Summary
Living in order to please God involves obeying God’s commands—all of them, not just the easy or not-burdensome ones. It is depressing that many deny this fact (not with their lips, but in how they actually live), practicing Christianity only as “Sunday morning Christians”, rather than offering up their entire lives as living sacrifices, in the manner Romans 12:1-3 tells us to do. For all the worship songs they may sing and shallow emotional highs they may experience (fancying this “worship”), God will not praise such people on Judgement Day. Because instead of subordinating everything in their lives to the truth of the Word of God so that their minds might be transformed—which is true worship, as scripture plainly states—they convinced themselves that somehow they “love God”… despite not really obeying His commands to any great extent.
We should take pains to not delude ourselves in such a way. If we wish to please God, there is no way to do so except by doing everything in our power to learn His commands, and then actually obey them in complete and total submission to His Will—essentially meaning we need to 1) learn the Word of God, 2) actually believe it, 3) apply it to our lives by passing the tests and trials put before us, and then 4) help others do likewise. There is no substitute for this hard work of spiritual growth—none whatsoever.
Content
Loving God means actually obeying His commands
When Paul speaks of “living in order to please God”, we are not to take this as some special or mysterious thing. It is nothing more than following the instructions given to us in the Bible (and no doubt expanded upon by Paul’s teaching when he was physically with the Thessalonians).
For us nowadays, since we no longer have the Apostles (or prophets) with us to guide us, we rely solely on Word of God to determine how to live in order to please God.
So what does the Word of God have to say about all this? A good place to start is with is the passage enumerating the so-called “greatest commandments”:
29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
29 Jesus answered, “Here is the most important one. Moses said, ‘Israel, listen to me. The Lord is our God. The Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Love him with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 And here is the second one. ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ There is no commandment more important than these.”
1 John 5 is also very relevant:
2 This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. 3 This is love for God: to obey his commands.
2 How do we know that we love God’s children? We know it when we love God and obey his commands. 3 Here is what it means to love God. It means that we obey his commands.
Do not be deceived: “love” is not some airy-fairy feeling. It is not mere emotion. It is obedience and submission and keeping the commands of God. If we would wish to please God, we must follow what He instructs us to do. After all, how do soldiers please their superiors here in the physical world? By carrying out their orders with excellence and distinction. In the same way, we are Christian soldiers, and Jesus Christ is our Commanding Officer (and never a better Commanding Officer has there ever been, nor shall there ever be). So why do we imagine that pleasing God will be anything other than obedience? That somehow we can just “love Him” (I suppose entailing thinking warm fuzzy thoughts, putting on a show of praise and “worship”, and paying lip service to God), but not bother with actually learning and then submitting to all the Bible teaches?
The vast majority of self-professed Christians today do not know very much of what the Bible teaches—not really. Just be truly honest and look around (and perhaps inward). And if we humans know God’s commands only through His Word, then this means that these people who don’t really know what the Bible teaches aren’t very familiar with what God commands of us. And if they aren’t very familiar with what God commands of us, they can’t keep His commands properly. And if they don’t keep His commands properly, the Bible says they don’t love God. (If not in an all-or-nothing fashion, certainly in a relative sense; people “do not love God” to the exact extent that they flout His commands as a direct consequence of not even bothering to try to fully learn what they might be).
Those who actually believe necessarily behave differently; faith that is truly alive always bears fruit
Can you be saved if you don’t love God—if you don’t do what God commands of us? James 2:14-26 speaks of those who say they “have faith” (without it being accompanied by works), and that that alone will somehow save them. Such “faith” is dead (James 2:17). In other words, it is, in truth, no true faith at all. Since all true faith leads to “works of faith” (Note: these are not primarily what things people tend to think of with blinders on, like giving money to the poor—the examples James uses are Abraham offering up his only son upon the altar, and Rahab sheltering the Jewish spies from capture and death; the thing in common is the immense faith these actions took), someone who claims “faith” without any works of faith is simply deluding themselves.
This is not to make us all walk around questioning our salvation. If you believe the gospel message, you are saved—the Bible is very clear about that (cf. John 3:16, Ephesians 2:8-10). But we do need to be brutally honest with ourselves about exactly how “alive” our faith is. Because James 2 clearly links the “health of our faith-plant” (cf. the Parable of the Sower and John 15:1-17) with how much we work out our faith. If we say we believe, but behave the exact same way as the unbelievers (and share their exact same priorities, and so on), well “how much” do we believe, really?
Let me use an analogy. Let’s say you somehow knew a particular stock was certain to go up 900% in the next week. If you actually believed this, would you not do everything in your power to buy as much of it as you possibly could, to maximize your return? Wouldn’t you look at someone really funny if they said that they “really” believe this (pinky promise)… but then buy none of the stock whatsoever? Would you not think to yourself, “This person doesn’t really believe this, because if they did, their behavior would necessarily be different”?
So, tell me, why do we as Christians tend to be so unwilling to apply that same logic to our faith in God? The Bible certainly does, so we should too. So that we do not lie to ourselves and live lives unworthy of the immeasurable price Christ paid to redeem us from our sin and just condemnation. So that we ensure that we live lives pleasing to God as good Christian soldiers.
Given the priorities of most modern churches, focusing on the truth as you ought will likely make you an outcast
We should do what we have been discussing—and be completely unapologetic about it, and unyielding in it—despite what everyone else around us might be saying. For example, most modern churches won’t agree with the assessment that most of the Church visible is steeped in lukewarmness and ignorance of the Bible, despite it being objective truth (and obvious, at that, for any who care to look with the least bit of honesty). Do you imagine that they will be happy when you say that it is all about the truth of the Word of God, when in fact most modern churches spend the greater part of their time and focus and money on many, many things other than that? Many modern churches barely teach anything of substance at all, and those that do either teach so many false things or keep their focus on such a narrow subset of what the Bible teaches—e.g., about such happy topics as marriage and love and family—that they too ought to be greatly ashamed.
Put bluntly, if you follow things here to their logical conclusions, you won’t fit it in at most modern churches, since most modern churches really only pay lip service to teaching the full truth of the Word of God. But that’s OK, since we are out to please God, not man. Because we know that true worship (as opposed to whatever it is people imagine it to be) is dedicating our lives as living sacrifices to God, being transformed in our thinking by the power of His Word (Romans 12:1-3, and cf. John 4:23-24). That people somehow think we can “renew our minds” in any way other than the hard work of learning, believing, and applying the Bible to our lives (and then helping others do likewise) is why many self-professed Christians will never worship God as He actually wishes for them to (despite all their supposed “worship”), and will consequently never really live in order to please God. Let us not be among that number, even if it means we walk a lonelier road.