1 Peter 1:22
How to really love someone

This verse from the first letter of Peter is a treasure trove. It is packed with gems of practical insights which you can find after doing some digging to unearth them.

The imperative in this verse is to love one another fervently. The Greek had four different words for love so they could be more precise in expressing what kind of love they meant. The word for love here is the agape love. Its the kind of love that God has shown towards us and it usually involves some sort of costs for the one who gives the love. I heard it being defined as "doing what is in someones best interest, regardless of the costs", and that is a great definition. I think it goes deeper though than just the actions. I think it is the driving force behind the actions, so my definition would be: "caring enough to do what is in someone's best interest, regardless of the costs". The same word for love is used in one of the most famous verses of the bible, John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." In this verse, the action (sacrificing His son) was the result of the love, so the love is the driving force behind the action.

But, we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let's start at the beginning of the verse. "Since you have purified your souls". The verb for purified is a participle, so the verse could also be translated as "Having purified yours souls", or "now that you have purified your souls". So the purification of your soul is something that comes first, and it is something we have to. Purifying means to get rid of dirty things, to clean up. Your soul, or 'psuche', is the core essence of us humans. It is a result of God breathing life (psuche means to breath or blow) in us, and it is the combination our mind, will, and emotions. So we have to clean this up, which means we have to get rid of impure thoughts, impure desires, impure emotions.

How do we do this? Ah, the next gem. By obeying the truth. The word for obedience, 'hupakoe', comes from a combination of 'hypo' (beneath) and 'akouo' (to hear). So you place yourself under what you hear, you obey. And what do we obey? The truth. Don't be like Pilate, who asked "what is truth?" and then went and killed an innocent man. We can search and dig for truth. God, as the creator of everything, has revealed many things in His bible, and that is the best source of truth. In this truth, He has given many commands and instructions, sentences with verses in the imperative tense. We have to obey these commands, and by doing so, we purify ourselves. Throughout the history of scripture, God considered people pure when they believed Him and as a result, obeyed Him. The content of what people have to believe and obey varied, but the underlying principle stays the same. Believe/trust and obey, there is no other way. As NT Christians, we have to believe that Jesus died for our sins and that He will return to set up His kingdom in which he will pay back according to our works (Hebr 11:6, Rev 22:12). And then we have to obey His instructions.

Can we do this all by ourselves? No, there is the next gem. We can only do this through the Spirit. When we believe, we receive God's Spirit, who works in us to both want and do His will. On our own, we cannot do all the things God wants us to (John 15:5), but together with God, we can do all things (Phil 4:13).

The next gem is hidden in the 'in sincere love of the brethren'. The word for in is 'eis', which denotes the movement towards or into something. And the word for love here is not agape, but 'philadelphia', which comes from 'philos' (friendly) and 'adelphos' (brother). It is the affection that close friends and close siblings have towards each other. So the direction of us cleaning up our mind, will, and emotions, is towards genuine affection of each other. And indeed, the 2nd largest category of imperative verses deal with how we Christians should treat each other (http://www.truthbase.net/sermons/title/what-god-wants---part-2-great-commandments/). And when Jesus summarized the whole law, he said that the 2nd command is to love your neighbor as yourself. The first command is to love God with all that you've God, but the second is just like it. You cannot love God if you don't love others, and you cannot truly love others if you don't love God.

Which brings us full circle back to the imperative. Unless we love God, we will not take the steps to purify ourselves by obeying His truth. But if we do, then we are able and ready to love others with a pure heart (with clean motives). And that is the last gem. We often want to do nice and good things to others. But unless we have purified ourselves and see things from God's perspective, we end up doing the wrong things for the wrong motivations. We may for example give money to a homeless person but then not tell them about God. That way we helped them overcome some temporal discomfort but ignored their eternal comfort. We do this because giving makes us feel good about ourself or because we have empathy, but we ignored the real needs of the person. That's not true love. True love would be to give them what they need so that you gained an ear, and then give some truth that benefits them for eternity.

True love, loving others as God loved us, is very very hard. You cannot do it without a cleaned-up soul. So clean it up by obeying the truth.

Godspeed!