1 Peter 1:22

1 Peter 1:22 - "Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brothely love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart,"

Our souls have been cleansed by our obedience to the truth of the gospel, for the sake of truely loving one another, and it is the truth of the Gospel of Christ that gives us this pure heart with which to love one another.  Just as Romans 12:9 exhorts us to "let love be genuine," we should always look back to the cross as our measure of the sincerity with which we love our fellow believers.  I think this is especially evident to me as I step out of my comfortable life back in the United States and walk into the mission field.  Back home, "loving one another" was simply the ommission of sin, and by not doing anything that was "unloving" you would, by default, be loving one another...or at least this was my mindset.  In reality, our missionary mandate extends to all aspects of our lives, no matter the location.  In the field that mandate is clearly seen and has definite purpose, "Go and make disciples of all the nations..." (Matt 28:19), however "If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing." (1 Cor 13:3)  Love, and earnest love with a pure heart, is the central focus of missions.  We are sharing the great love of God, who sent his son to die for us, bear the full weight of our sin and the full fury of the wrath of judgment against that sin, so that we might inherit that which we had no right to even long for, eternal life in the presence of God's glory.  This is the truth that has purified my soul for the sake of love, and this is the truth I must be obedient to, not just in Guatemala, not just back home, but to the ends of the earth.

~Jeremy