors. We must not let down in maintaining a humble, serving attitude essential for those God selects for His Kingdom. True love requires active belief, not mere acknowledgment, prompting us to grow, apply His teachings, and move toward perfection without harboring grudges or anger toward others begotten by God.

First love is unconditional love for God, the foremost responsibility of every believer. Though Scripture does not define the term outright, Christ calls loving God the first and great commandment (Matthew 22:36-38; Deuteronomy 6:5), and the Greek protos agape in Revelation 2:4 means the foremost love. Loving God comes first because it enables us to love His law and one another (I John 4:7, 21; 5:2-3). The new believers who received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost showed this, for their first experience was an enthusiastic love for God joined with unconditional love for each other (Acts 2:41-47; 4:31-35). The Ephesian church held to sound doctrine and resisted false teachers, yet Christ rebuked it for leaving its first love. Paul had foreseen that false teachers and corrupting men from within would lead the congregation astray, and that love would be neglected. Disputes, division, and drifting followed, and Timothy was told to promote love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. Other churches suffered the same decline. The Galatians were fixated on the letter of the law and needed to fulfill its spirit through love, gentleness, and empathy. Sardis and Laodicea also had faltering faith. When faith falters, first love soon follows.

Loving God is the cornerstone of a faithful relationship with Him, as emphasized through the teachings of Deuteronomy. The book serves as a compass, guiding His people toward a strong bond with Him by outlining the importance of love as the motivation for willing obedience. As Jesus Christ declared in Matthew 22:37, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." This love must be freely given, not forced, arising from a deep understanding of His character and the countless ways He has shown mercy and intervened in our lives. God's love and faithfulness are inextricably linked, as seen in Deuteronomy 7:6-12, where He is described as the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments. His love for us is evident in His willingness to die for us, demonstrating a faithfulness that endures despite our shortcomings. In return, loving Him is the key to our faithfulness, ensuring that we strive to avoid harming others and instead build them up, reflecting His care and devotion. The relationship with Him, vital for eternal life as stated in John 17:3, is enhanced by close contact within the New Covenant, which offers forgiveness, His Spirit, and direct access to His throne room through prayer. To know Him is to love Him, fostering a response of obedience born from genuine affection. This love is not merely a legal obligation, as defined in I John 5:3, but carries an emotional bond, akin to the connection between a man and a woman, which God desires alongside the legal aspects of the covenant. God set Israel apart and married her out of love, as detailed in Ezekiel 16, expressing deep feelings and subsequent disappointment when she turned away due to a lack of emotional commitment. With the power of His Holy Spirit, we are equipped to love Him emotionally and deeply, sharing in the same Spirit that enables us to care for Him profoundly. We must frequently ask Him for the power to love, to strengthen the bond with Him, and to ensure our faithfulness mirrors His, driving us to do what pleases Him.

Love is of God. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. Knowing God is dependent on loving Him, and loving Him is dependent upon knowing Him. God initiates the relationship by His love. God calls, grants repentance, forgives, and gives His Spirit. These acts enable fellowship. In fellowship elements of His love enter the person. The person begins to love God in return. As love is given back God gives more because growth occurs and love is perfected. God by His love begins the cycle. God by His love keeps the cycle going. A response is required in giving love back to God and then out to others. God is revealed by His acts. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. God is a loving God. Every activity of God is loving. If He creates He creates in love. If He rules He rules in love. If He judges He judges in love. All that He does is an expression of His nature. God is the source of this love. Human love apart from God is at its best merely a pale and vague reflection of what God is all the time. God is not an abstraction. God is living and dynamic. The God as to His nature is love.

Jesus answered the lawyer's test question by declaring without hesitation that the first and great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all the heart, with all the soul, and with all the mind. This directive, drawn from Deuteronomy, requires wholehearted devotion that places God and His instructions above every competing claim, including the pleasures set before the believer, personal escapes in times of weariness, the pulls of the flesh, the opinions of peers or authorities, and even one's own intellect. In contrast to the Pharisees' endless disputes over greater and lesser commandments and their focus on minor details, Jesus presented this commandment as the foundation of all others, the starting point from which everything else in Scripture flows. The command calls for a complete reorientation of life that begins with God rather than human reasoning or external observances. Jesus further connected this first commandment to the second, which is like it, by stating that on these two hang all the Law and the Prophets, indicating that the entirety of Scripture depends upon wholehearted love toward God paired with love for neighbor. These dual principles therefore serve as the guiding center of faithful living both now and into eternity.

Loving God begins with correcting a common misunderstanding: what the world calls love—warm feelings, preferences, or mere caring—is not biblical love at all, since these can amount to little more than opinion or even obsession. True love, by contrast, is shown in Scripture to be of supreme importance. In I Corinthians 13, Paul compares love to faith, hope, prophecy, and other spiritual gifts, showing that while gifts are temporary and situational, love never ends and never becomes obsolete. Without love, even gifts such as knowledge can corrupt their recipient, since "knowledge puffs up, but love edifies." Love is something to be pursued and perfected over time, not possessed all at once, and it originates not in human nature but through God's Spirit, as Romans 5:5 affirms. This love is deeply tied to law and duty. In Romans 13, Paul describes love as a debt owed daily to others, one that fulfills the commandments by ensuring no harm is done to a neighbor. Law alone cannot produce right motivation, since people often obey only when coerced; love, however, supplies the internal drive that law cannot. In Colossians 3, love is called "the bond of perfection," the quality that holds a community together by restraining self-centered traits like competitiveness and pride, allowing unity to be maintained through mutual constraint rather than individualism. I John 4 reveals that love is not merely something God does but what God is—His very nature, expressed in every act, including creation, providence, free moral agency, and supremely in sending His Son. Because God's love is revealed through action, human beings can only fulfill their created purpose by loving as God loves, and this love is perfected in fellowship among believers. Love for God and love for others are inseparable; one cannot claim to love God while hating others, since obedience to God's commandments constitutes the practical definition of love. Genuine love, then, is not just feeling but action, ideally accompanied by joyful devotion rather than mere begrudging compliance, though obedience itself remains essential even when right emotions are still forming. Knowing God is achieved not through intellectual speculation or emotional experience, as in ancient Greek philosophy or mystery religions, but through God's own self-revelation and the believer's obedient response to it. This process of "knowing" carries a sense of deep intimacy, reverence, and loyalty. The standard of love God calls for is extraordinarily high—loving neighbor as self, loving enemies, and ultimately being willing to lay down one's life for others, following Christ's own example. Such love cannot arise from human effort alone but is possible only because God empowers believers as "partakers of the divine nature" through His Spirit. Godly love is thus both the evidence of a relationship with God and the fruit of His Spirit working within, expressed continually through obedience to His commands, principles, and example.

Writing from Ephesus near the end of the first century to a community shaken by desertions, the apostle John pauses in 1 John 2:12-14 to anchor believers in three foundational, non-negotiable truths essential for enduring the Christian life. Addressing believers across three spiritual stages—little children who rest in the Father's love, young men who fight spiritual battles in God's strength, and fathers who possess deep, abiding fellowship—John reminds them that their sins are fully forgiven for Christ's name's sake, they have already overcome the evil one through God's abiding Word, and they possess an intimate, relational knowledge of the Father and the Son. Far from optional doctrines or progressive milestones reserved for a select few, these bedrock assurances belong to every Christian at every step of their journey, grounding their past in forgiveness, empowering their present in victory, and securing their future in eternal fellowship.