Most any conversation about love will bring to mind the famous love chapter, First Corinthians chapter thirteen. It is indeed a beautiful statement about the importance of love and what mature love looks like.
There are other texts that provide powerful teaching about love that often go overlooked. First Peter 1:22-25 is one of those texts. It teaches us about the kind of thinking and habits that sustain mature love.
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 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.
Love doesn’t simply sneak up and grab us. Mature love takes action on our part. How often is our personal comfort zone 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:
- We have been purified by obeying the truth of the gospel.
- 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?
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.”
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!
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.”
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?” Peter says we have the calling to love - not 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!” Mature love takes work.(2:1-2).
Love comes with the territory
of our calling in the gospel. As we are presented opportunities to love
other people we know we are "growing in the Spirit" when we think about what we need to do in a given situation from the vantage point of our life in the gospel. 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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