Love has a definition
Ask a room of believers how we show our love for God and you will hear good answers: worship, prayer, gratitude, serving others. Scripture does not leave the question open. It gives love a definition, and the definition is the same in the Torah, in the Gospels and in the letters.
“This is love, that we should walk according to his commandments. This is the commandment, even as you heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it.”
2 John 1:6
“By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep his commandments. For this is loving God, that we keep his commandments. His commandments are not grievous.”
1 John 5:2-3
John does not say that keeping the commandments earns God’s love, and he does not say that love replaces the commandments. He says this is what loving God looks like when it leaves the heart and enters the week. The commandments he means are the ones his readers had “from the beginning” (1 John 2:7), not a new list.
Grace comes first
Before going further, the order matters. We do not keep commandments so that God will love us, or so that he will save us. He loved us first (1 John 4:19), and he saved us by grace through faith, not by works.
“for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them.”
Ephesians 2:8-10
Grace is the root and obedience is the fruit. Titus 2:11-12 says the same grace that brings salvation also trains us to live soberly, righteously and godly in this present age. A person rescued from the penalty of sin naturally wants to please the one who rescued them, and the commandments tell us how.
Jesus’ own words
On the night before his death, Jesus tied love to obedience again and again in a single conversation.
“If you love me, keep my commandments.”
John 14:15
“One who has my commandments and keeps them, that person is one who loves me. One who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will reveal myself to him.”
John 14:21
“If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, even as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.”
John 15:10
He also said that whoever loves him will keep his word, and that the Father and the Son will make their home with that person (John 14:23). Notice how he ends: Jesus remained in his Father’s love by keeping his Father’s commandments, and he asks us to remain in his love the same way. His commandments are not a separate code from the Father’s. He said his teaching was not his own but belonged to the one who sent him (John 7:16; 12:49-50), a point we take up in Question 4. Here the point is simpler: the Messiah himself defines love for him as keeping what he commanded.
Knowing him and walking like him
“This is how we know that we know him: if we keep his commandments. One who says, “I know him,” and doesn’t keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth isn’t in him. But God’s love has most certainly been perfected in whoever keeps his word. This is how we know that we are in him: he who says he remains in him ought himself also to walk just like he walked.”
1 John 2:3-6
These are strong words, and John chose them. To claim to know God while ignoring his commandments is, in John’s vocabulary, a lie. The test of being “in him” is walking as he walked, and Jesus walked in Torah. He kept the Sabbath, ate what the law calls food, kept the feasts and wore tzitzit (Question 13). Walking like him means walking that way too, in the power of the Spirit rather than in our own strength (Ezekiel 36:26-27).
What God asks, and whether it is too hard
None of this began with John. Moses put the same question to Israel and gave the same answer.
“Now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, and to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, to keep the LORD’s commandments and statutes, which I command you today for your good?”
Deuteronomy 10:12-13
Fear, walk, love, serve, keep. It is one list, not a ladder, and Moses adds that the commandments are “for your good.” He also answers the fear that the standard is out of reach.
“For this commandment which I command you today is not too hard for you or too distant. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up for us to heaven, bring it to us, and proclaim it to us, that we may do it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will go over the sea for us, bring it to us, and proclaim it to us, that we may do it?” But the word is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.”
Deuteronomy 30:11-14
John says it in fewer words: “His commandments are not grievous” (1 John 5:3). Jesus said his yoke is easy and his burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30). The heavy burdens he condemned were the man-made rules laid on top of God’s law (Matthew 23:4; Mark 7:8-9), not the law itself. When a command feels heavy, the first thing to check is how much of the weight God actually put there.
Love summarizes the law; it does not replace it
Someone will ask whether Jesus reduced all of this to two commandments, love God and love your neighbor. He did name two greatest commandments. Look at where he found them.
“Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. A second likewise is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:37-40
The first is Deuteronomy 6:5, spoken just before the command to keep God’s words on our hearts and teach them to our children (Deuteronomy 6:6-7). The second is Leviticus 19:18, in a chapter that also commands honest weights, care for the poor and the stranger, and reverence for the Sabbath (Leviticus 19:30). Jesus was quoting Torah, not replacing it. He said the whole law and the prophets “depend on” these two, the way a door depends on its hinges. Take away the hinges and the door does not become free; it falls.
Paul reads it the same way. Love fulfills the law because “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” and the rest are what love does in practice (Romans 13:8-10; Galatians 5:14). The two great commandments tell us what every other commandment is for. The other commandments tell us what love actually does on a Sabbath, at a dinner table, in a business deal, with a neighbor in need.
So this is how we show our love for God. We trust his Son, we receive his grace, and then we walk the way he told us to walk, because we love him.