Love is an interesting word that can be used to express an emotion or a feeling when we say, “I love that color” or “I love that truck” or “I love that person”. But it can also be used to describe an action when we say, “I will love my spouse until the day that I die” or “I will love my child unconditionally” or “I will love my family and friends with every ounce of my energy”.

Emotions and feelings are fleeting, so the truck that I love today may no longer be the truck that I love tomorrow. But when I use the word love to describe the way I am going to relate to other people then a serious question arises when I don’t feel like I love that person anymore. The question that arises when I don’t feel like I love someone is “How do I continue loving this person even though every ounce of my emotions and feelings say something differently?”

I would argue that the Bible overwhelmingly uses the word love to describe an action or a list of actions in regard to our relationships with God and other people. The word love is not used very often to convey an emotion or a feeling in the Bible. In the Bible, the word love is used to describe the activity of someone who is actively loving another person.

But the question is “How do I actively love someone when my emotions and my feelings don’t give me the juice I need to do so?” We all know what it’s like to feel the energy of emotions and feelings. An emotional high can give you and I the juice we need to stay on the phone for hours with a long-lost friend who calls to catch up. But an emotional low will not produce the same amount of juice to stay on the phone with a long-lost friend who has hurt you. A long-lost friend who calls to catch up is a lot different than a long-lost friend who has hurt you deeply; the emotional high or the emotional low is different depending on the kind of friend we are trying to actively engage with.

The problem for us is that our ability to love has been jacked up from the Garden of Eden. God created Adam and Eve and he simply told them “I will love you unconditionally and all that I ask is that you express your love to me through your obedience to the boundaries of our relationship.” And what follows is the story of how mankind has continuously jacked this thing up by trading in the concept of active love for the cheap substitute of fleeting emotional love.

When Adam and Eve saw that the fruit of the tree of good and evil looked better and tasted better in the moment than the hard work of remaining committed to actively loving God and each other, from that point forward all of humanity has been infected with a love-dysfunction that is centered on feelings and emotions and transactions rather than the instructions of God’s Word.

We trade the activity of loving God and loving others for momentary feelings every day. And Peter knows this. Peter is very in tune with the theological meaning of love in the Scriptures and he wants Christians everywhere to be people that are known for living lives that demonstrate God’s love; his main thought in this passage is that if we have found a new life in Christ Jesus then let us express that new life in the way that we actively love one another.2

1 PETER 1:22 – 2:3…

22 Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, 23 since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; 24 for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, 25 but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you. 2:1 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation – 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

But how do we actively love others when life gets hard? When someone hurts you? When your emotional gas tank is empty? When you’ve had it up to here and you don’t have the energy to invest anymore? How do you stay actively engaged in loving other people when every ounce of your being just wants to run away and hide?

How do you keep actively loving when you are tempted to go looking in the gutter for some kind of semblance of love? How do you stay engaged in actively loving other people when the world around you hates you and dismisses you? Peter basically says that active love begins with obedience to the truth of the gospel…

#1: ACTIVE LOVE BEGINS WITH OBEDIENCE TO THE TRUTH OF THE GOSPEL (V. 22)

Notice how Peter begins in verse 22 when he says, “Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart.” Look at that phrase “love one another earnestly from a pure heart”. The word earnestly simply means actively with commitment. The kind of love that Peter is talking about here isn’t an emotional love that depends on how I feel today; it’s the kind of love that is founded on the principle that says that Jesus loved us through his death on a cross while we were unlovable.

The gospel of Christ crucified, risen and returning is the truth that purifies the heart and the soul and enables us to love other unlovable people. Without the gospel of Christ’s sacrificial love for his enemies, then the kind of love that you and I would be left with is the kind of love that depends on emotions for motivation, feelings for qualification and transaction for justification.

Without the truth of the gospel, we only love when our emotions tell us to. Without the truth of the gospel, we only love when our feelings say it’s ok. Without the truth of the gospel, we only love when we are certain that we will get something in return. Peter knows all of this and this is why he reminds his listeners that active love begins with obedience to the truth of the gospel.

#2: ACTIVE LOVE IS CULTIVATED BY GOD’S WORD (VV. 23 – 25)

Look at what Peter says in verses 23 – 25: He says that we are to actively love one another, “since [we] have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you. You see, active love begins with obedience to the truth of the gospel and it must be cultivated by God’s word.

Look at the words that Peter uses here. He says that since we have been born again through the living and remaining and eternal seed of the Word of God, the good news that was preached to us, then we actually have what it takes to actively love other people even when our emotions and our feelings and the return on the investment is dismal at best.

If we only love people when it feels good or if we only love people when we get something in return, then our love will die right alongside of every other fleshly thing that eventually dies. But if we have been born again (made into new creations in Christ Jesus) because of the gospel we have heard, then we can base our active love on something that will never fade, never die and never run out; the Word of God.

Christians don’t need the word of Oprah Winfrey or the word of Joyce Myer or the word of Charles Spurgeon or the word of Joe Marino for that matter. All the pop culture words, all the words of every preacher and all the words of every counselor will eventually die just like grass in the wintertime and then our love will grow cold and dead too. We need more than the words of mere men and women. We need the Word of God on a daily basis to keep our love active and full of warmth. This is why Peter basically says that active love is cultivated by God’s Word.

#3: ACTIVE LOVE MUST TAKE OUT THE TRASH (V. 1)

This is where Peter gets super practical with his readers when he says that if they are going to actively love one another than they are going to have to “put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. We must take out the trash of malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander otherwise the flower of active love will not grow in our lives.

When you cultivate the soil in a garden you have to remove the trash that kills the seed and makes the flower wilt. The activity of cultivating the soil of our hearts with the seeds of the truth of the gospel must be accompanied by the activity of taking the trash out otherwise the flower of active love will never grow.

Malice is intense hatred for someone. Deceit is self-centered lies that belittles and dismisses other people as less than valuable. Hypocrisy is a kind of legal code that makes everyone else into failures in light of your own self-regulated perfection. Envy is jealousy over what everyone else has that you wish you had. Slander is malicious gossip.

Peter knows that malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander is just the kind of trash that will poison the soil of the heart where the seeds of pure love need to grow into beautifully active flowers. This is why Peter basically says that active love must take out the trash.

#4: ACTIVE LOVE IS NURTURED BY THE GOSPEL (VV. 2 – 3)

Peter wants his readers to grow up into mature loving adult children of God.3 He wants us to remember that active love begins with obeying the truth of the gospel, it must be cultivated by God’s living Word, it must take out the trash and it must be nurtured by the gospel as we “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation – if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. Active love is nurtured by the gospel if we have in fact tasted the love of God in the cross of Christ.

We cannot ever move on from the importance of the gospel for our everyday nutrition. If you stop feeding a baby the milk, he or she needs then that baby will eventually get sick and possibly die. But unlike babies who move on from milk to whole foods, we must never move on from the milk and the meat of the gospel.

So many people today believe that they can begin with the gospel and move on to some other spiritual whole food when in reality the Bible teaches us that it is the gospel that gets us started and it is the gospel that keeps us growing. The only way that you and I grow up into salvation and grow into actively loving others when the emotions, the feelings and the payoff sucks is if we nurture the soil of our hearts with the gospel.

How do we nurture our hearts with the gospel? Think about Jesus. Behold the work of Jesus at the cross and the empty tomb. Jesus died the death that you and I should have died. He loved us so much that he would bear the abuse of the cross. He didn’t emotionally feel that love he actively lived that love. He didn’t get anything in return from us when he loved us at the cross. He poured out every ounce of his life in active love for us. This is what it means to nurture your active love with the gospel.

CONCLUSION…

In a world that is full of the fleeting love of emotions, feelings and transactions, we need a better vision for active love.

If active love begins with obedience to the truth of the gospel; if active love is cultivated by God’s word; if active love takes out the trash; and if active love is nurtured by the gospel, then the only place that we can get our love dysfunctions set straight is at the foot of the bloody cross, in the doorway of the empty tomb, in light of the hope of Heaven.

This is where you and I will find a true vision of active love in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the one who is the essence of active love.

1 Unless otherwise specified, all Bible references in this paper are to the English Standard Version Bible, The New Classic Reference Edition (ESV) (Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, 2001).

2 David R. Helm, 1 and 2 Peter and Jude: Sharing Christ’s Sufferings (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, ESV Edition, 2008), 69.

3 Ibid., 70.