Loving God is the supreme mark of maturity. When we love him we will desire to be like him. We will desire to see him someday. We will desire to please him. We will find ourselves just thinking about him. We will desire to study his words in Scripture. We will desire to talk to him. We will desire to purify everything ungodly from our life. We will desire to be with others who love him. All of these naturally flow from loving God, even if they might start small in our early Christian life. As we follow these desires they will grow and so will our Christformation.
When we love God then this love will naturally manifest through us in many ways. It lifts our hearts, blooms into joy and gives us strength. In the words of the author of the Imitation of Christ:
Love flies, runs and jumps for joy. It is free and unlimited. Love gives all for all, abiding in One who is higher than all things, from whom all goodness flows and emerges. Love is not concerned with gifts, but looks to the giver of all good gifts. Love knows no bounds, strongly transcends all barriers. Love feels no burdens, ignores hard work and aims at things beyond its powers. Love sees nothing as impossible, for it feels able to achieve all things. So love can do great things. It is effective in its tasks, whereas those who lack love faint and fail.
Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (New York: Penguin Books, 2013), 130
So it will be very important to our Christformation to regularly ask ourselves if loving God is the greatest commandment in our lives. We can ask ourselves: “Does loving God have top priority in our thoughts, affections and choices? Do we actually pursue love for God as our highest value? And if we say we love Jesus, do we pursue Christformation above all else in our lives? Do we just want to feel the sweetness of his graces or do we pursue Christformation more than spiritual pleasure, human approval, and supernatural gifts?”
This means that we actually follow him by doing what he asks us to do. Any other kind of love is just a vapor. Jesus said: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15, ESV). John explains loving God this way: “In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3, NIV). How could we think that we love God as God unless we also love his commandments, study them and passionately pursue keeping them?
