1 John 5:3

1 John 5:3. For, the love of God is this it is in us for this end, that we should keep his commandments. Here, as constantly, some truths are suppressed. The apostle had seemed to assert that the love of brethren seen was easier than the love of God unseen. But there are some who might and who did pervert that principle: having a speculative, transcendent, emotional love of God, they might and they did undervalue the security, the depth, the universality of the self-renouncing devotion to others that brotherly love as the commandment of Christ includes. But he whose love of God is a love of universal obedience, knows that such brotherly love, as the ‘fulfilment of the law,' is in itself difficult: it is indeed the ‘hard' part of the love of God. And his commandments are not grievous is the reply to every suggestion of the failing heart: this is an axiomatic saying, standing here alone; of deep importance and boundless application. The laws of God are reasonable, and in harmony with the purest ethical principles of reason, even the severest of them. But apart from what follows, they are intolerable.