Surely love is the greatest of virtues.  Of it Jesus said, "These three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."  To be loved is to be coveted more than fortune or fame.  To love and be loved is more to be desired than gold.  One cannot live without love because God is love, and no one can live without God.

First, it is true that love is a Christian rule demanded of us.  Christ summarized the whole law of God with the command to love, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'  [Matthew 22:37, 39]

This mandate is stark and severe.  To love is not a simple request but an ultimatum.  It is not only cruel but fundamentally inhuman not to love.  You must love.  It is your obligation and your duty without recourse to your feelings, the expenditure, or how much "oomph" you think you have.

On the night of His betrayal, Jesus was not speaking marginally when he said to his disciples, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another."  The obligation is not only to love but to love each other as he first loved us.  This eradicates any echelon of love like this: some you tolerate, others you like, a few you cherish, and only a couple you totally love.  "Love your enemies," Jesus said.

He did.

He loves you and me who have, in bypassing people, repeatedly detoured around this command.  A priest and a Levite (as Jesus tells the story in Luke 10) took the long way around a hurting man even though they were "men of the cloth."  Don't think it's enough to love God as if loving God were easier.  God is good; people aren't.  God is generous; people are stingy.  God is understanding; people are prejudiced.  God is loveable; people are mean.  God can take care of Himself; people are a hassle.

The way love for God is expressed is through love of your neighbor.  But this isn't your invention.  It is the love of Christ for mankind.  Jesus bore a devotion to humanity the likes of which the world had never seen.  Beyond sentiment, beyond charity, beyond friendship, beyond life itself, the love of Christ was given.  He loved the malefactors, he loved Jerusalem, he loved Judas.  And he loves you and me.

At the cost of his own life, "having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end." (John 13:1) 

It is not our job as Christians to generate feelings for anyone or produce passion for people.  It's not up to us to trigger affection for our neighbor or like doing all the things love is keen to do.  Love's origin is the Lord of love-Jesus Christ.  In him, love is noun, verb, adverb, adjective, and interjection!

In Him love is Gospel, all Gospel!  It is gift.  It is good and irrevocable - and truly sweet to our ear.  In Christ, God's love is shown to be pure, active, sacrificial, and undying.  He first loved us.  He loved us through affliction, rejection, through hostility, and through death on a cross.  Christ is love personified.

Divine love is the truth that God profoundly cares for and values all humanity.  Thus, even in our sin, we are so loved that He would give his eternal Son to become man Himself to redeem our utterly unlovable race.   It is from the fountain of this divine love that we may now love each other with the character of Christ - His love the central attribute of our being Christian.

The epistle of John shows the inseparable linkage of love for God and for our brother.  What was impossible under the law, will now, through Christ, not only be visible in your actions and resounding in your words, but will animate your heart toward all that is expressive of Christ's love for others. 

No lie.