There are many images in life that capture the concept of love, but I am not sure if there is one better than the testimony of Jessica Buchanan, the American aid worker rescued from captivity in Somalia back in 2012. After 93 days of deteriorating health and constant fear, she was freed by Navy SEAL Team Six in an incredible nighttime operation. What she remembers most is not the violence of the rescue but the gentleness in the midst of chaos. As she lay on the ground awaiting extraction, these men who had already risked their lives for her formed a circle around her and then lay on top of her, shielding her with their own bodies until the helicopters arrived.

Jesus said in John 15:13, “No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.” That kind of love feels extraordinary, even unreachable. We tend to admire it from a distance, assuming it belongs to elite soldiers or rare heroes. Yet the apostle Peter insists that this posture of self-giving love is not exceptional Christianity. It is normal. It is the inevitable fruit of a life truly anchored in Christ Himself.

In 1 Peter 1:22-2:3, Peter presses the church to understand that genuine Christian love is not optional or defined by the world around us. It flows from a regenerate heart and is sustained by obedience to Christ, and grows through continual nourishment from the Word of Christ. Love, according to Peter, is not the cause of salvation but is certainly evidence of a life that has been transformed by Christ. And where love is absent, something far deeper than personality or preference is at stake.

1 Peter 1:22–2:3 “Since you have purified yourselves by your obedience to the truth, so that you show sincere brotherly love for each other, from a pure heart love one another constantly, because you have been born again—not of perishable seed but of imperishable—through the living and enduring word of God. For all flesh is like grass, and all its glory like a flower of the grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord endures forever. And this word is the gospel that was proclaimed to you. Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all slander. Like newborn infants, desire the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow up into your salvation, if you have tasted that the Lord is good.”

Love is Made Possible by Purity

Peter begins with a statement that is easy to misunderstand: “Since you have purified yourselves by your obedience to the truth” (1 Peter 1:22). At first glance, this language sounds like purification is achieved. This is a real temptation for us to believe that this is Peter’s call to earn our way into a loving disposition. We might read this verse and think Peter is prescribing a step program to love. But look closely. Notice the word, “since.” Peter does not say “in order to” or “so that you might be” purified. He speaks of purification as an accomplished reality. The purifying has already taken place, and brotherly love flows as the expected fruit of the completed work.

If we were to paraphrase Peter’s intended meaning, it would read something like, “Since you have already been purified, now love with a brotherly love, and love one another from the depths of a pure heart.”

This distinction matters. A person who shows no evidence of purification from sin has no biblical basis for claiming deliverance from it. Scripture is uncomfortable consistent on this point. 1 John 4:8 says, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

Peter grounds this further in verse 23: “Because you have been born again—not of perishable seed but of imperishable—through the living and enduring word of God.” The language of seed and birth here is not incidental. Peter is constructing an organic metaphor that runs through this entire section. Regeneration is like germination. When God brings a sinner to new life, He plants an imperishable seed in the soil of the human heart. That seed, by its very nature, produces fruit.

Just think about an apple orchard. You might walk through rows of fruit-laden trees and decide you want your own supply. But imagine cutting a tree halfway up the trunk, hauling the severed top home, and sticking it in your yard. You water it faithfully, weed around it carefully, and hope for fruit. But it never produces a single apple. It simply dies. There is no possibility of germination because you have separated the tree from its originally germinated seed. From the seed, a tree grows.

This is precisely Peter’s point. You cannot produce the fruit of Christlike love by grafting external behaviors onto a heart that has never been regenerated. But when God plants the imperishable seed of new life in your heart through the gospel, love becomes not just possible but natural—the expected bloom of a life connected to the Living Vine.

Peter reinforces this by quoting from Isaiah 40, reminding us that all human glory is temporary, like grass and wildflowers that wither under the relentless sun. But the word of the Lord endures forever. And then Peter adds the critical interpretive key: “And this word is the gospel that was proclaimed to you” (1 Peter 1:25). The imperishable seed is the gospel itself. It is the message of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection that has been planted in your heart, and from that eternal seed, love that outlasts the fleeting affections of this world can grow.

Love Submits to the Authority of Christ

Peter does not leave love floating as a vague sentiment disconnected from the rest of the Christian life. He immediately connects it to obedience. Notice his language again in verse 22: “Since you have purified yourselves by your obedience to the truth.” The purification that makes love possible was activated through obedience to the truth of the gospel. But this obedience is not a one-time event. It has perpetual, ongoing effects as the believer continues to submit to the authority of Christ.

In John 14:15, He says, “If you love me, keep my commands.” The Psalmist echoes the same conviction: “How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word” (Psalm 119:9). Obedience to Christ’s commands is not legalism. It is the natural response of a heart that has been purified by His blood and animated by His Spirit. We guard our hearts, our conduct, and our purity in accordance with the word of the living God, not to earn our standing, but because our standing has already been eternally secured.

The sheer scope of biblical commands can feel staggering. Jewish tradition identifies 613 commandments in the Old Testament. Some scholars count as many as 800 distinct commands in the New Testament. Yet when Jesus was pressed to identify the greatest of them all, He did not point to a ceremonial regulation or a dietary law. He went straight to the heart of the matter.

Matthew 22:37-40 “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”

Jesus distills the entire moral architecture of Scripture into two commands, both of which are expressions of love. There is never a moment in the biblical narrative where you can set aside the command to love as though it were optional or peripheral to faith. Love is not an advanced elective for the spiritually elite. It is the foundational expectation of every person who claims to follow Jesus. How you love is the greatest demonstration in your life that you truly belong to Him.

This type of love is sincere. The word translated “sincere” carries rich historical resonance. The Latin root from of our English word, sine cera, literally means “without wax.” In the ancient Roman world, potters and sculptors sometimes concealed cracks or imperfections in their work by filling them with melted wax. The finished product appeared flawless on the surface, but as soon as the wax softened or wore away, the defects were glaringly exposed. Artisans who produced genuinely flawless work, however, would mark their pieces with the inscription sine cera—signifying that the item was authentic through and through, with no cheap substitutes hiding beneath the surface.

Peter is saying, do not let your love be filled with wax. Do not fill in gaps with hollow compliments, performative warmth, or surface-level pleasantries that carry no real weight. The type of sincere love that we are called to show one another is a love that is completely authentic and holds up under pressure because it was never propped up by pretense in the first place. It is love filled not with wax but with the Spirit of God Himself. Everything else is a cheap substitute.

True Love Delivers from Enmity

As chapter 2 opens, Peter changes direction from the positive call to love to the negative reality that love must actively remove. Therefore, rid yourselves…. “Therefore” is connecting this command directly to everything Peter has just said about the nature of gospel centered love. Rid yourselves of everything that stands opposed to that love.

The five vices Peter lists function as the precise antithesis of the true love he has been describing. Where sincere love is transparent, deceit conceals. Where earnest love seeks the good of others, malice wishes them harm. Where authentic love presents itself honestly, hypocrisy wears a mask. Where Christlike love rejoices in the flourishing of others, envy resents their success. And where pure love builds others up, slander tears them down with the tongue.

Peter’s point is very clear. If you are not actively pursuing the love he has described, you are not standing still, but drifting toward the opposite. There is no neutral ground in the moral life of the believer.

Jesus told His disciples that the watching world would identify His followers by a single distinguishing mark of whether or not they love one another. Anytime one of us participates in the opposite, we are undermining the gospel advancement through us in the world.

The greatest support of unity in the church is for brothers and sisters to love one another genuinely. The greatest witness to a watching world is that same love on display. Therefore, Peter says, fight against these things. Welcome the deliverance that Jesus provides. The gospel that planted the seed of love in your heart also supplies the power to uproot the weeds of enmity.

Love Aligns our Hunger

Throughout this passage, Peter has been alternating between indicative statements (what God has done) and imperative commands (how we should respond). He closes this section with one final pairing that brings the entire argument to its climax.

1 Peter 2:2-3 “Like newborn infants, desire the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow up into your salvation, if you have tasted that the Lord is good.”

The image is disarmingly simple. Every parent who has ever brought a newborn home from the hospital knows the instinctive, unrelenting hunger of an infant for milk. A healthy baby does not need to be persuaded to eat. The longing for nourishment is woven into the child’s nature. It is not a learned behavior. It is an expression of life itself.

Peter says that the same should be true of every person who has been born into the family of God. If you have genuinely tasted the goodness of the Lord, if the imperishable seed of the gospel has taken root in your heart, then there will be a natural, unrelenting hunger for the pure spiritual nourishment that comes from God’s word. This hunger is not the mark of a super-Christian or a seminary graduate. It is the baseline indicator of spiritual life. Just as the absence of appetite in an infant signals something dangerously wrong, the absence of hunger for God’s word in a professing believer should prompt serious self-examination.

We should also recognize that newborn infants do not grow in isolation. They are fed, held, protected, and nurtured within the context of a family. In the same way, spiritual maturity is designed to happen within the community of the local church. You have been brought into a family purchased by the blood of Jesus. You have been redeemed, adopted, and placed among brothers and sisters who share the same imperishable life. Growing up into your salvation is not a solo endeavor. It happens as you love your brothers and sisters sincerely, as you pursue holiness together, as you bear one another’s burdens, and as you collectively feast on the word that endures forever.

This is why Peter’s call to desire the word is not disconnected from his call to love. They are two sides of the same coin. The word nourishes the love, and the love creates the environment where the word can take deeper root. A church where brothers and sisters love one another genuinely becomes the very soil where spiritual maturity flourishes.

Peter’s closing conditional phrase—“if you have tasted that the Lord is good”—introduces a penetrating question for every reader. This is directly from Psalm 34:8, and it functions as both an assurance and a diagnostic. For those who have genuinely experienced the goodness of Christ in salvation, the desire for His word is confirming evidence of spiritual life. But for those who feel no longing for God’s word, no hunger for spiritual nourishment, no drive toward maturity and love, Peter’s words gently raise a question worth pondering honestly: Have I truly been brought into the family of God through Christ?

This is not a question designed to torment the anxious soul. It is a question designed to awaken the complacent one. If you have tasted the Lord’s goodness, the appropriate response is to keep eating—to keep growing, to keep pressing deeper into the nourishment that only He provides.

The Anchor of Love Holds

Peter’s argument in this passage is as tightly constructed as it is pastorally warm. The logic flows with gospel precision: because you have been purified by the blood of Christ and born again by the imperishable seed of the gospel, you are now able to love sincerely and earnestly. Because you are called to this love, you must rid yourselves of everything that opposes it. And because you have tasted the goodness of the Lord, you will naturally hunger for the word that fuels your growth into the fullness of your salvation.

This is what it means to be anchored in love. Not anchored in our emotions, which fluctuate with our circumstances. Not anchored in our willpower, which fails under pressure. But anchored in the finished work of Christ, the indwelling presence of His Spirit, and the enduring power of His word. The same gospel that saved you is the gospel that sustains your love. The same seed that germinated your new life is the seed that produces its ongoing fruit.

Two dozen Navy SEALs lay down on top of Jessica Buchanan in the Somali darkness because it was their training, their identity, and their mission. In a far deeper and more eternal way, laying down our lives for one another is our training, our identity, and our mission as followers of Jesus. The cross has made it possible. The Spirit makes it actual. And the word of the Lord that endures forever ensures that the love planted in our hearts will never, ever wither.

We would love for you to join us this Wednesday evening from 6-7pm for our weekly prayer gathering.

This week we are continuing our study through the Gospel of Luke. Looking forward to seeing you there!

You are loved and prayed for!

Michael Gossett