Lesson 7 — Love One Another Earnestly

²²Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart,²³since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God;²⁴for "All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls,²⁵but the word of the Lord remains forever." And this word is the good news that was preached to you.1 Peter 1:22–25

Chapter one ends where it began, with the new birth. Verse 3 said God has caused us to be born again to a living hope. Verse 23 says we have been born again of imperishable seed, through the living and abiding word. And between those two births, Peter has shown what the new life is for: a gathered mind, a fixed hope, a holy conduct, a reverent fear. Now he names the first fruit of all of it: love for one another. Holiness does not terminate on the lone believer. The holy priesthood is a loving brotherhood. Read this passage as the capstone of chapter one.

1. Souls purified for love

Peter opens with a striking phrase: "Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love" (1:22). Notice the order. Purification is already past ("having purified"). It happened through obedience to the truth, the gospel, when they believed. And the purpose of that purification was love: for a sincere brotherly love. God did not cleanse us so we could sit alone in our purity. He cleansed us for love.

Matthew Henry draws out the devotional point: a clean heart is the soil in which brotherly love grows, and a love that comes from an impure heart is not the love Peter means (Henry on 1 Pet 1:22). Purification and love are not rivals. The more purely we walk with God, the more truly we can love each other. Sin makes love self-interested; obedience to the truth makes it sincere.

Notice thisThe goal of your cleansing is not isolation but affection. If your "holiness" makes you colder toward the brethren, it is not the holiness Peter is describing. The true direction of a purified soul is toward others, sincerely.

2. Brotherly love, then earnest love

Then the command itself: "love one another earnestly from a pure heart" (1:22). Two different Greek words for love are in this verse, and the difference matters. First, brotherly love (philadelphian), the warm affection of family. Then, the command to love (agapēsate) one another earnestly (ekteneōs), a strong, stretching word that Peter will use again in 4:8 to cover "a multitude of sins." It is the love that strains, that reaches, that does not stop at convenience.

So Peter is saying: you already have the family affection, now let it stretch into earnest, determined love, from a clean heart. Adrian Rogers catches the note: this is not a polite tolerance of the brethren but a love that labors for them, the kind that holds a church together under slander and trial (Rogers, on 1 Pet 1:22). The believers Peter is writing to needed exactly this. Scattered, pressured, tempted to pull apart, they are told: love each other earnestly.

The devotional pointEarnest love is not a feeling we wait for; it is a command we obey from a purified heart. The heart has been made clean; the love is now our work, stretching toward the brother or sister in front of us, even when it costs.

3. Born of imperishable seed

Why can we love like this? Because of what we are born from: "since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God" (1:23). The new birth is here pictured as a seed. And the seed is imperishable, the same word Peter used for the inheritance back in 1:4. The life now in us cannot rot, cannot fade, cannot die. It is the same life that endures forever.

The link is quietly powerful. The reason earnest love is possible is that the life now in us does not run out. Human love, born of perishable seed, exhausts itself, gets hurt, withdraws, gives up. Love born of imperishable seed has a different stamina. It can keep loving the difficult brother, the ungrateful sister, the failing elder, because the seed in us does not tire (Guzik on 1 Pet 1:23).

And the seed is delivered by "the living and abiding word of God." The new birth comes through the word, the gospel that was preached to these believers. This is why Peter can say in the next breath that this word remains forever. It is both the seed of our new life and the message that will outlast the world.

4. Grass and the word

To press the point home, Peter quotes Isaiah 40: "All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever" (1:24-25). The contrast is stark. Flesh, human life and all its glory, is seasonal. Grass. A flower. Here in the morning, scorched by afternoon. Our achievements, our beauty, our reputations, our strength, all of it is grass.

But the word, the word that begat us, the word that was preached to us, remains forever. Peter closes the chapter by anchoring our love and our life in the one thing that will not pass away. Matthew Henry puts it plainly: what is born of the abiding word partakes of the word's nature, and so abides (Henry on 1 Pet 1:25). Our love lasts because our life lasts, and our life lasts because our seed is the eternal word.

The single takeawayWe have been purified for love, and born of a seed that cannot die. So we love one another earnestly, from a pure heart, because the life in us is as durable as the word that gave it. The love is commanded; the stamina is provided.

5. And this word is the good news

Peter ends with a turn so warm it is easy to miss: "And this word is the good news that was preached to you" (1:25). The eternal, abiding, world-outlasting word is not an abstraction. It is the gospel, preached to ordinary people. The same word that holds the universe together holds you together. The same seed that lasts forever was planted in you the day you heard and believed. That is the ground of your love, and the ground of your endurance.

Try thisName one believer this week you find difficult to love. Then do one earnest act of love for them, a call, a meal, a patient listening, a prayer kept, a kindness not required. Before you act, remind yourself: I have been purified for this, and the seed in me does not run out.

Application — head, heart, hands

Head. Believe that you were purified for love, and born again of an imperishable seed through the eternal word. Your love for the brethren has a stamina that does not come from your temperament but from the life of God in you.

Heart. Cultivate a sincere brotherly affection that stretches into earnest love. Mortify the coldness that hides behind "holiness," and the fatigue that says love is too much effort. The seed in you does not tire.

Hands. Love one earnest act at a time. Pick the difficult brother or sister, and let the imperishable life in you reach toward them this week. The church under trial is held together by exactly this kind of stretching, determined love.

Check your understanding

For what purpose were believers' souls purified (1:22)?

For a sincere and earnest brotherly love
For a private and undisturbed piety
For a loud and public prophetic ministry
For a strict and rigid rule keeping

Purification was "for a sincere brotherly love," and the command is to "love one another earnestly from a pure heart" (1:22). Cleansing is the soil; earnest love is the fruit. Holiness that grows cold toward the brethren has missed Peter's point.

Check your understanding

What kind of seed are believers born of (1:23)?

A perishable seed of natural descent
An imperishable seed through God's word
A seasonal seed tied to human effort
A fading seed of inherited tradition

Believers are "born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God" (1:23). The new life in us cannot rot or fade, which is why the love it produces has a stamina human love lacks.

Check your understanding

In Isaiah 40 (quoted in 1:24-25), what is contrasted?

The proud and the humble among the saints
The wise and the foolish builders of houses
Flesh like grass and the word that remains
The rich and the poor in the assembly

Peter contrasts "all flesh" (like grass and its flower, which wither and fall) with "the word of the Lord" which "remains forever." Our life and love endure because the seed-word that begat us is the one thing that will not pass away.

Read for the next lessonRead David Guzik on 1 Peter 2:1-3, and re-read verse 25 until "the good news that was preached to you" feels like the foundation under your whole Christian life. The next lesson steps into chapter two and the heart of the series' through-line: 1 Peter 2:1-10, "A Royal Priesthood," living stones built into a spiritual house.