“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”. This the greatest and first commandment of God. And the second commandment is “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:36-39)
In the Holy Bible what God has commanded we have to follow and there is no other option than to follow!! If we are faithful to the greatest two commandments of God then we can say that we are living according to God’s Ten commandments. “If anyone who loves God is known by him” (1 Cor 8:3). “Let us love one another because love is from God, everyone who loves God is born of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7-8)
Love comes from pure heart, clean mind, good conscience and sincere faith. Without these qualities we cannot love one another. “Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom 13:10). Those who say “I love God and hate their brothers and sisters are liars, for those who do not love brother or sister whom they can see, cannot love God whom they have not seen” (1 John 4:20). “Whoever says ‘I am in the light’ while hating a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Whoever loves a brother or sister, lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling.” (1 John 2:9-10). “All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them.” (1 John 3:15)
When we love one another it should not be only in our speech but it should be in our actions. “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven us, therefore be imitators of God” (Eph 4:32). “With all humility and gentleness with patience bear one another in love, making every efforts to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph 4:2-3). “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them, those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.” (Heb. 13:2-3).
In so many other ways we can love one another, by not judging others, by not talking ill about others, instead talk good about others by helping others who are in need, morally, physically, financially. “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?!” (1 John 3:17).
If we do not have love within us for one another then we gain nothing. “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all forth so as to remove mountains, but do not have love I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor 13:1-3). “Faith, hope and love abide and the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13:13)
“Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrong doing but rejoice in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor 13:4-7). Therefore “maintain constant love for each other for love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).
If we accept the word of God and live according to its truth, we can experience God’s everlasting love every moment of our lives. “Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born a new not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring WORD of GOD” (1 Peter 22-23)
