Through the Apostle John, God tells us how to live the life of faith and how to know without a doubt that we are living that life.  It’s pretty simple, really.  Love one another.  Jesus put it that simply in John 15:17: “This is my command, love one another.”  He prefaced that in John 14:15 by saying, “If you love me, you will obey my commands.”

It’s called a new commandment in John 13:34, but it really isn’t a new command.  It is a command that John’s first letter says we have had from the beginning.  And in his second letter, John explains that love is obeying this command.  Yet the command itself is to love.  So we love God if we obey His commands, and His commands are to believe in the Son and love one another (1 John 3:23).  What a wonderful, yet simple mystery this is.  And He has revealed it to us through His Son.

I like 1 John 3:18, because it puts together three of the most important concepts that John wanted to teach us.  We are told to love—God and one another—not just through our words but in our actions and in truth.  Love is the key, but “to love” is God’s command and is an action verb.  It is expressed toward God by expressing it toward each other.  And the truth of this is revealed in our knowledge of God and our knowledge of who we are in Christ.  The more we know God, the more we will love Him and have that love in us to share with others.  The more we love others, the more we will please God in walking with Him and obeying His commands.  What are His commands?—to love one another.

It isn’t always easy, but it isn’t an option, and God gives us the ability to do it by His Spirit.  God IS love.  And as God’s children we have His love in us as a gift that can be shared with everyone around us.  When we fail to live up to the standard of expressing love through our actions—in meeting the needs of our brothers and even being willing to lay our lives down for them—God puts our hearts at rest by reminding us again that the love is there.  It hasn’t gone away.  It’s there because of the relationship we have with God through faith in Jesus Christ.  We remain His children, no matter what, with the command to maintain our fellowship with Him and keep on growing in our knowledge of Him by putting our love into action.