Believers are to love one another because they have purified their souls; This means that the soul of a true believer is cleansed of sin. You remember in our previous posts that we showed how your sins past, present, and future have been forgiven at the cross that Christ paid the price once and for all with His precious blood that we would be holy acceptable to God. As it shows in Romans 5:5 God purified our souls and poured His love (agape) into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. - It is a constant power within our lives. Here in verse 22, Peter used two different words for love: philadelphia - which is brotherly love and agape - which is godlike sacrificial love.
Not only is this love a spiritual love, but the scripture shows us that it is also a sincere love - meaning it is genuine, without pretension, hypocrisy, or play-acting. We are not to pretend, play, and act like we love one another; we are to love one another genuinely and sincerely.
Lastly we see in verse 22 that this love is fervent. "love one another fervently with a pure heart" - love here is the agape love and is used in the Aorist Imperative mode - meaning that it is a command to be done at that very moment. Fervent is an athletic term that means "striving with all of one's energy." So we are commanded to strive with all of our energy to love one another. It takes work, it is not a matter of feeling - it is a matter of will. We should love as God loves us. God forgives us - we forgive others; God is kind to us - we are kind to others.
The Spirit of God produces the "fruit of the Spirit" in our lives, and the first of these is love (Galatians 5:22-23). If we are filled with the Word of God (Colossians 3:16) and the Spirit of God (Ephesians 5:18), we will manifest the love of God in our daily experiences.
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