Obedience is God’s love language

As a romance-loving, somewhat ditsy heroine with a heart of gold, I’m not ashamed to admit – I love Valentine’s Day. Unfortunately, I seem to have entered into the marriage covenant with an anti-romantic. It didn’t start that way. As my boyfriend, my husband’s romance game was, as the young people say, goals. Once, I showed him my most prized possession, folded up on yellowing typewriter paper and tucked away in my childhood Bible: it was an old poem my beloved grandfather had written me. My beau surprised me by sneaking it away and having it framed. He asked my (curmudgeonly, intimidating) father for my hand in marriage before proposing to me. Most prominently though, he introduced me to Jesus, and, as all Christian women know, that pretty much takes the cake for romantic overtures. 

But if one thing smothers the charm and intrigue of new love – like a metal baking pan over a grease fire – it’s finding you’re pregnant a month after your honeymoon, giving birth to an additional two kids over the following five years; then changing continents as a family of five, finding out you’re pregnant with baby number four, two months after you get there.

This may fan the embers of fanciful attraction into flame for some couples, just not any I know. For most, the concerns and cares of life can drown out romance.

Learning to love our first love

We idealise romantic love primarily because few of us actually manage to find its consistent, lasting version. It’s for this reason, as years pass, I have to fight Valentine’s Day becoming synonymous with disappointed cynicism. I’m learning to take my thoughts away from how I am, am not or could feel more loved by my mate, changing my focus onto how I can best love God. “We love because he first loved us,” after all (1 John 4:19). How can we all engage our lives more around the eternal romanticism of returning our first true love to Jesus?

It was the apostle John, arguably the person closest to the Lord, who wrote that famous, preceding scripture. I could be wrong, but it seems Jesus’ very best friend wrote most on how to love God. In John 14:15, he recorded Jesus saying, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” In 1 John 2:5 (NLT), he wrote “those who obey God’s word truly show how completely they love him”. In 1 John 5:13 (NLT) he added, “Loving God means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome” (NLT). He also wrote one of the more famous quotes from scripture: “God is love” (1 John 4:8). But he clarified later: “Love means doing what God has commanded us” (2 John 1:6, NLT). 

There’s significance in the one closest to Jesus being so prolifically able to express how to love God. To love someone, it helps to know them. Take a moment to ponder this hypothetical scenario: a good-looking stranger walks up to you on the street and professes: “I love you.” Your quick and rightful response should be: “You can’t love me; you don’t even know me.” John knew Jesus best, so he best knew how to love him.

Learning to love God well

Scripture says God knows our words before we speak them and thinks of us as many times a day as there are grains of sand on the seashore (Psalm 139:4,17-18). My husband and I fell in love very early in our relationship. It’s saccharine but true – he first said he loved me as we were walking up Union Street. We were engaged within five months of meeting, and four months later we were married. In reality, we barely knew each other; it’s one of the very real caveats to marrying when your relationship is young. Navigating changes of life – like cohabiting, managing lifestyles and work schedules, not to mention extended family and child bearing, all with someone whose inner workings you’re still becoming privy to – can be challenging to say the least. The romance may get lost along the way, but it’s coming to know your other half through lived experience, while remaining consistently faithful through the years, that truly accomplishes love’s time test. We love God intimately over time by getting to know and honour his word. 

We idealise romantic love primarily because few of us actually manage to find its consistent, lasting version

It’s possible the one who knew Jesus best, loved him most, was the most obedient and, in return, wrote some of scripture’s most beloved verses, including John 3:3, 3:16 and 14:6. John was consistently identified in the early Church as “the disciple whom Jesus loved”. Although possibly the youngest apostle, it’s taught in some traditions that he became the oldest living, as he was called John the Elder. God allowed him to receive the heavenly Revelation that closes scripture and, perhaps singularly of all the apostles, he is claimed to have avoided martyrdom, dying of natural causes. He famously recorded Jesus’ teaching that indicates that the greatest love involves laying down our lives for our friends (John 15:13). When we die to self, we receive new life to pick up our cross and follow the One who fulfilled every commandment (Matthew 16:24). This is how we love God and look more like Jesus.

God’s love language

The term ‘love languages’ was coined in the early 1990s by prolific author and Baptist pastor, Gary Chapman, in his book The Five Love Languages: How to express heartfelt commitment to your mate. With over 20 million copies sold, it claims every person has a way they best respond to love. Chapman’s designated love languages are: words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, physical gifts and physical touch. I think obedience is God’s love language. Knowing and honouring his word by doing what he says is the way to reciprocate God’s unsearchable love and makes every day Valentine’s Day with Jesus.