WHOLEHEARTED: SOUL
Joseph and Mary loved their son. Even more, they loved God. They were devout Jews, so naturally, they followed all of the Jewish laws and customs. Perhaps their most sacred duty was to recite the Shema. For thousands of years, every evening and every morning, Jews have prayed these words as a way of expressing their devotion to God. In fact, the Jewish Law instructs that when a child starts to speak, they are immediately taught the first verse of the Shema.
And what is the Shema? (S-H-E-M-A) The actual word is translated “hear” or “listen”. It’s all about action. In Hebrew, hearing and doing are the same thing. So naturally, the first words Jesus memorized were words He would come to know from Deuteronomy 6:4:
Listen, Hear, SHEMA, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
This formative prayer served as the foundation for all of Jesus’ teachings.
At the height of His ministry, we find Jesus surrounded by the chief priests and the elders. Their tempers were flaring. They were angry with how He portrayed them as the antagonists in His parables. So, they called in the Pharisees to catch Him in His words. And when they didn’t succeed, the Sadducees jumped in to see if they could debate His interpretations.
Finally, one of the teachers of the law, who had been watching the debate from the sidelines, stepped forward. He had been impressed with Jesus’ teachings, and curiously asked, “Teacher, of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
Now, Jesus didn’t have to complete an exegesis of the 613 Jewish laws to answer this question. Nor did He quickly recite the 10 Commandments. He knew the one commandment that had been flowing from His heart to His tongue for all of His life. He quickly answered:
“The most important one is this: ‘Hear, Shema, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
We began a new sermon series last Sunday entitled Wholehearted – exploring the Shema and what it means to wholeheartedly love God and love our neighbors. Our knowledge, our existence -- everything we are -- is to love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength.
For devout Jews, and us today, loving means faithful obedience to our covenant relationship with God and His commandments. Obedience to these laws isn’t about legalism or trying to earn God’s favor — it’s about loving God by actively listening and responding to His teachings.
Last week, we focused on the heart. Scripture teaches us to love God with all our emotions and desires, passions and thoughts, affections and will.
Today, we’re moving to that second word – love the Lord our God with all our soul.
The word “soul” can often feel like a vague word. Its translation in English comes with a lot of baggage from ancient Greek philosophy. It’s the idea that the soul is a non-physical, immortal essence that’s contained or trapped in our body to be released at death. In our culture today, soul is synonymous with jazz and blues music. Or here in the south – soul food is southern comfort food.
But all of these notions are totally foreign to the biblical meaning.
The Hebrew word for “soul” is nephesh. N-E-P-H-E-S-H. It occurs over 700 times in the Old Testament.
The most basic meaning of nephesh is throat. When the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness, they were hungry and thirsty, and they said to God, “We miss the cucumbers and melons we had in Egypt, and now our nephesh has dried up!”
And since your whole life and body depend on what comes in and out of your throat, nephesh could also be used to refer to the whole person. In Genesis, there were thirty-three nephesh in Jacob’s family. That is, thirty-three people. And on the first pages of the Bible, both humans and animals are called a living nephesh.
In Scripture, people don’t have a nephesh; rather, they are a nephesh — a living, breathing, physical being. Psalm 119 reads, “Let me live, that I may praise you.” In Hebrew, the poet literally says, “let my nephesh live, that it may praise you." By using nephesh, the poet emphasizes his entire being - his life and his body - offers thanks to God.
And my favorite use of nephesh comes in Psalm 42:
“As the deer pants for the water, so my soul - nephesh - pants after you.
My soul - nephesh - thirsts for the living God.”
So, on a physical level, your throat can be thirsty. But then physical thirst can become a metaphor for how your whole physical being longs to know, and be known, by your Creator.
This brings us all the way back to the Shema. To love the Lord with all your soul – all your nephesh - means to devote your whole physical existence to your Creator. It’s about offering your entire being, with all of its capabilities and limitations, in the effort to love God wholeheartedly.
Now, we can usually visualize what it might look like to love God with our hearts and minds. But what about the soul?
If the soul is the deepest part of who we are, the part of us that searches and yearns for something more than just the physical day-to-day life, then the soul is also the most vulnerable part of who we are. It’s the part of us that sincerely longs to love, believe, and find purpose.
Ecclesiastes describes the spiritual part of us as having an eternal and divine sense of purpose, which God has implanted in our hearts. And only God can satisfy this.
Have you ever felt the empty feeling of a dissatisfied soul? Perhaps it was before you were a follower of Christ and that’s what prompted you to search for God in the first place? No amount of pleasure, attention, or success could fill the void. Perhaps it was during the pandemic? Or maybe during a crisis of health or relationship?
When our souls are dissatisfied, we start to feel like nothing is good enough. We become dissatisfied with our marriage, our job, home, school, even our schedule. We start to crave more and more, looking for ways to feel satisfied.
This craving for more is actually a sign that our souls need God, but often we confuse the signal for something else. And instead of turning to God, we try to fill the emptiness inside us with:
· more things,
· more approval from people around us,
· more success at work,
· or more sources of physical and emotional comfort.
Remember Psalm 42:
As the deer pants for streams of water,
So my soul pants for you, my God.
Our souls thirst for God — not for more things we think will satisfy us.
Unless we stop, and pay attention to what our soul needs, we will always look for love in all the wrong places.
But where in the Bible does it tell us how exactly to love God with all our soul?
I found myself reading Luke chapter 7 this week, as you do. And two things popped out – gratitude and forgiveness. Let’s read through this story together, and see if you think this teaches us how to love God with the deepest parts of our soul.
Luke chapter 7, beginning in verse 36:
One of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him.
So, Jesus went to the Pharisee’s house,
and He took his place at the table.
There was a woman in that town who had lived a sinful life.
She learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house.
So, she came there with a special jar of perfume.
She stood behind Jesus and cried at His feet.
And she began to wet his feet with her tears.
Then she wiped them with her hair.
She kissed them and poured perfume on them.
The Pharisee, who had invited Jesus, saw this.
He said to himself, “If this man were a prophet,
he would know who is touching him.
He would know what kind of woman she is. She is a sinner!”
This story introduces us to two very different people:
First, Simon the Pharisee:
- He was probably well-respected in his community, with a good, clean reputation, holding strictly to religious traditions.
- He was hospitable. He had a home nice enough to host Jesus and His friends for dinner.
- On the outside, he seems to be what many of us would consider a good guy, trying to do the right thing
- In fact, he could be any one of us.
But then we learn a few other things about Simon:
- While he did good things on the outside, his thoughts on the inside were that of a very critical observer.
- He looked down on Jesus, and the sinful woman, noticing what he perceived as their faults, without admitting any of his own.
Now, I can relate to Simon, and maybe you can, too! I’ve been known to be a little self-righteous here and there. Like Simon, in my head, it’s easy for me to criticize others, instead of being humble and aware of my own sins and weaknesses. When I get that way, I become full of myself — convinced I’m right, and empty of the things that matter - like love, gratitude, and mercy.
But what about that “sinful woman”? What do we know about her?
- Well, clearly, we know she “had lived a sinful life.”
- She had a reputation in the community, and never would’ve made the guest list to this dinner party.
- She was familiar with the guilt, regret, and shame that come from sinful choices.
I think we all can relate to many of these feelings, too. I’ve felt the pain of regret, the fear of being judged, and the shameful consequences of making bad life choices.
Yet it’s this woman who gives us a picture of what it looks like to love God with all our soul.
Throughout Scripture, spiritual lessons often come through the people we least expect. And the same is true here. The Pharisee, an expert in religious law, doesn’t teach us to love God with his everything. The sinful woman does.
First, she cared more about Jesus than what people thought of her:
Despite her reputation, she showed up to a party she wasn’t invited to. That alone would take monumental boldness. She could’ve been kicked out or humiliated. Can you imagine the critical stares of the self-righteous people? But not only did she show up, she went out of her way to lovingly express her gratitude for Jesus.
And how did she get this boldness? We later learn that her heart was deeply moved by Jesus’ love and forgiveness. This forgiveness meant so much to her that any concern about other people’s opinions of her flew right out the window.
Second, she was vulnerable and unguarded:
She didn’t hide in the crowd to watch Him from a distance. She stood right behind Jesus and wept. She held nothing back, bawling tears filled with pain, sorrow, and regret — and likely hope, relief, and gratitude, too. The soul is, by definition, deep and emotional. This woman vulnerably opened her heart to love God with all her soul.
Third, she sacrificed:
She brought a jar of costly perfume to Jesus. This perfume may have been the most valuable item she owned. Loving God with all our soul means recognizing that nothing is more valuable than our relationship with God.
And fourth, she was humble:
It must have taken great humility for this woman to wipe Jesus’ feet with her hair and tears in front of so many people. Yet, she simply served Him, carrying out a humbling task with great willingness and eagerness. This was her way of admitting her great need for Jesus, as well as her gratitude for Him.
As He so often did, Jesus turned this into a teachable moment. He knew Simon’s thoughts without him saying a word, and responded to this religious man with a lesson about love. Verses 40-47:
Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.
Two people owed money to a certain lender.
One owed him 500 silver coins.
The other owed him 50 silver coins.
Neither of them had the money to pay him back.
So, he let them go without paying.
Which of them will love him more?”
Simon replied, “I suppose the one who owed the most money.”
“You are right,” Jesus said.
Then He turned toward the woman.
He said to Simon, “Do you see this woman?
I came into your house.
You didn’t give me any water to wash my feet.
But she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.
You didn’t give me a kiss.
But this woman hasn’t stopped kissing my feet since I came in.
You didn’t put any olive oil on my head.
But she has poured this perfume on my feet.”
Jesus used this illustration to teach us what it takes to love Him with the deepest, most vulnerable parts of our souls. In the story, the guy who had the most debt forgiven was naturally the most grateful and loving.
And the sinful woman gave God her all, because she was so incredibly grateful for His forgiveness.
Gratitude is key to loving God with all our soul. The Bible tells us that we love God because He first loved us. We can’t love God with all our soul if we have lost our gratitude for Him and all He has done for us.
And how do we lose gratitude?
1. Complaining –Complaining focuses our minds on everything we don’t have, and everything that seems to be going wrong in our lives, and makes us forget all the things that are going right. Don’t get me wrong. Lament is good. It’s biblical. But if that’s all we do, our love for God will suffer.
2. Comparing – When we compare our lives to other people’s lives, we often focus only on what we don’t have, instead of remembering what we do have.
3. Forgetting answered prayers – It hurts our relationship with God when we don’t take time to acknowledge the prayers He has answered for us and the desires He has fulfilled.
Gratitude is powerful. A one-time act of thoughtful gratitude produces an immediate 10% increase in happiness and 35% reduction in anxiety.
If you feel you’ve lost your love for God, know this:
gratitude can bring back that lovin’ feeling. :)
Jesus concluded in verse 47:
So, I tell you this. Her many sins have been forgiven.
She has shown that she understands this by her great acts of love.
But whoever has been forgiven only a little, loves only a little.
The woman in this passage showed great love for Jesus because she understood His forgiveness. We can’t love God wholeheartedly with all our souls without recognizing and understanding how much we have been forgiven. And we can’t recognize how much we have been forgiven without recognizing our sin.
Now this isn’t something that comes natural to me. Perhaps I want to prove to myself, and others, that I am not sinful. Perhaps I feel like Christianity is about having a perfect performance, instead of realizing I can never earn my salvation on my own. Perhaps I feel insecure about what others will think of me.
The Bible refers to this woman as “the sinful woman.” There’s no question she was sinful. And actually, according to Romans, everyone has sin, right?! So, we could all be referred to as “the sinful man” or “the sinful woman.” Jesus came to forgive our sins, and He shows us He will forgive us by the way He treats this woman.
We can, and should, have the kind of experience this woman had with Jesus every time we spend time with Him. When we recognize and admit our sins, we can experience the same gratitude, love, forgiveness, and security that she found in her relationship with Jesus.
But when our focus shifts from God to people, our fear of rejection stops us from wanting to admit our sins and shortcomings. The woman in the story was singularly focused on Jesus. She wasn’t concerned with what others thought because she knew only Jesus’ view of her mattered. And He forgave her.
So, what did Luke Chapter 7 teach me this week? Gratitude and a deep understanding of God’s forgiveness are key to loving God with all our soul – all our nephesh. And the love we experience through gratitude and forgiveness results in faithfulness and obedience. These are the truths that can transform us from the inside out to love Jesus wholeheartedly with all our soul – all our nephesh.
And, of course, my favorite theologian, Henri Nouwen, summed it up best:
“Jesus has to be, and become, ever more the center of my life.
It is not enough that Jesus is my teacher, my guide, my source of inspiration.
It is not even enough that He is my companion on the journey,
my friend and my brother.
Jesus must become the heart of my heart, the fire of my life,
the love of my soul, the truth of my spirit.
He must become my only thought, my only concern, my only desire.”
That is to say:
Listen! Hear! Shema, O, First Methodist Church: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
May we give Jesus, today and every day, our wholehearted devotion.
Amen. And Amen.
