What does it really mean to love God and love others?

from the old testament

• Loving God and loving others finds its culmination in Jesus' instruction in the New Testament (see Matthew 22:37—40; Mark 12:30—31), but begins in the Old. Love begins with recognizing who God is and responding to Him with wholehearted devotion. Deuteronomy 6:4–5 declares, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one,” followed by the command to “love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” Loving God means giving Him our whole selves, not merely adding Him to our lives.
  
• Israel was instructed to remember what God had done for them (Deuteronomy 5:15; 8:2–5). Loving God grows from remembering who He is and what He has done.
• Love for God is demonstrated through obedience: walking in His ways, keeping His commands, and serving Him (Deuteronomy 10:12–13; 11:1, 13, 22). Obedience is one of love's clearest expressions.
  
• Loving God is not about religious activity. The prophets confronted Israel over and over again when their outward worship was disconnected from their hearts and treatment of others. God said in Hosea 6:6, “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,” while Isaiah 1:11–17 shows that religious rituals mean little when people practice injustice and refuse to care for others.
  
• Loving God means trusting Him even when obedience is difficult. Proverbs 3:5–6 calls God's people to trust Him rather than relying entirely on their own understanding. Psalm 37:3–5 similarly connects trust, doing good, delighting in the Lord, and committing one's way to Him.
• Loving God includes delighting in His Word. Psalm 119 repeatedly describes God's commands as something to treasure, meditate on, and delight in (Psalm 119:14–16, 47–48, 97, 111). Love for God should, therefore, shape what we want, think about, and pursue.
• Loving God changes what we worship. We cannot faithfully love God and other gods (Exodus 20:3–6; Deuteronomy 6:14–15). The issue is ultimately one of loyalty: Who receives our worship, trust, and devotion?
• The command to love others also comes from the Old Testament. God commanded His people to love their neighbors as themselves. Leviticus 19:18 says, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” making love a practical obligation rather than simply an emotion.
  
• Loving others extends beyond friends and people who can benefit us. Israel was commanded to love the sojourner because they themselves had been sojourners in Egypt: “You shall love the stranger as yourself” (Leviticus 19:33–34). God's people were also called to protect widows, orphans, foreigners, and the poor in Deuteronomy 10:18–19 and Deuteronomy 24:17–22.
• The Old Testament includes many laws describing what it means to love others. Leviticus 19:11–16, for example, forbids stealing, lying, false testimony, oppression, and partiality.
• Loving others means responding with compassion, forgiveness, and patience, even when others have wronged us. Proverbs warns against celebrating when an enemy falls (Proverbs 24:17–18), while Joseph’s response to his brothers’ betrayal shows what forgiveness can look like in practice (Genesis 45:1–15; 50:15–21). Loving others is costly and requires action.

from the new testament

• Jesus explicitly brought together the two themes of loving God and loving others. When asked about the greatest commandment, Jesus replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Then He added, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37–40; Mark 12:29–31). Jesus said these two commands summarize the Law and the Prophets.
  
• Notice how loving God comes first, but how it necessarily affects how we love people. Our relationship with God becomes the foundation for how we treat everyone else. In Luke 10:25-37, Jesus clarifies the meaning of “neighbor.” In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus answers the question “Who is my neighbor?” The neighbor is not simply someone we already like, someone who looks like us, or someone who is near us. It is the person in front of us who needs compassion, regardless of who they are or what differences exist between us.
• Love for God is demonstrated through love for His people. First John 4:20–21 makes the connection especially direct: someone cannot claim to love God while hating a fellow believer. Love for God and love for others belong together.
• John 14:15 says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” and John 14:21 says, “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.” Loving God, therefore, is directly connected to obeying Him. Galatians 5:13–14 says that the whole law is fulfilled in the command to “love your neighbor as yourself."
• Jesus' own life gives the standard for how we are to love God and others: He served, suffered, and ultimately gave Himself for others (Mark 10:45; John 15:12–13). Jesus also commanded His followers: “Love one another: just as I have loved you” (John 13:34).
  
• Jesus extends love even to enemies. In Matthew 5:43–48, Jesus commanded His followers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. He pointed to God's own kindness, since the Father gives sun and rain to both the evil and the good. Christian love, therefore, cannot be limited to people who love us back.
  
• Loving others also involves forgiveness. Jesus called His followers to forgive others (Matthew 6:14–15; 18:21–35; Luke 6:27–28). Love does not pretend that wrongs never happened, but it refuses to make revenge the goal.
• Loving others looks like being patient, kind, humble, unselfish, forgiving, truthful, and enduring (1 Corinthians 13:4–7). Colossians 3:12–14 calls believers to compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, and above all love, “which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” Galatians 5:13 says, “through love serve one another.” Philippians 2:3–4 tells Christians to reject selfish ambition, look to others' interests, and adopt the mindset of Christ, who humbled Himself and served others (Philippians 2:5–8). Our love is shown in how we treat others: by removing selfishness and self-centeredness and choosing to do what is good for another.
• Loving others requires action, not merely words. First John 3:16–18 points to Jesus' sacrifice as the model and asks how God's love can remain in someone who sees a brother or sister in need but refuses to help. John concludes that believers should love “in deed and in truth.”
  
• Loving others does not mean ignoring truth. Ephesians 4:15 calls believers to speak “the truth in love.” Biblical love is neither harsh truth without compassion nor compassion that abandons truth. It seeks to communicate truth in a way that genuinely seeks another person's good.

implications for today

It’s easy to make the Christian life more complicated than Jesus did. We can get caught up in church, Bible studies, theological debates, life, relationships, and trying to become a better version of ourselves, yet Jesus brings our priorities back to two things: love God and love others (Matthew 22:37–40).

Loving God means more than saying we believe in Him. It means giving Him first place in our time, decisions, relationships, money, goals, and everyday choices. And loving others means letting that love spill over into the way we treat people, especially when it costs us something. It looks like forgiving someone who hurt you, checking on a friend who is struggling, serving when you would rather be comfortable, listening instead of making everything about yourself, and showing kindness to someone you have nothing to gain from. A life of loving God and loving others is only possible through surrender to the God who is love.

Look at your calendar, your priorities, and even how you treat people when no one is watching. What do they say your life is about? The Christian life isn't about fitting God into whatever space is left over; it's about putting Him first and letting that relationship reshape everything else. When loving God is at the center, loving people becomes part of the same pursuit. If you want to know what your faith should look like on an ordinary Tuesday, start here: love God, then let that love change the way you love people.