Psalm 119:64 “The earth is filled with your love, O LORD; teach me your decrees.”
The world today focuses on following man made rules and laws that contain no power in making us ‘love one another.’ We seek to follow laws that only reflect the outer behavior of people and disregard what’s in the heart of man. It is pointless to command your child: “love your sister or you will be spanked” or to tell people: “love your neighbors and give to the poor; if not, God will not love you.” If we love one another base on the avoidance of certain punishments or the anticipation of some rewards then is it really love? Let’s face it; we cannot command people to love anymore than the law can compel any man to genuinely love one another.
The Bible instructs us differently. The verse today shows us a person who sought to follow the ways of The LORD because he has a revelation of God’s love for us. Even The Lord Jesus Christ Himself gave us the same instruction: “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34). In order for us to love others, we should first have a revelation of how much God loves us. Without this revelation, we are stuck with nothing but a bunch of written laws that ‘compels’ us to do good to others. What The LORD wants is not for us to just ‘do good’; what the Lord wants for us is for us to love one another.
We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19)
We go back to the first step of everything. We go back to the knowledge and revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ and what He has done on the cross for us. This revelation of His love will drive us to genuinely love one another.
* Image taken from Deviantart