Just HOW do you love God? Love is more than just an emotion you know – it requires WORKS, it requires ACTION to show love for God!

James 2:14-17 What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.

This scripture uses an example of LOVE where it is merely an emotion, and not backed up by WORKS, to show that FAITH without works is DEAD. If a man is hungry, and you say “I wish you well!,” you FEEL the emotion called love, but if you don’t FEED him, and show him the WORKS to back up your emotion, that emotion, that feeling is DEAD because it is alone!

Likewise, if you say you LOVE GOD, and don’t have the works that PROVE that you love Him, your so-called “love of God” is a DEAD, worthless, and empty love!

1 John 2:3 And hereby we do know that we know him…

Pay close attention… John is about to tell us HOW to KNOW the LORD, and how to LOVE GOD.

1 John 2:3 …if we keep his commandments.

This is how you know that you know Him! And it stands to reason that the BETTER you keep His commandments, the MORE you are showing love for Him!

1 John 2:4-5 …He that SAITH, I KNOW HIM, and KEEPETH NOT his commandments, is a LIAR, and the TRUTH IS NOT IN HIM. But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the LOVE OF GOD PERFECTED: hereby know we that we are in him.

THAT is how you know you LOVE GOD! That is how you know you are IN Him! If you KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS! That’s the SIMPLE ANSWER to a question that the world loves to complicate! KEEP HIS LAWS and OBEY HIM. This is the WORKS that you put WITH your emotion, to make LIVING, REAL LOVE OF GOD!

Exodus 20:1-11 And God spake all these words, saying, I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that LOVE ME, AND KEEP MY COMMANDMENTS.
Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

1 John 5:3 For THIS IS the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.

That’s the plain answer. No fluff, no complicated, hard-to-understand nonsense, just do what He says. Keep His laws, the first four of which are how to love God, and the last six of which show how to love men.