Loving Each Other

John 13:31-35

INTRODUCTION

Our text today comes at a definitive time in the lives of the disciples. They have just finished eating the Passover meal in the Upper Room. Jesus will soon be arrested and condemned to death. In a few short hours, He will be crucified on the cross of Calvary. The disciples will be scattered, afraid, and doubtful. The One they believed in will have been taken from them. Their faith will be tested as never before. If there were ever a time in their lives when they needed each other, it would be then.

Our circumstances are much different today, but our difficulties are similar. The world in which we live is increasingly less tolerant of our faith. Our religious liberties are vanishing before our eyes. Our faith is being tested as never before. If believers, if the church ever needed each other, we do so today more than we ever have. The only advocates and defenders of the church today is the church. No matter what a leader or politician tells you, the church is as isolated as it has ever been.

I realize also that we aren’t the only ones who are struggling. The world is a difficult place to live. Our economy is still not stable. People are concerned about health care, groceries, retirement, etc. It's history’s most chaotic election year ever. Many feel they are forced to face these difficulties alone, with no one to care or understand about their problems. Our society is changing rapidly, but the basic needs of humanity remain the same. Everybody needs someone to lean on, someone to love them and share in their times of difficulty. In the history of the world, the church is needed now more than ever.

Jesus spoke some words thousands of years ago, but they are as timely today as they were then. He urges the disciples and all of us to think deeply about love for one another. Jesus calls His followers to be actively loving each other.

John 13:31–35 ESV

When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’ A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

SCRIPTURAL ANALYSIS

One of the major themes in John’s first letter is brotherly love. John spells out that love is a principle of action rather than emotion. Love’s purpose is honoring and benefiting the other party. It is a matter of doing things for people out of compassion for their needs, whether or not we feel personal affection for them. It is by their active love for one another that Jesus’ disciples are to be recognized.

Verses 31-32

The first part of the summation is connected directly to the previous section by the reminder that Judas had departed the upper room after Jesus had revealed that someone would be betraying him. This transition refocuses the remaining disciples after Judas’ hasty exit.

From there, Jesus continues His foretelling of His coming death. God has and will soon again definitively reveal his glory in Jesus. This glorification Jesus speaks of is not the coming of the end of time and the final victory. The idea of glorification employed here is directly related to the obedience of the Son in the crucifixion and the subsequent resurrection. To see God’s act of glorification through the tragedy of the death of the Messiah and the victorious resurrection is a crucial aspect of the Gospel message. The crucifixion and resurrection reveal the depth of God’s love and grace. No example is more extraordinary or speaks more clearly than what Jesus is about to endure and accomplish.

Through his death, the Son of Man reveals his true glory, and at the same time, his death becomes the means by which God’s glory is revealed. In what will initially seem to be a contradiction, the cross will ultimately be how Jesus is glorified.

Verse 33

If Jesus’ glorification is tied to his imminent death, he must speak directly to one of the chief themes of a farewell discourse: his departure. “Little children” is an affectionate expression occurring only here in John. It was a title of address used by Jewish rabbis for their students. It was a way to connect the leader's heart to the follower.

Jesus told his dear children that the time of his departure was nearing. Jesus would be going to the Father to rejoin him in the glorious fellowship that the Father and Son enjoyed from all eternity. The disciples would not be able to participate in that fellowship just yet.

Verses 34-35

The Old Testament had commanded love. To love was nothing new. What makes Jesus’ commandment new is the new standard and example: “As I have loved you.” In this context, Jesus is saying love goes to the point of laying down one’s life for others. Jewish ethics emphasized learning by imitation, including imitating God’s good character. Disciples were expected to learn by following the examples of their teachers.

Jesus called this a “new command,” although the commandment to love was as old as the Mosaic revelation. He did so because his radical love demanded a new object and a new measure. The object was now “one another.” The Jews had watered down the Mosaic teaching so they could love whom they wanted and hate whom they wanted. But Christ changed the object from “neighbor” to “one another.” This was a radical new commandment. This new commandment to love one another has almost no meaning apart from its contextual presupposition, “I have loved you.” That is the new measure.

Jesus would be gone, and they would be unable to come to him for a while. In the meantime, they were to follow this commandment: Love each other as I have loved you. The newness of Jesus’ command pertains to the new kind of love Christians have for one another because they have each experienced the love of Christ. This was revolutionary, for believers are called to love others based on Jesus’ sacrificial love for them. Jesus was a living example of God’s love, as we are to be living examples of Jesus’ love. This love would be the mark of distinction: “Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”

Jesus places no limit on this demonstration; all will recognize and know it. Unlike other associations, which are based upon common interest or outlook, the church is to be marked by an inclusiveness that echoes the universal appeal of Jesus. It is designated as a community that welcomes all people, irrespective of background, age, gender, color, moral history, social status, influence, intelligence, religious background, or the lack of it. To love like Jesus is to love inclusively, indiscriminately, and universally. When that kind of love flows within a congregation, the world will take note that ‘they have been with Jesus’. Nor need this standard to daunt us. Tertullian reported in the late second century the comment of the pagans in his day: ‘Behold, how these Christians love each other! How ready they are to die for each other!’ Their mutual love was the magnet that drew the pagan multitudes to Christ.

TODAY’S KEY TRUTH

Our Love for Each Other is the Unmistakable Sign of Christ's Work in Us.

APPLICATION

God’s glory is His beautiful, attractive, overwhelming preeminence that leads you to joy and to give away everything you have and everything you are to serve Him because of His infinite worth. Jesus has the audacity to say the greatest manifestation of God's glory would be Him and His work. The Cross was the most shameful, agonizing possible form of death. It had a unique disgrace and humiliation to it. Jesus was stripped naked, hanging up there. His face had been beaten beyond recognition.

Isaiah 53 says He was so marred and beaten that He scarcely looked human. He’s hanging there naked so the mob can jeer at Him between two thieves. It’s the exact opposite of our understanding of glory that we have. It’s the exact opposite of everything we know to be glorified. If there was anybody in this room that suddenly could catch actual sight of Jesus Christ dying on the cross, let me tell you what your most likely overwhelming urge would be to vomit. We would not be lost in thoughts of glorification staring at the cross.

But the cross showed the glory of His wisdom in providing a place whereby He could be a justifier of the ungodly. It showed the glory of His Holiness in requiring the laws demand for justice be satisfied by his great substitution. It showed the glory of His love, His compassion and patience, and His willingness to submit to unknown horrors and unknown agonies as no mind can conceive. With one word, He could have summoned His father’s angels and been set free, and yet he willingly stayed put on the cross.

His love has always been perfectly demonstrated demonstrated on the cross. What could be more beautiful than someone of infinite beauty voluntarily being beaten to a pulp and losing all of His beauty so that He could save us? What is more beautiful than someone willing to lose all of His beauty? For us? Isn’t that real beauty?

And what can be more glorious, powerful, and strong than someone who is strong enough to be weak? Someone who is powerful enough to lose all this power for us? No one can be more glorious than to be willing to lose their glory for us.

Do you know what the cross does? We’re the only religion that actually believes that God became killable, became vulnerable, and became mortal in order to save us. He had to put Himself in a position where He could be crushed. And He looked and said, “I will perish to save them.”

Moses said,’ Love one another.’ Jesus’ words aren’t like the first time anybody told anybody else to love one another. So what’s new about it? Jesus says not ‘love one another’ but’ love one another as I have loved you.’ Untilthis time in the history of the world, nobody’s ever seen love, like what He was about to show them. In other words, He’s saying I want you to have your love for each other fueled by the glory of the cross. You’re going to see a kind of love that no one’s ever seen before. The level of Jesus’ sacrifice, the magnitude of Jesus’ sacrifice, what Jesus gave up, and what Jesus went through are now our models of love. To know that Jesus Christ did what He did, to know the Son of God did all that, no one’s ever seen that before.

So, at one level, Jesus is saying it’s a new command because you’ve got the ability of the power to love one another that no one else has ever had. But Jesus is also saying that the mark of a Christian is if you’re a real Christian, you love one another in the same ways. Jesus is saying, "When I was here on Earth, everyone could see my love. Everyone could see my life. And everyone could say, ‘Wow, this is the Son of God.’ But I’m about to leave, and the only way people are going to know my supernatural reality and beauty is in the quality of love amongst Christian believers.

Later in the very same discourse in chapter 17, Jesus will say, ‘Father, make them one in love so the world will know you sent Me.’ Jesus is saying that the way people will know, the way the world will know that I was really here, the way the world would know that I’m a supernatural reality, is by the quality of the love that you show one another. If you grasp the glory of the cross, the mark of the Christian is you love one another, and only as you love one another will anyone ever see the glory of the cross and the glory of Jesus Christ!

Our Love for Each Other is the Unmistakable Sign of Christ's Work in Us.

CONCLUSION

If the church is the body of Christ on earth, then she must reflect Jesus’ character in her relationships. God's supernatural love for sinners like us is made more credible when unbelievers see it reflected in Christians' love for one another. Dr. Francis Schaeffer rightly described such love as ‘the ultimate apologetic,’ for the Lord himself said, ‘All men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.’

‌As we said last week, we love God by loving others as God has loved us. God loves each of us fully. John says, “If God so loved us, they should love each other.” We love God by outwardly loving others. And again, how does God define love? Sacrifice. We love God when, in our love, we sacrifice for others. That is precisely what Jesus did: He sacrificed himself as the greatest demonstration of love. At the cross, Jesus demonstrated and defined love.

If the world is turning away from Christianity, we should look at ourselves. I’m not saying it’s all the problem there is, and I’m not saying there’s no blame to go elsewhere. But Jesus Christ is essentially saying that if the world is turning away from Christianity, and it is right now, then we need to take a hard look at how we love one another.

This is a completely fractured world. There seems to be no unity anywhere in the world. Nothing astonishes a fractured world more than a community where radical, faithful, genuine love is shared among its members. There are many places you can go to find communities of shared interest. You can go to many places to find people like yourself who live for sports, music, gardening, or politics. But it is the mandate of the church to become a community of love, a circle of Christ’s followers who invest in one another because Christ has invested in them, who exhibit love not based on the mutuality and attractiveness of its members, but on the model of Christ, who washed the feet of everyone including Judas. The church is the only place where loving each other has no prerequisites. Loving each other is to be the same as Christ loved us.

Our Love for Each Other is the Unmistakable Sign of Christ's Work in Us.

Jesus’ love was Selfless. While many today are willing to show compassion toward those who benefit them, Jesus loved all regardless of their condition or ability to return favors. He was often drawn toward those who had nothing to offer, those in desperate need of help, to show us how and who to love.

Jesus’ love was Impartial. Jesus was not prejudice with His love. He showed no partiality toward a particular group while neglecting others. He took time for the poor and needy. He loved the sick and hurting. He ministered to the rich and prominent. He spent time with the educated and unlearned. Jesus loved people, regardless of their status, social standing, race, or political views.

Jesus’ love was Enduring. Jesus was not fickle with love toward others. His love was not influenced or motivated by circumstances. His love endured regardless of the actions of others. There were times when His love was rejected, and He continued to love. There were times when those He loved turned on Him, even denying Him, and yet He loved them anyway! Jesus knew what Judas would do as he washed his feet.

Jesus’ love was Sacrificial. It is impossible to think of Jesus’ love and not consider the sacrificial nature of His love. He often sacrificed His time when dealing with large crowds. He made a great sacrifice in being separated from the Father as He dwelt here on earth. His greatest sacrifice was clearly His offering of Himself on the cross for our sins. He loved us enough to take our place, bearing our sins and suffering the righteous judgment of God.

Our Love for Each Other is the Unmistakable Sign of Christ's Work in Us.

Love is fundamental to the Christian Church. Christ gave it only this one commandment. This is not a ‘thou shalt not’ but a ‘thou shalt.’ Thou Shalt love each other as I loved you. Jesus expects Christians to live a life of Christian love. We will never be able to relax in achieving a full measure of love, for the love we are required to show is the same depth of love demonstrated by Jesus Christ.

When someone new enters this building, they shouldn’t feel like a stranger. They should feel loved. When someone who left the church shows up, they shouldn’t feel excluded; they should feel loved. When someone who wronged you walks through these doors, they should feel loved. When we walk in here, we should feel loved. The defining characteristic of this church, and all churches, should be love. Why? Because Christ loved us. Because Christ didn’t hold anything against us. Because Jesus loved us selflessly, impartially, enduringly, and sacrificially. That’s why we love and how we love each other. Loving each is about loving everyone in this place as Jesus loved us.

Our Love for Each Other is the Unmistakable Sign of Christ's Work in Us.