God’s Love in Us Enables Us to Fulfill the Commandment

David W Palmer

(1 Timothy 1:5 NKJV) “Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith.”

God wants us to love—according to his instructions—with perfect love. But he has not left us to our own weak, frail, human love to do this in our own strength:

(John 17:26 NKJV) “And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”

In this passage, Jesus is praying to his Father. He says that he has declared the Father’s name to his disciples; so that the “love” that God loved Jesus with would be “in them”! Jesus succeeded in his mission of declaring the Father’s name; and therefore, he believes that this love is now in us. The Holy Spirit further bears this out in Romans 5:5, when he says: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (ESV). We have received the Holy Spirit, and therefore we have this love poured into our hearts. God’s supernatural love in us enables us to fulfill Jesus’s one new commandment to love others as he has loved us (John 15:12). We now look at some of the specific ways the Holy Spirit tells us to outwork this.

Widows and Orphans

(James 1:27 NIV) “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

This again is a very practical outworking of the command to love. Jesus expects us to love others. One way of doing this is by looking after widows and orphans in their distress. He wants us to do things for them that a husband or parent would normally do. Moreover, he needs us to provide for them the things they are likely to miss out on. God loves people, and he especially wants to be a husband to the widow (Isaiah 54:4-5), and a father to the fatherless (Psalm 68:5). However, his means of expressing this is through his body; that is, through you and me.

Husbands, Love Your Wives

(Ephesians 5:25 NKJV) “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.”

(Ephesians 5:28 NKJV) “So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself.”

(Ephesians 5:33 NKJV) “Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”

(Colossians 3:19 NKJV) “Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them.”

This is another very specific application of the command to “love one another.” Here Jesus expects, and the Holy Spirit exhorts, husbands to love their wives. This also has to be received by Christian husbands as a commandment. Men need to be reminded to “love,” just as women need to be reminded to “respect.” This is the only way the marriage relationship can work properly. And this relationship is vitally important, as it is intended to be the stable building block of society, and an accurate depiction of Jesus’s relationship with his bride—the church.

Because of all that Jesus achieved for us in his death and resurrection, and because of his ongoing ministry for us in his current roles, he believes that the love with which his Father loved him is in us, and that he is living in our hearts by faith. That’s a lot of love “poured into our hearts” (Rom. 5:5). This is why Jesus expects us to have such a high standard of love for “one another” (John 15:12). Let’s open our hearts to his love flowing through us towards our brothers and sisters in the Lord—and specifically today towards our spouses, widows, and orphans. Remember: Jesus is behind this; he has graced us with his love to fulfill it, and that he said:

(Matthew 5:48 DKJV) “Therefore, be completely perfect in love, just as your Father in heaven is completely perfect in love.”

He believes we can do this …

(Romans 5:5 NKJV) “Because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”