I John 2:5,6 “but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.”
If I were given the task to describe the one whom the love of God has been perfected, I don’t think I would have come up “keeps His word” initially. With my religious upbringing, I would have emphasized sacrifice. I further would have detailed this sacrifice as giving up pleasures. An ascetic life is what I would gravitate towards.
I’m not sure why I and many others think that this pleases God. Yes, sacrifice indicates devotion and there is some sacrifice in pleasing God. However, being an ascetic goes off on a tangent that focuses more on our denial than God. There is something within that sees pleasure as self serving and wrong. We misunderstand God’s nature. He created this world to bring us pleasure. We agree with Him that creation is good when we tap into pleasure. It’s possible to over indulge in pleasure (hedonism), but that isn’t even close to the issue of the ascetic.
Today’s passage says that the one in whom the love of God is perfected keeps His word. This means that this one does what God says. That’s it. No herculean tasks like climbing Everest or giving up all that we own. Do what He says. Some of us have a problem with this. We don’t know when enough is. We don’t know the satisfaction point with God. We may have had a critical parent who was never pleased with us. We could never satisfy them, so we haven’t experienced a resting point.
Jesus died for our sins. If we’ve accepted Him, He is pleased with us. He wants to work on our day to day performance. He gave two commands, to love God and love our neighbor. I realize the application of those two could produce volumes. If we aren’t being loving, we need to pray for God’s wisdom and understanding, then fix it.
John says if we do this the love of God is perfected in us. What a concept. He expects us to walk and live in this state. He sees this as perfect. We are so fallable, that we can’t imagine having made it. I think of our cars. 99% of the time they run fine. The 1% is when they are in the shop getting tuned up. He sees us as perfect in Christ and perfect in our day to day lives. I can feel my anxiety lessen as I think of this. It’s not like we couldn’t improve, we are doing enough for the day at our point of maturity. He will nudge us and we respond. It’s like a parent/child relationship. The 5 year knows very little. The parent sees this, but wouldn’t attempt to teach too much. The child would be overwhelmed and not ready. The good parent knows the child’s capacity to learn more and retain the feeling of satisfaction from the parent. If the parent attempted to teach too much, the child would begin to feel insecure.
Lord, thank You for Your grace and understanding. Thank You also for Your Word. Help us to keep it and have Your love perfected in us.