With gentle hands the stocky, gray-haired doctor examines each patient in a room filled with suffering Angolans. He is able to visit this isolated clinic just once a month, so for 24 hours straight he examines, treats and performs surgery in primitive conditions on as many patients as possible. In a country where life expectancy and infant mortality rates are among the worst in the world, he is hardly making a dent in the vast need. So why does he do it?

The reason is found in the answer to a question asked of Jesus by a teacher of the law in Mark 12:28. “Of all the commandments, which is the most important? Jesus replied, “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 neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”

The doctor sacrificially serves the sick and poor in the backwaters of Angola for neither money nor recognition. He receives little of either. He serves these people as a natural and logical outgrowth of his love for God. At some point in his life he encountered the singular God of Israel, the one Jesus prefaced His answer with, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Captured by the love God demonstrated through the death and resurrection of His Son Jesus, his response is to love God in return with all his heart, soul, mind and strength.

To love God with all your heart means to respond with your emotional nature. Love is the strongest of human emotions created by God, primarily to respond to Him.

“We love because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)

To love God with all your soul is a response of your volitional nature. God created us with a free will so when we choose to love Him, He is most pleased. “My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from Him.” (Ps. 62:1)
To love God with all your mind is a response of your intellectual nature. What you put into your mind and how you use it is influenced by your love for God. “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable; if anything is excellent or praiseworthy; think about such things.”(Phil.4:8)

To love God with all your strength is a response of your physical nature. Using your physical strength, possessions, gifts and skills to help others is an outward demonstration of love for God. “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” (1 John 3:16)

Our first obligation is to love God with the totality of our being, but this does not happen in a vacuum. To love God and not show it in the fruit of our lives is not possible. If there is no fruit, there can be no love. To love our neighbours as ourselves is a very close second because it is the natural outcome of obedience to the first.

When the doctor in Angola treats his patients he also tells them about the God he loves. Many are drawn to Jesus because they experience Him through the healing hands of a man who loves Him with all his heart, soul, mind and strength and loves his neighbour as himself.

This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome. – 1 John 5:3