“Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?” [37] Jesus replied, “‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ [38] This is the first and greatest commandment.Matthew 22:36-38 NLT
Loving God with all your soul is important; Jesus says it is part of the first and greatest commandment.
But what exactly does it mean to love God with all your soul?
We can usually visualize what it might look like to love God with our hearts and minds. My heart is the center of my emotions, so loving God with all my heart makes me think of having an emotional connection with him and being aware of the things that might attract my heart away. My mind involves my thought life, so loving God with all my mind means I need to be aware of what I think about and fill my mind with Scripture, faith, and prayer.
But what about the soul? This is usually harder for us to conceptualize. Nonetheless, understanding it is essential to our relationship with God. In this devotional, we will begin by defining what the soul is, then we will read a passage of the Bible that shows us clearly how to love God with the deepest parts of our soul through two key things—gratitude and forgiveness.
What exactly is the soul?
Merriam-Webster tells us that the soul is the spiritual part of us, our deeply felt moral and emotional nature. It is the deepest part of who we are, the part of us that searches and yearns for something more than just the physical and day-to-day life. The soul is also the most vulnerable part of who we are; I think of it as almost a childlike part of me. It is the part of me that sincerely longs to love, believe, and find purpose.
This verse from the book of Ecclesiastes describes the spiritual part of us as an eternal and divine sense of purpose which God has implanted in our hearts:
He has made everything beautiful and appropriate in its time. He has also planted eternity [a sense of divine purpose] in the human heart [a mysterious longing which nothing under the sun can satisfy, except God]…Ecclesiastes 3:11 AMP
Only God can satisfy the spiritual parts of us. That’s important because if we want to be secure and strong, we need to learn to recognize when our soul is unsatisfied.
My wife, Messer, and I have both experienced the empty feeling of a dissatisfied soul many times, before becoming Christians and after.
The emptiness in my soul was one of the things that prompted me to search for God in the first place. I remember being at the top of my game as a college football player, yet feeling a deep emptiness inside. No amount of pleasure, attention, or success could fill this void. This is what ultimately led me to seeing my need for God.
The emptiness in my soul was one of the things that prompted me to search for God in the first place
We have also felt this feeling more recently, through the pandemic. When our souls are dissatisfied, we start to feel like nothing is good enough. We become dissatisfied with our marriage, job, home, and schedule. We start to crave more and more, looking for ways to feel satisfied.
This craving for more is actually a sign that our souls need God, but often we confuse the signal for something else. The feeling of emptiness is a red flag that our souls need God, but often what we do instead of turning to God is try to fill the emptiness inside us with more things, more approval from people around us, more success at work, or more sources of physical and emotional comfort.
As the deer pants for streams of water,
So my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?Psalm 42:1-2 NIV
Our souls thirst for God—not for more things, vacations, a new job, house, significant other, or any of the other things we think will satisfy us. Unless we stop and pay attention to what our soul needs, we will always search for satisfaction and love in all the wrong places.
How to love God with all your soul
Now that we understand a little better what the soul is, we will look at a story in the Bible where Jesus teaches us what it takes to love him with the deepest, most vulnerable parts of ourselves. Let’s jump in.
Choose realness over reputation
One of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him. So he went to the Pharisee’s house. He took his place at the table.There was a woman in that town who had lived a sinful life. She learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house. So she came there with a special jar of perfume.
38 She stood behind Jesus and cried at his feet. And she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair. She kissed them and poured perfume on them. 39 The Pharisee who had invited Jesus saw this. He said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him. He would know what kind of woman she is. She is a sinner!”Luke 7:36-39 NIrV
This story introduces us to two very different people and we can learn a lot about loving God with all our soul from their relationship with Jesus.
Simon the Pharisee
First, the Pharisee (who we later learn is named Simon). The Pharisees in Jesus’ day were well-known experts in religious law. Many of them were small landowners and traders. Knowing this, we can extrapolate a few things about Simon:
- He was probably well-respected in the community.
- He probably had a good, clean reputation, since Pharisees held strictly to religious traditions.
- He must have had a home nice enough to host Jesus and his friends for dinner.
Not everything about Simon is negative. He invited Jesus and his friends over for dinner. He was hospitable. He seems like he was trying to do the right thing. On the outside, he seems to be what many of us would consider a good guy. He could be any one of us.
But then we learn a few other things about Simon:
- He did good things on the outside (being hospitable, inviting Jesus to dinner) but hid his real thoughts. He was “in his head,” not saying out loud what he really thought.
- He was a critical observer. He looked down on Jesus and the sinful woman, noticing what he perceived as their faults without admitting any of his own.
I (Messer) relate to Simon. I can be very self-righteous, especially in our marriage. Scott used to call me “Officer”—because I really thought my role was to catch the ways he was doing wrong and report him to others so they could help him.
Even as recently as last week, I saw my self-righteousness come out in my relationship with Scott. Scott had been asking me to stop using our credit card and slow down my Amazon orders. Last week, I got the mail and saw a credit card bill in his name. Are you kidding me? I thought to myself. Here he is telling me not to use the credit card and he is using one!
So, I went to Scott and confronted him on this perceived double standard. “You told me not to use the credit card, but you get to use it?” I asked indignantly.
Scott said, “Did you open the envelope?” Of course, I hadn’t. When I opened it, it turned out to just be a rate change notice.
Like Simon, it is very easy for me to criticize others instead of being humble and aware of my own sins and weaknesses. When I get that way, I become full of myself—convinced I’m right, but empty of the things that matter like love, gratitude, and mercy.
Now, let’s look at the “sinful woman.” What do we learn about her?
The sinful woman
- This woman “had lived a sinful life.” She was familiar with the guilt, regret, and shame that come from sinful choices.
- She had a reputation in the community. People knew “what kind of woman she was.” She wouldn’t have been invited to this dinner party because the host looked down on her and her choices. She must have been familiar with being judged, criticized, and rejected.
I think we all can relate to many of these feelings. Many times in my life I have felt the pain of regret, the fear of being judged, and the shameful consequences of making bad choices or decisions.
This woman—full of guilt, shame, and a bad reputation—gives us a picture of what it looks like to love God with all our soul. In the Bible, spiritual lessons often come through the people we least expect. The religious Pharisee, an expert in religious law, does not teach us to love God. The sinful woman does.
She gave Jesus everything, the deepest parts of herself. Here are a few lessons we can learn from this woman about what loving God with all your soul looks like:
She cared more about God than what people thought
This woman had a bad reputation and yet she showed up at a party she wasn’t invited to. That alone would take monumental boldness. She could have been kicked out or humiliated. She would have to face the critical stares of many self-righteous people. But she showed up anyway. And not only did she show up, she went out of her way to lovingly express her gratitude for Jesus.
How did she get this boldness? We later learn that her heart was deeply moved by Jesus’ love and forgiveness. This forgiveness meant so much to her that any concern about other people’s opinions of her flew right out the window.
She was vulnerable and unguarded
She stood right behind Jesus and cried. She didn’t hide in the crowd to watch him from a distance. She let down with Jesus, crying tears probably filled with pain, sorrow, and regret—as well as hope, relief, and gratitude for the forgiveness she knew he offered. The soul is by definition deep and emotional. If we are not willing to vulnerably open our hearts, we cannot love God with all our soul.
She sacrificed
She brought a special jar of perfume to Jesus. This perfume was costly and may have been the most valuable item she owned. Loving God with all our soul means recognizing that nothing is more valuable than our relationship with God and being willing to give him everything.
She was humble
It must have taken great humility for this woman to wipe Jesus’ feet with her hair and tears in front of so many other people. She wasn’t vying for position or praise at the party. Instead, she served him —carrying out a humbling task with great willingness and eagerness. This was a way for her to admit her great need for Jesus as well as her gratitude for him.
She was self-aware
This woman knew herself and how much sin she had, which left no room to look down on anyone else. She wasn’t spending time criticizing or judging other people.She was just genuinely grateful for Jesus.
Pause and reflect
- As you reflect on these two people and their relationship with God, who do you most relate to? Simon or the woman? Why?
