Q: Is love done in obedience real love?

The shortest answer to this question is, yes. God is truth. God’s Word is entirely true. God, in His word, commands His people in numerous places throughout the Bible to love: love one another (1 Jhn. 4:7); love your enemies (Matt. 5:44); love the Lord your God (Mk. 12:30). Truth is an accurate reflection of reality. God is saying that when you interact with other Christians, your enemies, and with Him, in a way that conforms perfectly to what He calls “love” then you are demonstrating real, true love. [1]

I submit that this question creates problems when we read into the biblical word “love” a cultural meaning. In our culture, love is thought of predominately as a feeling. Love is something you feel. This is affection. Something that touches our soul, yes, but it is an affection. If we are meaning deep, growing, organic, unconditional affection for someone when we say “love” then it is easy to see how one could view “loving” in response to a command as less than authentic: Forced affection smells of inauthenticity.

However, Christ's command to love is not a command to have deep seated affections for someone. The command to love is a command to committed, determined action that naturally grows out of God’s affection-filled love for us in the person and work of Jesus Christ. 

First, we will see where the Bible defines this love as committed action. Second, we will see where the Bible describes this committed action as a natural response to God’s affectionate-filled committed action (love) toward us. Ultimately, I submit that Christ's command to the Christian to love is no different than someone commanding a fish to swim. It’s natural. It’s logical. It’s certainly an authentic activity, and it's possible.

The love commanded by Christ is a committed activity. God demonstrates what this love looks like (a committed action) in the incarnation and the Cross: 

9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 

(1 Jhn. 4:9-11) [2]. How is this love described in its manifestation (i.e., what it looks like)? John does not give adjectives but a verb. God –sent– his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. As John writes in His Gospel: “For God so loved the world, that he –gave– his only Son” (Jhn. 3:16). [3] He “sent” His son; He “gave” His son to be the propitiation for our sins. The Father loves by sending His Son. The Son is the propitiation for our sins (i.e., the substitutionary atoning sacrifice, the wrath absorber, the Cross. All actions): “greater love has no one than this [Jesus said] that someone lay down his life for his friends” (Jhn. 15:13) (emphasis added). “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (10:11) (emphasis added). How do you define this love demanded of the Christian? The sending, obeying, dying, resurrecting of the Son of God for sinners –committed, intentional action. Douglas Moo summarizes this beautifully, writing, “it is a love that gives to us and takes possession of us . . . and which can stand for all that God has done and will do for us” [4]. Hence, love commanded: intentional –committed action.

Paul helps illustrate this “committed, action-oriented” type of love in First Corinthians. In describing what this love looks like, Paul writes, 

“4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.” (13:4-6).

Patience, kindness, humility, others-interest first, self-controlled and building-up in substance. Think of someone authentically and consistently demonstrating this kind of behavior to another. This kind of love (that looks like this) is the result of committed –determined– action to do, and not do, certain things. 

Therefore, looking to John and Paul’s, we see that the love commanded is not a command to have a certain affection but a command to committed, determined action.

Christ not only commands us to love like this but the ability to love is the result of us, the Church, being the object of God’s affection-filled love for us. God loved us by sending His Son to die the substitutionary atoning death on the Cross in our place (Jhn. 3:16; 1 Jhn. 4:9-11). In regeneration [5], God has poured this love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Paul explains this when he writes that “. . . God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us “ (Rom. 5:5). Meaning, we can spiritually taste the love that God has shared in the Trinity for eternity, that held Him on the Cross for our sake, that coursed through His providential tidal wave, chasing us, gripping us, and giving us new life. Yes, we can taste that true, eternal, affection-filled love in our hearts. It has been –poured– into our hearts, and “conveyed to our sensations by the Holy Spirit” who indwells every believer. [6] How marvelous is this to contemplate!

John tells us that not only do we become aware, gripped, by God’s love for us, but also, God’s love for us works like pressure against the pistons driving us to love God and one another. In other words, the love that fills our hearts is the love the strengthens us to obey the command to love:

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God (1 Jhn. 4:7) (emphasis added).

Look at the end of this verse and work backwards: those who have been born of God, love. One can only receive this love from one, single source: God, for love is of God. Therefore, if we are to love one another, then we must receive this love from God, which we do, when we are born again. Hence, loving the way we are commanded is the natural product of being born again. 

His love seizes us. It bends the nerve endings of our souls to love like Him and sends electric-like voltage filled with His love to shock our innermost being so that we are jolted to a life that loves others as He loves us. 

We swim, yes, because we are told to. However, we swim because we are fish and we are in the water. We love, yes, because He commands us to. However, we love because we are born again by the Spirit of God, are being transformed into Christ's image, and therefore, we are made to obey the command to love like Him! The fish in the water swims; the Christian, as an object of God’s love, loves. All to His glory. All because of His great love for us.

O perfect Love, all human thought transcending,

Lowly we kneel in prayer before Thy throne,

That theirs may be the love which knows no ending,

Whom Thou forevermore dost join in one [7]

End Notes:

[1] I am only dealing with ἀγάπη, the word found explicitly in the commands that are the subject of this question. For more on the history of the Christian usage of ἀγάπη see Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B.Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1996), 775n24.

[2] Unless otherwise noted, all Biblical citations are from the English Standard Version.

[3] See D.A. Carson, The Gospel according to John (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1991), 204-05.

[4] Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, 305.

[5] By regeneration I mean the instantaneous act of God imparting new, spiritual life to those who are spiritually dead (i.e., “born again”). (Ezek. 36:26-27; Jhn. 1:12-13; Eph. 2:4-5; Jhn. 3:6-17; 1 Pet. 1:3). For more thorough treatment of this doctrine see Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994), 699 et seq.

[6] Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, 305.

[7] Dorothy B. Gurney, “O Perfect Love” in The Baptist Hymnal (Nashville, TN: Convection Press, 1991), 512.