"Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."
Ephesians 5:1-2
The command to love and walk in love carries the same inexorable challenge as the command to forgive. It is to love 'as Christ also hath loved us'. And how did Christ love us? The answer is: He gave Himself. That is the measure of His love, and ours is to bear that characteristic also. And when it does, it will be to God what Christ's love was - an offering and a sacrifice to Him for a sweet-smelling savour. Ah, this takes us into the realm of mystery: Christ's dying love is the ground of all our hopes, and the source of all our gratitude, but it is more: it is something inexpressibly sweet to God, and dear to Him. And the closer and nearer we are to Christ's self-sacrificing and self-denying love, the sweeter will our lives be to God also.
There is something else here also. In the nature and character of God, and that of Christ our Lord, holiness and love are inextricably linked. God is holy, and before Him angels veil their faces, but He is also a God of infinite tenderness, compassion and love. That paradoxical blend is to be seen in our lives also, and not the one without the other. Alexander Maclaren, in his exposition of the seven Christian graces in 2 Peter 1:5-7: 'Add to (supply in) your faith virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness ... brotherly kindness ... love' - comments, 'On the one side, severe, self-regarding graces fronting a world full of antagonism and evil; on the other, gentler graces fronting a world full of people who need care and help. How important this is! It has not always been so, and it is not always so today, in Christians' lives. There are lives that are upright and true and holy yet not loving; there are Christians in whom the fruit of holiness is unquestionably there, strong and steadfast, and straight as a die but the fruit tastes sour. There is a sanctification that is hard and metallic, cold, forbidding and censorious, and even strident, and it lacks the melting quality that the love of Christ alone can impart.'