Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is begotten by God,
and everyone who loves the Father
loves also the one begotten by him.
The Father empowers us to believe in the Son who is begotten by him. When we let him teach us, especially about his Son, we become like his children, opening our hearts to trust him. This is faith, leading to baptism, in which he adopts us as his own sons and daughters. But this transformation is meant to prepare us to live as members of his household. To do so without a lot of friction we need to increasingly love what he loves and hate what he hates. At the top of this hierarchy is the love he has for his Son. Thus belief in the Son leads us to the Father, who in causes us to grow in love for his Son. We gradually learn to see in the Son what the Father himself sees in him, which is a reflection of his own goodness, truth, and beauty.
Whoever loves God must also love his brother.
Our love of the Son of the Father must extend to those other children of the Father begotten by him in baptism. It must lead to love of neighbor, and even a properly ordered love of self. Failing to love others is also a failure to love icons of God himself. It implies not only a deficiency of love of neighbor, but also a failure to fully appreciate and love God in his entirety. We may come up with reasons why we or our neighbors are not worthy of love. But we cannot imagine that God agrees with us. He himself desires all to be saved, implying that there are none living who are excluded from his love, no matter how we may imagine they have disqualified themselves. Thus our love of others or lack thereof is a valid litmus test for our love of God. We obviously can't do everything everywhere that might be of benefit to everyone. But what do we intentionally omit? Finding our blind spots is a good starting place for growth.
In this way we know that we love the children of God
when we love God and obey his commandments.
It is true that we demonstrate our love of God by our love of neighbor. But it is by our love of God that our love of neighbor receives its proper definition. Otherwise we tend to call many things love that are not worthy of that name. We encourage others to pursue harmful goals, conceal knowledge that might ultimately by helpful for them, for the sake of protecting their feelings, and allow them to settle for less than God intends for them. In these and a variety of other ways, love that is without reference to the commandments often does more harm than good.
And his commandments are not burdensome,
for whoever is begotten by God conquers the world.
Helping others in a way that references and is defined by God's commandments is not merely laying upon them a yoke of obligation. It is not just going to make their lives harder as we sometimes fear. It tends rather toward freedom. It leads from being ruled by our disordered desires to the victory over the world that Paul calls the freedom of the children of God (see Romans 8:21). We tend to prefer love that is subjective and sentimental. But only the real love defined by the commandments can have a real effect in our lives. This is what it means to build our lives on rock. We begin with a solid foundation and are therefore able to build a stable structure that is ultimately capable of becoming all it is meant to be. And, what, finally, are we building if not a temple, a dwelling place for the Spirit of God?
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.
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