“This is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, that as you have heard from the beginning, you should walk in it.”

This is the commandment,

God’s command is a statement of His will.  Love for other Christians is doing the will of God.  All of God’s commands issue out of love and actions that manifest love.  We see love for each other in applying truth to experience.  God’s truth opens up the nature of true love. 

that as you have heard from the beginning,

God gives the content of love by revelation.  He states the nature of love in propositions in His Word; therefore, love is more than sentimental relationship. 

PRINCIPLE: 

Love is more than sentiment for it also involves content. 

APPLICATION: 

Man cannot artificially produce divine love by keeping the law.  This is not true love for God.  Self-justification is not love.  A truly regenerate person loves God and seeks to please Him.

Facts that are not frankly faced have a way of stabbing us in the back.

It is twice as hard to crush a half-truth as a whole lie.

Truth is what God says about a thing.

Beware of half-truths; you may get hold of the wrong half.

Nothing is more harmful to a new truth than an old error.

All of God’s principles have intrinsic value since they come from an absolute being.  Any violation of them constitutes sin.