Reading biblical texts about love is a lot like going to the doctor. You know you are in for an “examination!” 1 Peter 1:22-25 doesn’t usually get mentioned in the same breath with some of more well-known love texts. But, this text provides us with a powerful exhortation about what mature love looks like. Peter says:
Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For,
“All people are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of the Lord endures forever.” And this is the word that was preached to you.
Peter says love doesn’t simply sneak up and grab us. Mature love takes action on our part. It is intentional. How often is our personal comfort zone or selfish habits of thought the starting place for how we love people? Peter’s starting place for understanding love is the gospel and obedience to the same. He says we should love like Jesus loved because:
1. We have been purified by obeying the truth of the gospel.
2. We were born again of incorruptible seed, the word of God.
Point? Something happened to us when we came to Christ. We came under the power and influence of the gospel. As such, being born again marries us to the gospel’s style of love.
How does Peter describe love?
1. It is sincere. The greek word (anupocritos) means “without hypocrisy”. We should not be phony or disingenuous in how we engage people. He accents it further by saying that love should be “from the heart.”
2. Fraternal affection (philadelphos). This is the kind of love families share within a family unit. Christians are brought together in God’s family. We care for each other like members in a close human family care for one another. What a beautiful picture!
3. Fervently. The greek word (extenos) means to “stretch out the hand.” It implies earnestness, going after something purposefully and with intensity. The Message translation reads, “…love one another as if your lives depended on it.”
Great text on love…right! Our natural inclination is to think about love and to give love according to how our subjective filters work. We’ve all done it. Do I like them? Do I think they like me? Have they been mean to me? Rude? Ignored me? Discriminatory? Arrogant? I don’t think I have the gift of love for that person. The gift of love? Hmmmm? Peter says we have the calling to love, but he doesn’t say anything about the gift of love. In fact he later points out some of the things that congest our ability to love and plainly says….”get rid of them!” (2:1-2).
Loving like Peter describes is a challenge for anyone. But, it comes with the territory of our calling by virtue of our new birth in the gospel. As we are presented opportunities to love other people let's set our hearts on Peter's "starting place" for love and see where it takes us, i.e., "I'm a person who has been....so in this moment my calling is to love like..." Maybe that’s what Jesus meant when he said, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
Father, loving the way you love is hard. We can’t do it on our own. Condition our hearts to your kind of love as we come to see ourselves as people of the gospel. Awaken us each day to the powerful truth of what the gospel means and what it means to live in it as those called through your Son. Amen.
Randy Daugherty
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