Can a person love God? To some of you I apologize for the question; it sounds almost absurd! Yet, on the other hand, there are those who quite honestly say, I cannot love God. I think the difficulty is the result partly of misunderstanding of the meaning of love, and partly, and perhaps more immediately, the result of the fact that the men who say it do not know God. To know God is to love Him.
Loving God consists of an inclination toward Him as we know Him to be good. Love of God must therefore be the outcome of knowledge of God. I can understand that the man who has no knowledge of God, no understanding of Him, no conception of God other than that which speaks of infinite intelligence and infinite power working together in the universe, will have no love for God—respect, reverence, awe, fear, yes, but not love.
No man loves God who discovers Him only through nature. According to Paul, men are not left without witness concerning God, even though they have never had any direct revelation from God; for in the things that are created, said the apostle, man may discover the wisdom and divinity of God - humans may discover, that is, the intelligence and the strength of Deity.
But love is never born in the heart of man toward God by that discovery. It is only when we turn from nature, not to neglect its message, but to listen for another voice and to hear what God says to man, not through the mediation of nature, but through the mediation of the Son of His love, that men come to such knowledge of God that love is created in their hearts.
Adapted from The Great Commandments, by G. Campbell Morgan.
