| Our verse does not tell us to keep God loving us. Nothing can ever change or alter the glorious fact that He loves us. He tells us that “I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.” “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Nor does our text verse tell us that we are to love God, though certainly “we love Him, because He first loved us.” But, our verse says, we are to “keep [ourselves] in the love of God.” We are to keep ourselves in the spiritual condition that permits God’s love to work in our lives and enables us to enjoy that love. Our Lord said, “He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me: and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him. … If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him.” So we are called to “come out from among them, and be ye separate … and I … will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” Then “keep yourselves in the love of God,” remembering that His “love is strong as death.” |
