God loves you (John 3:16; 1 John 4:19), and He gave you a “new spirit” of love like His. “The love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Romans 5:5b).

God’s love is an expression of His divine nature. It is a love that is so wonderful, so majestic, and so powerful, that we will surely spend all of eternity future discovering more and more of what it is.

But even now, His love is being perfected in you as He conforms your soulical functioning to your new love nature. With this gift of love you can be motivated and empowered to obey the Greatest Commandments, the Great Commission, and to know and to do all else that God wills for you.

Contrasting love and sin
Through examining the contrasts between sin and love, we can gain more insight into the characteristics of both: Sin is the opposite of love. What sin is, love is not; and, what love is, sin is not. A sin nature is the opposite of a love nature. An act of sin toward someone is the opposite of an act of love.

In First Corinthians, Paul gives us this classic essay on love: “If I speak with tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).

Righteous acts do not always meet God’s approval. Righteous acts, by themselves, might meet the requirements of the letter of the law, but only righteous acts motivated by love convey and satisfy the spirit of the law. When a believer acts out of love working through righteousness the believer is living in Christ and Christ is living His life in and through the believer.

Peter tells us that, “Love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8), and Proverbs gives us a similar teaching, that “love covers all transgressions” (Proverbs 10:12). Nowhere in Scripture is such miraculous power attributed to righteous acts performed independent of love. Every loving act is a righteous act, but not every righteous act is a loving act. True righteous behavior is rooted in love. When love works through righteousness the result is “wholehearted obedience” (Romans 6:17, NIV).

Some might argue that the opposite of love is hate. That is certainly true if hate is motivated by sin, for all sin is the opposite of love. However, all hate is not motivated by sin. For example, God loves sinners but also “hate[s] all who do iniquity” (Psalm 5:5). There is no contradiction here: For God to “hate” sinners simply means that, because of His perfect love and righteousness, He has an aversion to sin and sinfulness, and cannot accept Adamic man in his sinful state into a spiritual relationship with Himself. His love for sinners, however, can be seen in His opening the door to them, through faith and grace, to salvation in Christ Jesus.

We Christians can hate out of either sinful or loving motivation. But we are limited to what we are allowed to hate. The Bible tells us to “abhor [hate, detest and reject] evil” (Romans 12:9; see also Psalm 97:10). When it comes to relations with others, the second Greatest Commandment instructs us to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31), but that does not mean for us to love that which is evil; otherwise, God would be in contradiction of Himself.

In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul mentions several characteristics of love. I have listed them in a chart in Figure 6-3, and have added the opposite characteristics of sin.

Paul ends his essay on love with this benediction: “But now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13).

Love set you free from sin
Just as darkness can only be countered by light, and death can only be countered by life, sin can only be countered by love. It was out of love for you that God was motivated to save you through His Son, to give you His heart and life, and to dwell spiritually in your heart. And it was love that motivated Jesus to obey His Father and to give His life for you, so He could give His life to you in order to live His life in you and through you. Paul writes of this in Romans 8, establishing his theme with verse 2: “The law of the Spirit [sic] of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2; see Figure 6-4).

Figure 6-4: In terms of relationship, the Christian is “dead to” sin and “alive to love.”

Now, before we delve into the intended meaning of this verse, please read 1 John 4.
Now, let’s look again at Romans 8:2, and I think you will quickly understand why I suggested you read 1 John 4. Let’s begin with the question, What is “the law of the Spirit [sic] of life in Christ Jesus”? “Spirit” in this verse is capitalized by translators to indicate that this is in reference to the Holy Spirit. In all respect to the translators, however, I suggest that the word not be capitalized, because the “law of the spirit of life in Christ” refers to the law or principle of love (the “new spirit” promised by God in Ezekiel 36:26), and not to the Holy Spirit. Nowhere in Scripture is the Holy Spirit identified as a law or principle; He is the third person of the trinity. “The law of the spirit of life in Christ,” therefore, is the motivational principle of His love that characterizes the ethical nature of His life—His “spirit” of love that was placed in you in replacement of the “spirit” or motivational principle of sin that dominated you before you were saved. And by sharing His eternal life with you, He nullified your death penalty.

In Romans 8:2, then, we find these two principles: Where there is love there is no sin, and where there is life there is no death. The intended message of Romans 8:2 can be simply stated as this: “The love and life of Christ set you free from sin and death.”

Romans 8 begins with the theme of love, expands upon the theme of love, and concludes with the theme of love: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, ‘For Thy sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35-39).

The Whole-Hearted Christian Functions in Love
The believer’s relationship with God is absolute, unchangeable, and irreversible. However, he is still quite capable, conditionally and functionally, of having sinful motives and committing sinful acts.

Consistent sinful thoughts, feelings, desires, and intentions indicate a divided heart. This condition interrupts fellowship between the believer and God, and grieves and quenches His indwelling Spirit; but it cannot separate the believer from relationship with God.

Love unites the heart
In contrast, when the Christian “puts on love” (Colossians 3:14)—that is, chooses to love—he experiences the dynamic of a united soul and spirit, and fellowship with the indwelling Spirit of Christ. He will have loving thoughts, loving feelings, and loving desires and intentions (Figure 6-5). I suspect Paul had this in mind when he wrote of a “heart...knit together in love” (Colossians 2:2).

Figure 6-5: Love unites the heart.

The Whole-Hearted Christian Walks in Love
The believer whose spiritual heart functions in love expresses love through the conduct of the “outer man”: He “walks in love” (Ephesians 5:2. See Figure 6-6). Love is at the heart, if you will, of all he says and does. People see in this believer a love for God, a love for others, and a genuine love for himself. It is a way of life, a way of living, a life-style. It is the ethical way in which this believer relates as a parent, a spouse, an employee, a neighbor, a friend, and even as a stranger.

Figure 6-6: The Whole-Hearted Christian walks in the ways of love, with a functionally love-united soul and spirit. This believer experiences loving fellowship with the Holy Spirit, and love is dynamic in both his life-style and interpersonal relationships.

James called this the “law of liberty” (James 1:25) and the “royal law” (James 2:8).

Paul reminds us that, “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a [functional] yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). We are “standing firm” when we walk in love and in the Holy Spirit, practicing obedience to God from our hearts.

John is known as “the Apostle of love.” His first epistle contains a beautiful essay on the love of God and its manifestation in the heart and life of the Whole-Hearted Christian:

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God.... The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.... By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. And we have beheld and bear witness that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the [people of the] world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him... (excerpts from 1 John 4).

God desires that all of us walk in His love. But He neither demands nor expects us to live in sinless perfection. To do so is beyond mortal existence, even for the most spiritual of believers. Jesus was, and will forever be, the only person who lived sinlessly and therefore in perfect love.

What I am about to tell you might sound like a paradox, though it is not: I have known new believers—even children—who lived wholeheartedly, and I have known pastors and other Christian leaders—some of renown—who lived halfheartedly.

Knowledge and longevity in the faith are not the determining factors of wholehearted living. Wholehearted living is to live out of a loving heart. And a loving heart fulfills the Greatest Commandments spoken of by Jesus: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.... You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30, 31.)

Figure 6-7: The Greatest Commandment:

Jesus said we shall love God with all our heart
To love God with all our heart is to love Him with our whole heart—with the Holy Spirit (dove) expressing love through the individual's Christ-centered personhood and functionally united soul and spirit.

Now, let's focus on the soul chamber-part of the whole heart:

Jesus said we shall love God with all our soul
To love God with all our soul is to love Him with all our soul’s faculties (mind, emotion, will) and features (memory, belief, conscience, “New Spirit” of love, personality, character, temperament) operating in harmony with one another and with the indwelling Spirit of Christ. Since the soul is that part of the heart through which we (our unique personhood) expresses ourselves through our body and relates to the temporal realm, our love for God is expressed to Him and demonstrated through our loving conduct toward Him and others.

Jesus said we shall love God with all our mind
To love God with all our mind is to love Him as the foremost object of our mind set and with all our rationality. For we love whatever we set our mind to love. If our mind is set on self aside from God, we become self-centered and self-loving in a fleshly way. If our mind is set on things of the world, we will love the things of the world. But if our mind is set on Christ, it will be centered in Him and He will be the first object of our love and the foremost desire of our heart.

Jesus said we shall love God with all our strength
To love God with all our strength is to love Him with all the strength available to us when we inwardly function and outwardly walk in the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:13; Colossians 2:6, 9; 1 Peter 4:8-11), in the light (1 John 1:7), in newness of life (Romans 6:4), in the Spirit (Galatians 5:16; Ephesians 3:16), by faith (2 Corinthians 5:7), in wisdom (Colossians 4:5), in obedience (2 John 6), and in truth (3 John 4), and in love (Ephesians 5:2). Paul writes: “For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7, NIV); and that “The love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Romans 5:5b).

Loving Jesus is knowing Him experientially as Savior, Lord, and life. It is living our lives in Him, as He lives His life in us and through us. This is wholehearted living.

Loving Jesus and loving others as ourselves involves much more than our feelings. Our feelings are born in our emotion, which is but one faculty of our soul, and the soul is but one of two chamber-parts in our spiritual heart. Love demands more than our emotion: It demands all of us—a whole heart, in which personhood expresses love through a united soul and spirit, functioning in harmony with the indwelling Spirit of Christ.

As simplistic as it might sound, a whole heart is a loving heart, and a divided heart is a sinning heart. Positionally and relationally, we are “in love” because we are “in Christ.” Ontologically, love characterizes the ethical nature of new self. In our mortal condition we can love, but we cannot love perfectly all the time. However, God is perfecting us in love through progressive sanctification—the conformation of our heart’s condition and functioning to the loving likeness of Christ. And His wonderful work in us will be consummated in complete perfection when Christ returns for His Church and we are transformed into glory.

And, at that nearing time, sin will no longer be a factor in our lives. For, in our glorified state, Christ’s absolute love will be perfected in its fullness in us and through us. And where there is absolute love, there is absolutely no sin.

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