John 13:34 – “I give a new commandment to you, that you should love one another; according as I loved you, you should also love one another.”

John 15:12 – “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I loved you.”

1 John 3:23 – “And this is His commandment, that we should believe the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, even as He gave command to us.”

If the Church is ever going to come up to the stature of the fullness of the Body of Christ, it is absolutely imperative that we come to understand that we are commanded to walk in love. No exceptions!

There is a major problem in the Body of Christ today. It’s so deceptive and subversive that most people do not even realize its happening. It is so rampant that it is likely most Christians do it on a daily basis. Yet, with this being such a widespread problem you really don’t hear much teaching on it in the Church today. That problem is not recognizing that the Church has been commanded to walk in love, and it manifests itself by people making excuses when they don’t walk in love. If the Church is ever going to come up to the stature of the fullness of the Body of Christ, it is absolutely imperative that we come to understand that we are commanded to walk in love. No exceptions!

Many Christians know that we are supposed to love one another, but not many seem to grasp the fact that it is a commandment. In fact, it was such a serious commandment that Jesus went so far as to say, “All the other commandments are wrapped up in this.” Both in John 13:34 and in John 15:12 Jesus states in no uncertain terms, “My commandment to you is to love one another.” It was an order.

The problem is that because we have never really had a revelation that this is a commandment, we’ve made excuses for when we don’t walk in love. We have seen this command more as a suggestion. We have done our best to stay in love with one another, but when we didn’t we made excuses for why we didn’t. We didn’t see that it was not only breaking a command from God, but it was breaking THE command.

There are NO EXCEPTIONS to the command of love.

There are many different ways we’ve tried to make excuses for not walking in love with one another. We feel we can lose our temper or act unbecomingly because we’ve had a bad day at work. Or we feel we have a right not to control what we say when we didn’t get a good night sleep or if we aren’t feeling good. Many women use the excuse of “that time” for not walking in love. We think we have a right to get out of love if someone has just really stretched you as thin as you can go. The problem with all these things is there are NO EXCEPTIONS to the command of love.

Many of you may say, “But you don’t understand everything I go through.” I may not, but I can read. It is clearly written out for all to read. And notice, Jesus did not place a clause at the end of the above verses which said, “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I loved you; except in the case that you’ve lost your job, you feel sick, you didn’t get a good night sleep, your hormones are all out of whack and your dog was just run over. In this case, you don’t have to walk in love.” No, He didn’t add any clause. He said, “This is My commandment, that you walk in love!” Period!

The reason He can command this of us is because He gave us His own love to obey the command by.

Do you know why Jesus is able to expect this of us? Because Jesus had a really bad day in His life and He stayed in love. Think about that. Jesus was betrayed by a close person that he loved. He was arrested and beaten. His other eleven friends left Him. One denied that He ever knew Him. He was wrongfully accused and sentenced to death. Beat some more. Nailed to a cross naked, and then ridiculed. And never once did He get out of love. In fact, after all that He prayed that God would forgive the very ones that did all this to Him. If any person ever had a valid excuse for breaking God’s command to walk in love, it would have been Jesus. However, even after all this happened to Him He still stayed in the love of God because He knew there just aren’t any exceptions. The reason He can command this of us is because He gave us His own love to obey the command by.

You need to realize that God is never going to give you an exemption for walking in love. You will not wake up one morning with an angel from heaven at the foot of your bed who will say, “Heaven has recognized that you have had a really bad week, here is a written notice from God that you are exempt from walking in love today.” It’s not going to happen, and you cannot consciously or subconsciously give yourself that exemption either. You must cement it into your mind until it is absolutely immoveable that there are no valid excuses, exemptions or exceptions for getting out of the love of God.