To love God is to first be loved by God. We cannot initiate in our loving relationship with God -- God knew us in our mother's wombs, knitting us together and forming our inward parts, all in love. Before we were, God's love was. It's like loving the idea of a good meal before you even think about the restaurant you're going to go to and have looked at the menu -- you love the meal already, before it's even been prepared for you.
But to love God means that you've grasped the fullness of God's love for you, which means you grasp the fullness of the Gospel, wherein we learn that God loved us when we were unworthy, when our sin made us enemies of God. When that gets into the depths of our souls, then we can't help but love God in response -- because we see how beloved we are despite being incredibly unworthy. And if we grasp that we're loved eternally despite being unworthy, then can we deny love to another because they are unworthy?
Paul writes that he is the chief of all sinners, for when the Gospel fully pierces us, we realize that there aren't degrees us separation from God -- we're all lost, ourselves chiefly, but we stand on equal footing with our brothers and sisters. And so how can we look down on someone with whom we are on equal footing?
So then there is nothing else but to love, freely and without restraint, for that is how we are loved by God, and so to grasp this fully transforms us into the kind of people who love each other, always and forever, no matter what.
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