LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
An Ancient Commandment
In his first letter to the Lord's church, when John mentioned the old commandment, he was speaking of a time of decadence, of the loss of the first love -the love of the Lord- and consequently of the love of one another.
All the law and the prophets, Jesus said, are summed up in these two commandments: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Matthew 22:37-39).
According to the word of the Lord, who is the one who loves God? He himself answers by saying: "He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me ... He who loves me will keep my word ... He who does not love me does not keep my words" (John 14:21, 23-24). And what is the commandment that the Lord gave us from the beginning? That we love one another. "Love one another as I have loved you", Jesus said (John 15:12).
Why did the Lord leave us this commandment? Because he knew whom he was loving and saving; men of every tribe, tongue, people and nation. Barbarians, dates, slaves, free, Jews, Greeks, men and women, how to live together and have unity with so many differences of races and ethnicities? The commandment was necessary.
The Lord teaches us that not keeping his commandments is lack of love for him, and lack of love for him is lack of knowledge of him: "Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He that loveth not knoweth not God: for God is love" (1 John 4:7-8). It is not possible to know God and not love him, and it is not possible to love him without loving those whom he has begotten. One thing is a consequence of the other.
We can see then that we -his people- are perishing for lack of knowledge of God (Hosea 6:4). The abandonment of the first love began by disobedience to the commandment to love one another, and consequently to love the Lord, and all this because of the lack of knowledge of God. The weak judged the strong, and the strong despised the weak. Some said they belonged to Paul, others to Apollos, and others to Cephas. They no longer received those whom Christ had received, and then came the fall.
Repentance must begin with the first love; but this is connected with the knowledge of God. Without knowledge of God there is no revelation of our misery, rottenness and perdition; on the contrary, there will only be pride. It is in the knowledge of God in the face of Christ that we see our misery and see how merciful our God is. In his light we see our darkness and how much he loved us; then we will truly love him.
Loving him we will keep his word, and keeping his word we will love our brethren. It will be easy to love a brother, if we have clear revelation of where the Father brought all of us out of a mud puddle, out of a pit of perdition, and where he put us in Christ: in the heavenly places. "Love one another", is a commandment of our Lord, and for that he poured this love into our hearts, by the Holy Spirit given to us.