Mk. 12:28-34, Phil. 4:10-13, The Greatest Command (5)

Lastly, how can we love God with all our strength?

·        The Strength.  There are two sources of strength.  Either we are doing the best we can or God is enabling us.  In Scripture either we live according to the flesh (my ability) or the Spirit (God’s ability).  We either live under law (keeping the rules as best I can) or under grace (living out of God’s strength and resources).  The fact that we love God through our physical abilities is clearly taught in Scripture.

o   We have commands to find our strength in the Lord.  Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might (Eph. 6:10).  Literally this says we are to be capable with the capability that comes from God’s inherent strength.

o   Again, Paul told Timothy (and us): You therefore, my son, be strong (capable) in the grace that is in Christ Jesus (2 Tim. 2:1).

o   We are to be strengthened (enabled) with all might (God’s inherent strength) according to His glorious power (enablement) (Col. 1:11).

o   The result of this is expressed in Phil. 4:13: I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.

o   The idea that we are weak and that our love for God requires that His strength be at work in us is a regular theme of Paul in 2 Corinthians.  Consider these profound truths.

§  2 Cor. 1:9: Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead.

§  2 Cor. 3:5: Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God.

§  2 Cor. 5:7: But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.

§  2 Cor. 12:9-10: And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”  Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  10 Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake.  For when I am weak, then I am strong.

§  2 Cor. 13:4: For though He was crucified in weakness, yet He lives by the power of God.  For we also are weak in Him, but we shall live with Him by the power of God toward you.

In our world there is much glorification of the body and in the strength we possess.  In Christ, where we have been given a new heart, and our souls are being saved, and our minds are being renewed, the bodies that carry around these three are the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own.  20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s (1 Cor. 6:19-20).  Thus the daily act of believers is to present or yield your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service (Rom. 12:1).