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The Love Principle - Study 21: Love as Command

  • 12 hours ago
  • 20 min read

John 13:34-35 NIVUK

[34]  ‘A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. [35] By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’ 

John 15:9-17 NIVUK

[9]  ‘As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. [10] If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. [11] I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. [12] My command is this: love each other as I have loved you. [13] Greater love has no-one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. [14] You are my friends if you do what I command. [15] I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. [16] You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit – fruit that will last – and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. [17] This is my command: love each other. 

I grew up among people who used religion as a veneer for hatred. Unfortunately many still do. We have to be honest about that because it’s obvious.


It’s reached the stage where those of a more atheistic nature write off any form of religion believing that ‘religion causes wars’. That designation is, of course, fantastically lazy and ill-informed and does not stand up to scrutiny.


However, it remains.


Even if it isn’t true.


Allow me to explain.


Guns are weapons that are made to kill. When they are used to kill, they are fulfilling the purpose for which they were created. Other than a starter pistol or a flare gun, they have one use and one use only. You can’t use a gun to chop up vegetables or slice a birthday cake. They are weapons of death and that’s all they are for.


Knives are lethal weapons, but not all knives are made to be lethal weapons. Most are made to slice things like bread or cheese or fruit or vegetables or meat. Their main use is not to kill. But they have been misappropriated by those who then use something useful for a wrong purpose.


Many view religion as a gun. They see it as a deadly weapon. It is absolutely not. Religion is a knife. It was created for good. When used for purposes other than worship, it is misused: it is not being used for the purpose for which it was designed.


Christianity is like that. It was created for good. But those with evil intentions have misappropriated it. They have used Christian culture to paint a veneer of legitimacy on hatred.


But anyone who knows what real Christianity is knows this is fraudulent behaviour. 


Biblical Christians cannot rush headlong into war, and certainly not without clear justification.


Biblical Christians cannot be anywhere near racism and cannot give it any legitimacy.


Biblical Christians cannot be in favour of any policy that deliberately sets out to harm anyone.


Biblical Christianity is one hundred percent against favouritism, cronyism and any form of corruption.


Fake Christianity can be in favour of all of those things; real Christianity cannot.


Because real Christians love.


Because real Christians obey the command they have received from Jesus Christ to love.


Real Christians love because God has first loved them, and that love knows no bounds or limits.


It might sound a little strange to study a command to love. We have been so conditioned that love must be spontaneous and uncontrollable and romantic that we forget that love is commanded of us. 


And not just any love: agape love. 1 Corinthians 13 love.


We are commanded to love like that.


And that ought to stun is. There is no single command in all of Scripture that makes us realise how sinful and in desperate need of grace we are than the command to love. 


So before we go any further, we have to understand this: we are commanded to love, if we fail to love then we sin, all of us sin, so therefore all of us are in need of God’s love and His grace. We cannot go into this study believing that we are already obeying this commandment to the full, so we don’t need to head this message. That is just not true.


We need to be reminded of this commandment every day because we break it every day and we need grace every day.


So let’s further explore the commandment every Christian needs to obey all the time, but no Christian can, by looking at it as The New Commandment.


The New Commandment 

John 13:31-35 NIVUK

[31] When he was gone, Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him. [32] If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once. [33]  ‘My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: where I am going, you cannot come. [34]  ‘A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. [35] By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’ 

Every time we go to visit my wife’s family in the Philippines, we carry a suitcase full of clothes which do not come back with us. It contains clothes from my wife and daughter that they don’t want to wear any more. It all gets spread on a bed. My daughter’s cousins pick what they want. The rest gets given away to other people in the village.


Those clothes are new for the people who receive them, but old for those who donate them.


Maybe that’s how you see this command to love. After all, a command to love your neighbour is not exactly new. It was inferred right at the very creation of the Jewish nation in the Ten Commandments. It was documented for the first time using those specific words in Leviticus:


Leviticus 19:18 NIVUK 

[18] ‘ “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord. 

So how could it be new?


What changed in Jesus’ update to this command was its dimensions.


Firstly, its depth. 


The Hebrew word for love – ahav – could also refer to love within a family or for a friend. It was a strong verb, of course, but not as strong as the Greek verb Jesus used.


The ancient Greeks had nine words in their vocabulary for love. Nine! Imagine the confusion if you used the wrong word on a Valentine’s Day card...


Jesus exclusively used one word in this commandment. Just one. It’s a word so sacred that historians tell us that it was not used in any other work of Greek literature. Given how prolific the Greeks were at writing, that really is something.


Jesus exclusively used the word ‘agape’: meaning selfless, sacrificial love for the unloved and the unlovable.


He wasn’t commanding the disciples to be ‘best buddies’ or ‘homies’ or to ‘have each other's backs’. He was asking for way more than that.


He was asking them to give themselves for each other. As Paul said of the Macedonian believers:


2 Corinthians 8:5 NIVUK 

[5] And they exceeded our expectations: they gave themselves first of all to the Lord, and then by the will of God also to us.  

(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/113/2co.8.5.NIVUK)


That is what Jesus was commanding His disciples to do.


It was also new in terms of its breadth. 


Jesus was asking them to love each other as He had loved them, which is this much:


Ephesians 3:16-19 NIVUK

[16] I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, [17] so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, [18] may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, [19] and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. 

Is it not true that if God loves us for a mile, we often barely love a micron in return?


Yet Jesus commanded His disciples to love to the full extent of His love, not theirs.


Given that Jesus came to earth to die on the cross for us because He loves us, that is quite the command, but allow me to explain how it works by using the sport of netball as an example.


At my primary school, the only sports that were offered most of the time in PE were football (soccer) for boys and netball for girls. Netball, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is a bit like an even less contact version of basketball, mainly played by girls in pleated skirts, where instead of dribbling the ball after receiving it from their team-mates, a player has to stand still, only being allowed to step a pace forward to steady themselves, and then pass the ball to a team-mate, or shoot it through the hoop.


The boys in my school were quite familiar with netball, but I think they were more interested in the girls playing it than the rules.


The thing is, when you receive the ball, you can’t make progress towards scoring a goal until you pass it. You can’t catch it and kick it. You can’t run with like in rugby, or its rather more padded cousin, American football. You can’t dribble with it and make out like ‘you tha' man!’ like in basketball. When you receive it, you have to pass it on.


Love is like that. It is not designed to be kept or hoarded or held on to. To make progress and grow as Christians, we have to pass it on.


Now, the metaphor isn’t perfect. In netball, when you receive the ball and pass it on, you no longer have the ball. But with the love of God, we receive it, we pass it on, but we still have it, because there is an inexhaustible supply of it.


Another example is the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The Aral Sea used to be enormous. But it has been drained by irrigation and Soviet projects until only ten percent of it remains. There are ghost towns and even fishing boats lying on the salt flats, miles from the lake shore, because they were marooned when the water receded.


Maybe that’s how we see love. We are afraid to share it with others because we fear waking up to find that it’s all gone, and we are stuck, miles away from the love we once enjoyed.


That will never happen. The reservoir of God’s love is so deep that its depths can never be plumbed. It is a well that will never run dry.


So when we obey this command to love with the love God had given to us, we can do so fearlessly, knowing we will always be loved.


This commandment was new in the sense that Jesus had widened and deepened it. He could do that only because there is no limit to the width and depth to God’s love.


And that is an awesome truth.


But this commandment is not just the new commandment, it is also The Experienced Commandment.


The Experienced Commandment 

John 13:34 NIVUK

[34]  ‘A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  

I have a confession to make. My family likes to travel. I like to travel. Before we book a vacation, we often look up destinations on YouTube to see other people’s experiences – not so we can copy them (although that has happened to us), but so we can see what certain places are like so we know if we will receive our money’s worth. We see other people’s experiences. We then decide if we will spend our hard-earned money.


Of course, it can be hard. While some travel influencers are very useful in that they show the place very clearly, there are others who seem to be overly-enamoured with their own face. It’s almost as if you're not looking to book a trip to the location where they filmed, but to their bedroom, or to their plastic surgeon’s office, or to the bridge of their nose – or whatever part of their anatomy they like to flaunt on camera.


We aren’t interested in that. We want to see the place. We want to see their experience of the place.


Jesus here had given the disciples a first hand experience of something that was critically important to them: His love. He had shown them it clearly. They had lived in it for three years.


Now it was their turn.


That might sound so straight-forward and simple and direct.


Until, that is, you see how He had shown them His love up close and personal in the events most recent to this teaching.


Firstly, we see that Jesus served.


And how did He serve!


Their host for the Passover had made a dire cultural faux-pas. Jews at the time walked around in open toed sandals – that is well known. The streets were dusty. They were sandy. Plumbing was non-existent, so both humans and animals would have used them as toilets. The stench would have been unbearable.


When ancient Jews ate, they did not eat at a table with chairs like we do. They reclined at a low table, no more than a few inches high, with their putrid feet relatively close to the meal.


It therefore became the custom for the host to provide a bowl of water and a servant – the lowest in the household – to wash and dry the feet of the guests coming for the meal.


They were about to celebrate the Passover. That is a sacred meal for all Jews. If ever there was a time for the feet of Jesus and His disciples to not smell ripe, it was now.


But their host had not fulfilled his duty.


So out of love for His disciples (John 13:1), Jesus got up from the table, took a towel and a basin of water and He washed His disciples’ feet.


He did not berate His host. He did not order a more junior disciple to do it. Jesus saw the problem and He did what was necessary to fix the problem, no matter what it meant for Him.


John explains the reason why:


John 13:3-5 NIVUK 

[3] Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; [4] so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel round his waist. [5] After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped round him. 

Jesus loved His disciples. He knew where He had come from, who He was and where He was going. And so, secure in all this, He took the lowest place and He served.


No wonder the disciples were shocked (John 13:6-11).


But this astonishing event was not just about Jesus, it was also about the disciples:


John 13:12-17 NIVUK

[12] When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. ‘Do you understand what I have done for you?’ he asked them. [13] ‘You call me “Teacher” and “Lord”, and rightly so, for that is what I am. [14] Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. [15] I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. [16] Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. [17] Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. 

Jesus had carried out an act of supremely humble service. He commanded His disciples to do the same.


It wasn’t the first time:


Matthew 23:11-12 NIVUK

[11] The greatest among you will be your servant. [12] For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. 

Mark 9:35 NIVUK

[35] Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, ‘Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.’ 

(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/113/mrk.9.35.NIVUK)


Luke 22:25-27 NIVUK

[25] Jesus said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. [26] But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. [27] For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.

It is absolutely clear in the Gospels that Jesus wanted His disciples to love each other so much that they were willing to take the lowest place and serve each other.


But He wasn’t done yet. What we see next is a quite incredible and unrequited act love towards the very worst of His followers.


As well as serving, Jesus submitted. He submitted to a plan that would not only send Him to a painful cross, but would also mean that those closest to Him would greatly hurt Him.


Look what He pronounced in that upper room:


John 13:21 NIVUK

[21] After he had said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, ‘Very truly I tell you, one of you is going to betray me.’ 

Is it not astonishing that Jesus would accept into His inner circle a man who not only did not share His values, but would eventually consider Jesus of such low value that he was willing to sell his Rabbi to the Jewish leaders for a pittance? Who else would submit themselves to the harm this would cause to save people who at the time barely knew His Name?


And then there’s Peter:


John 13:37-38 NIVUK

[37] Peter asked, ‘Lord, why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.’ [38] Then Jesus answered, ‘Will you really lay down your life for me? Very truly I tell you, before the cock crows, you will disown me three times!

And this happened. Peter denied knowing Jesus three times, even calling down curses on himself (Matthew 26:74). Yet this was a man who had been among Jesus’ very closest companions.


But in a sense that made no difference. When the chips were down and the threat was high, this is what all the disciples did:


Mark 14:50 NIVUK

[50] Then everyone deserted him and fled.

Jesus was not naive. The Bible says this about Him:


John 2:23-25 NIVUK

[23] Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. [24] But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. [25] He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person. 

Jesus knew, then, even as He called each disciple, that every single one of then would abandon Him when He needed them the most.


But that’s true agape love, isn’t it? It loves and accepts people not just who are unloved and unlovely now, but who may be unloved and unlovely in the future. It loves and accepts people for who they are now, not just who they will be in the future, and is prepared to be hurt.


True love – the love that Jesus shows us – accepts the possibility of current and future pain, because in a fallen world, pain is part of love.


If we are to obey Jesus’ commandment to love, we too must accept the reality that this love may cause us pain and disappointment and frustration in the future. Our love can never be conditional on someone being and doing exactly what we want. We must stand with them even when they fail or fall, because we love them, so we want to help them stand tall.


This is the love we must have for others, because it is the love Jesus has for us. This is the love we have experienced. This the love we should seek to share.


But apart from the new and experienced commandment, we also see The Perceived Commandment.


The Perceived Commandment 

John 13:35 NIVUK

[35] By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’ 

Banknotes can be a very interesting things.


A number of years ago, a friend of ours walked up to a currency exchange in Asia and handed over some money for them to exchange into local currency. He was most disgruntled when they refused to change one of his bank notes because they said it was in such poor condition that their bank would not accept it.


He was even more disgruntled when they changed the rest of his money, and handed him local currency that was in a worse state than his money!


Those were back in the days when banknotes were made of paper. Now many of them are cotton or polymer. They have such ingenious security features that you only need to hold them up to the light to see if they are genuine.


Most banknotes come with watermark that is visible when exposed to light. In these verses, Jesus holds our Christianity up to the light to show us whether or not it is genuine, and He points out what the watermark should be:


Love.


But not just any love: agape love. The love that drove Him to come to earth to die for unworthy sinners.


The love that drove Him to get down on His knees and wash the filthy feet of His followers.


The love that accepted a betrayer, a denier and a group of cowards into His inner circle.


The love that embraced the sad reality that these men would let Him down before they would lift Him up in worship.


The love that embraced their foibles and failures before it celebrated their success.


That love.


That is the love which proves we are genuine believers.


I find this verse very interesting.


There are many churches, and even Christian organisations, who determine whether or not you are a genuine believer by your belief in a certain theological framework, or your completion of various rituals, or your agreement with certain moral standpoints, or your exhibiting of certain gifts.


And in a lot of ways, I understand it.


But Jesus doesn’t. He said that they know we are Christians by our love.


This is also written elsewhere in the New Testament:


1 John 2:9-11 NIVUK 

[9] Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. [10] Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. [11] But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them. 

1 John 4:7-12, 19-21 NIVUK

[7] Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. [8] Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. [9] This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. [10] This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. [11] Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. [12] No-one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. 
[19] We love because he first loved us. [20] Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. [21] And he has given us this command: anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. 

Now, the easiest thing here would be to point to those in the far right who claim to be followers of Jesus but who hate other people who are different to them. Of course they are fakes. That goes without saying. No-one can follow Jesus and hate another person whom Jesus loves. The two states are mutually exclusive.


However, the much tougher thing to do is to examine if we truly love our brothers and sisters.


Love does not look down on others.


Love does not gossip.


Love does not slander.


Love does not seek to gain the upper hand.


Love does not turn the Body of Christ into a tool for self-promotion or a political hill to climb.


So tell me: do you love?


Take a look again at 1 Corinthians 13:


1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NIVUK

[4] Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. [5] It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. [6] Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. [7] It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

So tell me: do you love?


Look again at Philippians 2:1-11. Where do you stand on this? Do you see other people as Jesus sees you?


So tell me: do you love?


When I was a missionary, I was always in multicultural teams. Every time we did evangelism or served in a local church, the question was asked how a team of twelve people from ten different countries could possibly get along and work together. I mean, we had our moments. Of course we did. Any group of people would. But I have seen monocultural churches fall out a whole lot faster and further than that team did.


And that’s the point. Any Christian group that truly loves prepares the ground to preach the Gospel. Their message is loud because disputes are silent.


They are fundamentally different to the division and hatred that is preached nowadays.


But when a church is divided, their message is drowned out and loses credibility because there is no love.


There is nothing more important than love for God, our neighbours and ourselves in a church. It is the greatest orthodoxy, the most powerful evangelicalism, the most powerful protest against a bitterly divided world.


So let me ask one more time: do you love?


Conclusion 

John 13:34-35 NIVUK

[34]  ‘A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. [35] By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’ 

It was rumoured for many years, but never substantiated or proven, that the European Union had banned bananas that were not curvy enough. The truth was a little nuanced, but less entertaining: the EU had classified and standardised banana shapes to protect consumers.


But even though that little piece of misinformation slipped up, the myth is still perpetuated today.


Standards are important. They let us measure the quality of the goods and services that we buy. They ensure we get value for money. The only people who ever complain about them are those whose goods or services don’t measure up.


Jesus issued a commandment. It is a new commandment in the sense that it took the old commandment to love God, our neighbours and ourselves and it drove it wider and deeper than the original. It was an experienced commandment in that the disciples had experienced it themselves, up close and personal. They knew exactly what Jesus was talking about. It is a perceived commandment because other people see it. They are aware of it. They observe it.


That commandment is a standard. It lets both us and the world around us know who is really a follower of Jesus and who is not.


And that is where the severe challenge bites. Paul wrote this to the Corinthians:


1 Corinthians 11:27-29 NIVUK

[27] So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. [28] Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. [29] For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.  

2 Corinthians 13:5 NIVUK

[5] Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realise that Christ Jesus is in you – unless, of course, you fail the test? 

(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/113/2co.13.5.NIVUK)


Love is the standard to which we compare ourselves. It is the litmus test. It forms the line between righteousness and sin; between discipleship and disobedience; between following Jesus and betraying Him.


Where do you stand when you compare with this standard? 


Are you really obeying this commandment? Are you truly following Jesus Christ?


For way too long, Christians have judged themselves and others by criteria that are intellectual, frivolous and meaningless.


But love: love is the litmus test. Love is the dividing line.


Love is obedience and obedience is love.


So tell me: do you love?


Prayer 

Lord Jesus, at a time when hatred seems to prevail, I am challenged to my core by Your commandment to love. I will obey, Lord. Teach me what it will men for me, I pray. Amen.


Questions for Contemplation

  • What is old about this commandment to love? What is new? Why is that important?

  • Whom did Jesus hold up as an example of how we should love? What does this mean?

  • Why is love the litmus test for every Christian and the standard we should meet? Do you pass this test? Why / why not? What will you do about it?

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