Paul is instructing Timothy and the purpose of his instruction is "love". As we have seen over and over again in Scripture, love is what God desires us to express to those around us. Paul in his teaching as a follower of Christ, does his part to teach his charges to love. I think this opening statement can give direction to us as well. Each of can love, learn to love and grow in love, and that is wonderful. But, we as followers of Christ and the teachings of Scripture would be wise to also instruct those in our charge to love as well. In our teaching our children, friends, relatives and those we are exposed to. We might take Paul's example in this passage describing where this love should be rooted.
We as one of "all" believers are instructed to love. Notice the word "filled". We are to be filled with love. Love should abound in us. If we are filled with love, how can there be any room for anger, slander, hatred, or the desire to judge others? It is hard to be filled with love, but we should aspire to love to that capacity. Being filled with love should be our goal. Our love is demonstrated in many ways. It is good for us to keep the quality of our love in check so that it does not become conditional, used as a tool, weapon or punishment to control or hurt others. Those things can be done by withholding our love.
Paul describes where the first root of our love should come from. If we can love from this first root, it will help us keep the base and quality of our love checked.
First, our love should be rooted in a pure heart. We use the term pure often but how would we describe a pure heart? We think of the heart as the center of our feelings and emotions. Our heart seems to be where we feel the beauty and wonder of life resides. It is the very symbol of love itself. A pure heart is a heart that is undivided, unpolluted by things like lust, it is uncontaminated, it is not diluted or divided by purpose. It's purpose is love and love alone and love for others. If our instruction is to love, a pure heart cannot be divided between selfish love for ourselves and selfless love for others. Can our love spring from a pure heart? I believe it can, but it may take some house cleaning to get it there. We have all suffered years of being taught in many ways that we should love ourselves above and beyond others. Some of our hearts may have been hardened by the teaching of the world that others have to earn or deserve our love. Christ's example of love was to give it away freely. How can anyone ever earn or deserve His love? If we are freely loved by Him, then how can we not love others as He loves us?
Second our love should have it's roots in a clear conscience. Our conscience is that little voice inside that judges our actions, motives, purposes and behaviors. It judges them as right or wrong. It is the internal self knowledge of the moral correctness of out thoughts and actions. It is part of our moral compass pointing to correctness or incorrectness. To have a conscience that is clear is to have one that is without guilt, innocent, without blemish and transparent. Our love should be rooted in a conscience that does not tell us that our love is given with impure motives or desires. When we love with a clear conscious our love is free, without strings, without conditions. Our conscience should tell us if we are loving for the sake of loving. Again Christ's love was given without condition or plot. His love was given because He loves. Can we love with a clear conscience? I believe we can. We can be sure if we listen to our conscience and make any needed adjustments to our course in loving as dictated by our own moral compass.
Last Paul tells us our love should be rooted in a genuine faith. Our faith and belief in the teachings of our Lord should be genuine and sincere. Our faith should be real not put on for public approval or to help us fit in. Our faith and belief in Christ's teaching us to love one another should be the real deal. We love because we believe in loving and we believe that His teachings are right and true. Can we offer a love that is rooted in genuine faith? I believe so. Again it is a place love grows from that will require regular monitoring but it can be done.
Allowing our love to be rooted and grow from such places of integrity and purity will result in a harvest of beautiful, selfless Christ like love. A love that grows from such places will most closely resemble our Lord's love for us all. If we continually monitor our love crop, feed the roots of our love with the pureness of heart, a clear conscience and a genuine faith, we will see the sweetest, fullest, ripest fruit of love you can imagine. It will be a harvest beyond your imagination.
Just love somebody. Everybody.