Everyone loves God to be faithful to them. Few talk about being faithful to God.
That sentence is where The Faithful Way began. It is also where love and faithfulness meet. Because the love Scripture describes is not a feeling that comes and goes. It is covenant loyalty. It is the love that stays, the love that commits, the love that shows itself in action. And that is exactly what faithfulness is.
We have looked at God’s faithfulness and ours. We have looked at God’s righteousness and ours. Now we come to the word that holds them both together: love. In Scripture, love is not the opposite of obedience. Love is the shape obedience takes. Love is not the opposite of faithfulness. Love is what faithfulness looks like when it moves toward another person. And the story Scripture tells about love is the same story it tells about everything else: God acts first, we respond, and the response is real.
God’s Love: Chesed in Action
The Hebrew word that Scripture most often connects with God’s love is chesed (חֶסֶד). It is notoriously difficult to translate. English versions render it “steadfast love,” “lovingkindness,” “mercy,” or “covenant loyalty.” None of those captures the full weight. Chesed is what happens when love and faithfulness become the same thing. It is love that commits. Love that stays. Love that acts on behalf of the other, not because the other earned it, but because the one who loves has bound Himself in covenant.
When God revealed His name to Moses on the mountain, He put chesed right at the center of who He is:
Exodus 34:6-7
“”YHWH, YHWH, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in chesed and faithfulness, keeping chesed for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin…””
Notice what stands side by side: chesed and emunah. Love and faithfulness. The same two words that Proverbs 3:3 tells us to bind around our necks and write on our hearts. They are not separate attributes. They are two faces of the same posture. God’s love is faithful. God’s faithfulness is loving. Pull them apart and you lose both.
Deuteronomy 7:7-8
“”It was not because you were more in number than any other people that YHWH set His love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because YHWH loves you and is keeping the oath that He swore to your fathers, that YHWH has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.””
God’s love is not a response to something in us. He set His love on Israel before Israel had anything to offer. And His love is tied to an oath, a promise, a covenant. That is chesed. It is love that binds itself, and then acts.
Psalm 136
“”Give thanks to YHWH, for He is good, for His chesed endures forever.””
This psalm repeats that refrain twenty-six times. His chesed endures forever. It is not seasonal. It is not circumstantial. It is the permanent posture of God toward His creation and His people.
Isaiah 54:10
“”For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but My chesed shall not depart from you, and My covenant of peace shall not be removed, says YHWH, who has compassion on you.””
Creation itself could dissolve before God’s chesed fails. It will not fail. It cannot fail. Because it is who He is.
The Love That Enters Death
The deepest expression of God’s love is the ransom. Not a payment to satisfy wrath. Forgiveness was always free. God forgave freely throughout the Old Testament, long before the cross (Psalm 103:8-12, Isaiah 43:25, Micah 7:18-19). What was needed was someone to break the power of death itself. And only God could do that.
John 3:16
“”For God so loved the world, that He gave His only kindred Son, that whoever trusts in Him should not perish but have eternal life.””
The word here is monogenes. It means “only kindred,” the one who shares the nature of the Father. God’s love moved Him to give the one who is most deeply Himself, His own Son, to enter death and conquer it. This is chesed in its most costly form.
Romans 5:6-8
“”For while we were still weak, at the right time the Messiah died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one will dare even to die. But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, the Messiah died for us.””
Paul does not say God talks about His love. He says God shows it. The cross is the demonstration. And notice when it happened: while we were still sinners. Not after we cleaned ourselves up. Not after we earned it. His love moved first.
1 John 4:9-10
“”In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the hilasmos for our sins.””
The word hilasmos is tied to the mercy seat, the place where God’s love and righteousness meet. Not wrath absorbed. Not punishment diverted. The cross is where God’s chesed and His tsedeq converge, and death is overcome. That is what God’s love does. It does not stand at a distance. It enters the worst that death can do and breaks it open from the inside.
1 John 4:8
“”Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.””
Scripture does not say God has love. It says God is love. His love is not a switch He flips. It is His nature. Everything He does, He does in love, even when that love looks like discipline, correction, or judgment. The cross is the proof that His love goes to the deepest place, pays the highest cost, and does not turn back.
Our Love for God: The Shema and the Life It Commands
If God’s love is chesed, covenant loyalty in action, then what does it mean for us to love Him? The answer Scripture gives is not a feeling. It is a life.
The oldest, most central command in the Hebrew Scriptures is the Shema:
Deuteronomy 6:4-5
“”Hear, O Israel: YHWH our God, YHWH is one. You shall love YHWH your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.””
Yeshua called this the greatest commandment, the one that sums up everything else:
Matthew 22:37-38
“”You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.””
The Hebrew for love here is from the root ahav (אָהַב). In the covenant context, ahav is not a warm emotion. It is covenant loyalty. When God says He loves Abraham (Genesis 18:19) or Israel (Deuteronomy 7:7-8), it means He has chosen them and committed to them. When He commands us to love Him, He is commanding the same thing: choose Me, commit to Me, walk with Me.
The Shema does not leave love as an abstraction. It defines it by what it involves: heart, soul, might. In Hebrew, levav (heart) is the inner self, the seat of will and thought. Nephesh (soul) is the whole living person. Me’od (might) is everything you have, your resources, your strength, your all. To love God is to orient your entire being toward Him. Not part of you. All of you.
And the Shema does not stop there. The very next verses show what this love looks like in practice:
Deuteronomy 6:6-7
“”And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.””
Love for God is visible in how you live, how you teach your children, how you order your home, how you fill your days. It is not a private interior devotion that stays invisible. It spills out into everything.
Deuteronomy 10:12-13
“”And now, Israel, what does YHWH your God require of you, but to fear YHWH your God, to walk in all His ways, to love Him, to serve YHWH your God with all your heart and all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of YHWH, which I am commanding you today for your good?””
Look at that list. Fear, walk, love, serve, keep. Love is not standalone. It is woven through a life of faithful obedience. And the goal is “for your good.” God’s commands are not a burden. They are the path of life, the way love lives.
Deuteronomy 11:1
“”You shall therefore love YHWH your God and keep His charge, His statutes, His rules, and His commandments always.””
Again: love and keep, side by side. This is why The Faithful Way uses faithfulness (pistis/emunah) as the operating word. Love is the posture. Faithfulness is the practice. You cannot separate them without distorting both. Love without faithfulness is sentiment. Faithfulness without love is duty. Scripture will not let us choose one over the other.
Joshua 22:5
“”Only be very careful to observe the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of YHWH commanded you, to love YHWH your God, and to walk in all His ways and to keep His commandments and to cling to Him and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul.””
Love, walk, keep, cling, serve. That is what loving God looks like. It is not one thing. It is an entire orientation of life.
The New Testament Echo: Love and Obedience as One
Yeshua makes the same connection the Shema makes. Love and obedience are not opposites. Love is the shape obedience takes.
John 14:15
“”If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.””
John 14:21
“”Whoever has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.””
John 15:9-10
“”As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.””
Notice what Yeshua does here. He does not say love replaces obedience. He says love is obedience. And He points to His own example. He kept the Father’s commandments and that is what it meant to abide in the Father’s love. Our love for God follows the same pattern.
Paul and the apostles use agape (ἀγάπη) in Greek, the word the Septuagint uses to carry the weight of ahav and chesed. It is the word Yeshua uses in John 14 and 15. And it is the word the New Testament writers use to describe both God’s love for us and our love for God and one another.
Romans 8:35-39
“”Who shall separate us from the love of the Messiah? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For Your sake we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in the Messiah Yeshua our Lord.””
God’s love is unbreakable. Nothing in creation can sever it. And the shape of that love is the cross and resurrection, the ransom that conquered death. Paul is not describing a warm feeling. He is describing a covenant bond that holds through everything.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
“”Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.””
This is the most famous passage on love in the New Testament. And it is a description of agape, the same love God shows us and the same love He calls us to show Him and one another. Notice what it is built on: patience, kindness, truth, endurance. This is not a feeling that washes over you. It is a way of being. It is chesed lived out in human relationships.
1 John 5:3
“”For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.””
Same pattern, Old Testament and New. Love God, keep His commandments. And the commandments are not a burden, because they are the language of love. A faithful spouse does not experience fidelity as a burden. It is how love lives. A parent who loves their child does not experience protection as a burden. It is what love does. God’s commandments are the same. They are not a weight to carry. They are the shape of a life that loves God.
2 John 1:6
“”And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the very commandment you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it.””
Love is a walk. It is a path. It is the daily, lived-out faithfulness that the Shema commanded and Yeshua confirmed and the apostles echoed.
Loving One Another: The Visible Shape of Loving God
There is one more thread Scripture weaves into this picture. Loving God and loving one another are not two separate commands. They are one commandment in two directions.
Leviticus 19:18
“”You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am YHWH.””
This is the command Yeshua called the second greatest commandment, alongside the Shema:
Matthew 22:39-40
“”And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.””
The two commands are not parallel. They are nested. Loving your neighbor is what loving God looks like when it moves outward. You cannot claim to love God and refuse to love the person He made:
1 John 4:20-21
“”If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.””
John is blunt. Love for God and love for neighbor are one reality. If the love you claim toward God does not show up in how you treat people, it is not real. It is a word, not a life.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
“”If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faithfulness, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.””
Everything we do, every act of devotion, every act of faithfulness, every act of sacrifice, is empty without love. Love is not the icing on the cake. Love is the cake. It is the substance that gives everything else its meaning.
The Flow: His Love First, Our Love in Response
This is the same pattern The Faithful Way has traced from the beginning, now in the key of love:
1. God loves first. His chesed, His covenant love that commits and stays, moves toward us before we move toward Him. He set His love on us when we had nothing to offer. The ransom is the deepest expression of that love, God giving His only kindred Son to conquer death.
2. We respond. Our love is not the cause of the relationship. It is the answer to being loved first. “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). The Shema commands us to love God, and that command is a response to the God who has already loved us.
3. Our love is lived, not just felt. It shows up as faithfulness: obedience, walking in His ways, keeping His commands, loving others as He loved us. Love is not a moment of emotion. It is a direction. It is the daily choice to orient your whole life toward the God who loved you first.
4. Love and faithfulness are one reality. Chesed and emunah stand together in Exodus 34:6. Ahav and commandment-keeping stand together in Deuteronomy. Agape and obedience stand together in John 14. You cannot pull them apart without losing both. To love God is to be faithful to Him. To be faithful to God is to love Him.
This is the heart of The Faithful Way. God loved us first. His love is faithful. Now we learn to love Him back, not with words alone, but with lives that walk in the same faithfulness He has shown us. His love is the foundation. Our love is the response. Both are real. Both are lived. And the life that loves God is the life that keeps His commandments, loves His people, and endures to the end.
This article is the foundation for an eight-week Bible study on love in Scripture. The study will explore: (1) The God Who Is Love, (2) Chesed in Creation and Covenant, (3) The Shema: Love as Covenant Loyalty, (4) The Love of Yeshua: Ransom and Resurrection, (5) Abiding in Love: Yeshua’s Words in John, (6) Love in Action: The Commands Fulfilled, (7) Love Under Trial: Enduring in the Hardest Places, and (8) The Love That Endures Forever: New Heavens and New Earth.