What It Takes to Please God

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.

–Luke 10:27

What does it take to please God?

You might say, “Pastor, you of all people ought to know there’s nothing we can do to please God. The only way we can please Him is by accepting His free gift of forgiveness through Jesus Christ.” Yes, we are saved by grace. As Ephesians 2:8–9 says, “By grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Salvation is by grace alone. There is nothing we can do to earn our way to heaven. But as we examine Scripture, can we honestly say that all God cares about is our right standing before Him? Is accepting His grace all we have to do–or all we can do–to please Him?

No. The Bible says God is interested in more than our justification.

A great passage that illustrates this truth is found in Luke 10. You may recognize these verses as the prelude to one of Jesus’s most famous stories–the parable of the good Samaritan. Verse 25 says, “A lawyer stood up and put [Jesus] to the test, saying, ‘Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’” When I teach this passage, I usually say, “This lawyer was trying to trap Jesus to see if He would set aside the Old Testament law.” After all, Luke pointed out that the lawyer was putting Jesus to the test. But most people operate from mixed motives. Maybe this lawyer also had his own questions. Perhaps it was the morning after his fiftieth birthday–he was starting to feel the pains of his own mortality, so he wanted to know what he needed to do to please God.

Jesus responded, “What is written in the Law?” (v. 26). So the lawyer said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself” (v. 27). And Jesus said, in essence, “You got it! If you want to please God, that’s how you do it.”

What does it take to please God? It’s not easy, but it’s simple: Love God with all your heart, and love other people as yourself. That’s the essence of the Christian life.

Today’s devotion is adapted from “What God Desires from You” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2008.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.