Love One Another
When You Struggle to Obey Christ's Command
"A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another."
— John 13:34
The Struggle No One Admits
Few commands weigh on a sincere believer like this one. Christ gives it plainly, and He gives it often:
"A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another."
— John 13:34-35
So the honest believer reads this and asks a frightening question: I struggle to love. I sometimes fail to love even those closest to me, let alone strangers or enemies. Does this mean I am not truly His?
If that question has ever crossed your mind, this study is for you. And the first thing to say is this: the very fact that this grieves you is itself evidence of the Spirit's work within you. The natural man does not lie awake troubled that he fails to love. That ache of conscience is not the mark of Christ's absence — it is the mark of His presence.
First, What Kind of Love Is Commanded?
Our English word "love" carries enormous baggage. We use it for affection, attraction, fondness, warm feeling. So when Scripture commands us to love, we naturally hear a command to feel something — and then we despair when the feeling isn't there.
But the love commanded here is not primarily a feeling. In every one of these passages, the underlying Greek is agape — the deliberate, self-giving love of the will that seeks another's good, regardless of what one feels in the moment.
This distinction is not a technicality. It is the key that unlocks the whole command. Consider: you cannot command an emotion. No one can be ordered to feel affection on cue; feelings are not subject to the will in that way. Yet Christ plainly commands this love — which tells us it must be something the will can actually render.
We see this most clearly where the Lord raises the bar to its highest:
"But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you."
— Matthew 5:44
No one feels warm affection toward an enemy who curses and persecutes him. The command assumes we do not. And yet we are to love them — to bless, to do good, to pray. These are acts of the will directed toward another's good. That is agape.
This reframes everything. The question Scripture puts to us is not "Do I feel love?" but "Am I willing — however imperfectly — to act toward my neighbour's good?" That is a far more honest standard, and a far more attainable one. Many a believer who feels cold is in fact obeying more than his feelings will admit.
Love Is the Evidence, Not the Entry Fee
Return to John 13:35 and read it carefully: "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples."
Notice what this verse does — and does not — say. Love is named as the mark by which others recognize a disciple. It is the outward evidence, the fruit hanging on the branch that lets the world identify the tree. It is not stated as the price of becoming a disciple.
Our discipleship, like our salvation, rests where Scripture always places it — upon the finished work of Christ, received by faith:
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life."
— John 5:24
The command to love does not sit underneath our salvation as a condition to be met. It grows out of our salvation as fruit. And fruit, in any real garden, can be sparse for a season without the tree being dead. A believer bearing little fruit is still a believer — a branch to be pruned and tended, "that it may bring forth more fruit" (John 15:2), not cut down and cast away.
Reading 1 John Rightly
No book presses the love command harder than John's first epistle, and no book is more often misread to torment sincere believers:
"Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God."
— 1 John 4:7
"If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us."
— 1 John 4:12
Read in isolation, these can sound like a merciless test: love perfectly, or you were never born of God. But John must be read as John wrote him — as a whole letter, not as isolated hammers.
For the same John, three verses into his first chapter, writes:
"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."
— 1 John 1:8
John is not teaching sinless perfection in love. He would be contradicting himself within a single page. Rather, he is contrasting two whole orientations of life — two directions a heart can face.
On one side stands the person whose settled, unbothered character is hatred:
"Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him."
— 1 John 3:15
Mark that man well — there is no conviction in him, no struggle, no grief over his coldness. He is at peace with his hatred.
On the other side stands the one born of God, whose life — amid real and repeated failure — genuinely bends toward love. John is describing the settled direction of a life, not a flawless record within it. And a believer who fails, and is grieved by his failure, and longs to do better, is standing exactly where John's beloved child of God stands. The unregenerate heart does not grieve this way.
A Work Being Perfected, Not a Test Already Failed
Look closely at the verbs Scripture attaches to this love, for they are full of comfort. Paul prays:
"And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you."
— 1 Thessalonians 3:12
Increase — from wherever you presently are. Abound — grow beyond the present measure. This is the language of a journey, not a finished destination demanded all at once.
And John: "his love is perfected in us" (1 John 4:12) — perfected, a process underway, not a threshold crossed once and for all. This is the ordinary shape of sanctification, and Scripture promises it will be completed by the One who began it:
"Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ."
— Philippians 1:6
You are not failing a finished examination. You are early in a work that God Himself has undertaken to complete in you.
The One Shift That Actually Helps
If the command felt like a burden to carry by sheer effort, Scripture points us somewhere else entirely. This love is not something we manufacture by gritting our teeth and straining harder:
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith."
— Galatians 5:22
"And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us."
— Romans 5:5
Love is fruit — the natural yield of the Spirit's life within us. And the Lord's own picture of how it grows is not a labourer straining, but a branch simply staying connected to the vine:
"Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing."
— John 15:4-5
Observe where the command to love actually sits: "This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you" (John 15:12) — spoken within the command to abide. The answer to "I cannot love enough" is therefore less try harder and more stay near the Source, and let Him produce in you what you could never work up on your own.
Where to Begin
Do not take up the whole of mankind as a crushing global obligation. That is not how this love is lived. Begin small, begin concrete, begin near:
• One person. Not "all people" as an abstraction, but one specific soul this week.
• One act. A single deliberate act toward their good — feeling or no feeling.
• Toward their good. For that is what agape is, and it counts fully even when the heart is cold.
This is grace, because the heart is often cold in all of us. The command was never "feel warmly toward everyone at all times." It was "seek one another's good," and that the will can render even on its coldest day.
A Closing Word to the Struggling Believer
If you have read this far troubled that you love too little, hear this plainly. You are not a dead branch. You are a living branch worried that it is not bearing enough fruit — and that is not a worry dead branches have.
Your salvation stands where it has always stood:
"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast."
— Ephesians 2:8-9
The love command is not a second gospel added to threaten that gift. It is the fruit that gift produces — slowly, imperfectly, but really — in every heart the Spirit has truly entered.
Abide. Stay near Him. Love the one person He sets before you today. And trust the One who began the work to finish it.
"Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another."
— 1 John 4:11
Summary
• The love commanded is agape — a matter of the will, not a feeling. This is why it can be commanded, even toward enemies (Matthew 5:44).
• Love is the evidence by which disciples are known (John 13:35), not the price of discipleship. Salvation rests on faith in Christ (John 5:24).
• 1 John contrasts two orientations of life, not a flawless record. A believer who grieves his failure to love stands where John's child of God stands (1 John 1:8; 3:15).
• This love is being perfected — a work God Himself has promised to complete (1 Thessalonians 3:12; Philippians 1:6).
• Love is the fruit of the Spirit, grown by abiding in Christ, not manufactured by effort (Galatians 5:22; Romans 5:5; John 15:4-5).
• Begin small: one person, one act toward their good, this week.
Key Verses
John 13:34–35 · John 15:4–5 · John 15:12 · John 5:24 · Matthew 5:44 · 1 John 1:8 · 1 John 3:15 · 1 John 4:7–12 · 1 Thessalonians 3:12 · Philippians 1:6 · Galatians 5:22 · Romans 5:5 · Ephesians 2:8–9