All Your Soul
Photo by Josh Marshall on Unsplash

Loving God with all your soul is a little more complicated of an area to consider. If loving God, when we cannot see Him, is difficult because of the abstract nature of it, then certainly loving Him with all of your soul only compounds that complexity. It helps to understand that while the Jewish believe the heart is where we experience and express much of what makes us a person (intellect, emotion, will), the soul is our essence. 

God’s Breath

Remember, essence is our intrinsic nature or the indispensable quality that determines our character. Soul, also translated as breath, is God’s breath of life or the thing that animates our bodies. It is the thing that God joined with our physical body and made it alive and what it means to be created in God’s image. When God breathed life into us, He was putting into us both His essence and the characteristics that make us, us. He animated our body with life that is Him.

Loving God with all your soul is about loving God with all of who you are. The Jews believe that the soul is the seat of our emotions because our emotions are a part of who we are. So loving God with all our soul includes our emotional responses to God. I’ve always been an emotional person, but the way that manifested before and after God is quite different.

Your Soul is You

Before God, my emotions came out often as anger. During that time, I might’ve called it passion, but it was anger. There were other emotions, but I think anger was the most frequent and predominate one. After God got a hold of me, I started crying a lot. Not because I’m sad, maybe sometimes, but mostly because I often feel overwhelmed with a lot; joy, amusement, awe, and relief. I also feel more compassionate toward others. To be clear, this was my emotional journey and is not intended to be indicative of how everyone’s journey should go. So, while there is an emotional aspect to this, it’s far more than that. Loving God with all your soul is manifested in you being you. That means relating and responding to Him with the character, personality, and emotions with which He created you.

Be You for Them

Again, living out the New Command, “to love each other”, is the best way to see this manifested. If by nature, you’re a nurturing person, that character trait is most directly God-honoring when it is directed back to Him through nurturing His body. If you’re a steadfast “rock “type person, you show your love for God best when you provide support for His people. Because your soul is who you are, if you’re creative, then you create. But you create for the good of others, starting with those in His body. Loving God with all your soul has everything honoring those in His body with who you are.

Excerpt from my book, Three Commands: Jesus’ Fulfillment of the Law Through Love. You can purchase the book HERE.