For God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love which you have shown toward His name, in that you have ministered to the saints, and do minister. (Hebrews 06:10, NKJV).
What is it about human love that requires such an expenditure of energy?
Not the love portrayed in popular culture, or other entertainment media, that is really thinly veiled and transitory lust, and that fades and cheapens with indulgence.
Or the kind of quid pro quo love prevalent in many modern relationships that requires a balance sheet of running credits and debits to keep track of each partner's interpersonal investment.
Not these at all, but the kind of agape love described in Scripture as that self-sacrificing, continuous act of will motivated purely for someone else's good. The kind of love defined by God Himself, as in God IS love. The kind of love Jesus demonstrated by His going to the Cross to die for us while we were yet sinners, and at enmity with Him. That kind of love.
I think the answer is that we humans are inherently hard to love, with all our scrapes, dents, and flaws; and all our self-centered, self-absorbed, self-important self-focus. We are all about us, not others. How tiring is that?
After we reach a certain age, or take on certain traits, or develop certain habits, we become rather unlovable, and only an act of God makes us otherwise. And even after the regeneration that comes through faith in Christ, only the love of God poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit enables us weak and broken down Christians to even remotely love each other like God intends.
Yet even the pale and ghostly love towards one another that we sometimes allow to come through our stubborn and thickened hearts is something that God never forgets. It is His light shining through our darkness, and it is one of the few precious things we are capable of that actually honors His name.
Not only is God not unjust to forget this, but He is incredibly gracious in His judgment of our ministry, rewarding us extravagantly for even a glass of water given in His name.
And that word labor, signifies a kind of grievous effort, associated with the beating of the breast with sorrow, a sort of unstoppable committed expenditure of willed effort, that compels someone to action, very much like the irresistible grief of loss in that sense.
The saints referenced above, are those called out of the world into and for Christ - anyone and everyone who believes He is Lord and Savior who died for our sin.
And what honors Him about our work and labor of love toward each other is embodied in the words ministered and minister, both the same in Greek, meaning to attend to anything that may serve another's interests over our own.
Why?
Because that is a hallmark of being like Christ Himself. It is His stamp upon our being that blazes out into the universe for all to see - a beacon that points others not to us, but to Him.
Look, talk is cheap. All it takes is hot air and a facile tongue to sound like you are something when you are not.
Action is harder to fake. The work and labor of love is impossible to feign for very long at all.
And when it's real, it shakes the foundation of Hell itself, and irks the godless world to the point of deceitful cynicism to explain it all away.
Think it's not important?
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. (John 13:34, NKJV).
This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. (John 15:12, NKJV).
“These things I command you, that you love one another. (John 15:17, NKJV).
Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. (Romans 13:8, NKJV).
But concerning brotherly love you have no need that I should write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another; (1 Thessalonians 4:9, NKJV).
Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, (1 Peter 1:22, NKJV).
For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, (1 John 3:11, NKJV).
And this is His commandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment. (1 John 3:23, NKJV).
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. (1 John 4:7, NKJV).
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1 John 4:11, NKJV).
No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. (1 John 4:12, NKJV).
And now I plead with you, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment to you, but that which we have had from the beginning: that we love one another. (2 John 1:5, NKJV).
