2 John 6
And this is love, that we follow his commandments; this is the commandment, as you have heard from the beginning, that you follow love.
It is a curious fact that when you try to boil down John to his essence, you get a tautology. John commands us "Love." When we ask, "How?" He replies, "Follow his commandments." When we ask, "How do we follow his commandments?" John replies, "Love." To the flat-footed rationalist and "systematizer," this appears to be a circle. But from another perspective it simply points out that God, who is Love, is the reality that underlies all other reality and that it is futile to try to get behind Him. Love is the center, the circumference, the highest, the lowest, the first and the last, the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega. To act in accord with reality (that is, to obey the commandments) is to love because the fundamental reality before, behind, and beyond all things is God, who is Love. Similarly, to love is to act in accord with reality since the God who is Love is also the God who is Truth. John, like all mystics, offers us mysterious language to express that mysterious fact. But it is only mysterious till we began to live it. Then it reveals itself for what it is: the word of God, the word of life, the word of truth, and the word of love. Today, follow his commandments and follow love.
