John 13:31-38 - A New Command

Invocation

Let us give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever! Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man! For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end, and Amen.

Confession of sin

1 John 2:7–11 ESV

Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

The defining characteristic of Christians is love. Meaning, you should be able to point a Christian out from the crowd based solely on how they treat others, and in particular, how they treat one another. But while this should be true, it often is not. A cursory reading through the New Testament will dispel any notion that this is easy, and that the church didn’t struggle mightily to live into this reality. The simple truth is the ideal of love that Christ set for us by going to the cross, and dying for your sins, is the highest ideal of love. One nearly unattainable. For as we will see as we come to our sermon text this morning, Jesus calls us to love one another by laying down our loves for each other, just as he has done for us. As we consider the nature of this kind of love, and compare it to the lack-luster performance of love in our lives, we cannot but confess our great need of forgiveness, and the Holy Spirit to come and produce in us the greatest of His fruits—this kind of love. So as we come this morning to confess our sins together, consider all the ways that you have failed to walk in the light by hating your brother. Remember, even anger directed towards a brother, Jesus condemns as as good as if you had murdered that person. And lest you use subtle to evade Christ’s command, he calls you to love even your enemies and those who persecute you. While we will fall short of the love Christ calls us to, let us not fall short of owning that we do. Let us now confess silently our lack of love?

New Testament Lesson

1 Corinthians 13 ESV

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Pastoral Prayer

(John Calvin) Grant, Almighty God, that as you constantly remind us in your word, and have taught us by so many examples, that there is nothing permanent in this world, but that the things which seem the firmest tend to ruin, and instantly fall and of themselves vanish away, when by your breath you shake your strength in which men trust—O grant that we, being really subdued and humbled, may not rely on earthly things, but raise up our hearts and our thoughts to heaven, and there fix the anchor of our hope; and may all our thoughts abide there until at length, when you have led us through our course on earth, we shall be gathered into that celestial kingdom which has been obtained for us by the blood of your only begotten Son. Until then, teach us to rest and trust in you.

To see your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Families of Hope

Missions of Hope

Dave & Ruth Green

Michael & Natasha Goodlin

Anees Zaka

Nation (president, etc.)

For our daily bread.

For forgiveness of sins

For deliverance from our enemies, the World, the flesh, and the devil.

Including deliverance from sickness:

Dan Rogers, Mom Betty (pneumonia)

Those who have lost loved ones

Edna Kozak’s brother Philip

Jimmy Harris and family, his mother Becky Murley died.

Receive the Word.

Offering

Let’s pray.

A New Command

John 13:31-38

Intro

Sometimes the hardest things to do are actually the easiest to describe. We tend, because of sin, to make things complicated. What was once so simple now, because of sin, becomes the greatest challenge you will ever face. Jesus gives His disciples a new command. It only takes him one sentence to describe it. He says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another” (Jn 13:34). What’s so new about love? It seems like Jesus is setting them up for some radical new thing, but then he tells them to love one another. But God had told His people that long ago in the law saying, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD (Lev. 19:18). To understand the newness of this command, we need to look at the surrounding discussion, set as it is in Jesus’ prediction of Peter’s denial for us to understand the nature of this love, and exactly what Jesus is calling us to. To do that, I am going to ask a series of interrogative questions: how, where, what, & why, as we walk through this brief text together.

How is Jesus glorified?

Now that Judas (and Satan) had been dismissed, the tone becomes decidedly intimate as Jesus spends the next few chapters preparing His disciples for the task ahead. In some ways, this is an introduction to His Farewell discourse, and as such, surfaces some of the themes that will repeat throughout. But which are also not new in terms of the John’s gospel thus far. Jesus has spoken of His glory, and being glorified already, and he will do so more in the chapters ahead, especially Ch. 17.

But now the hour for Jesus to be glorified has arrived. He teaches His disciples that the Son of man is glorified. That favored appellation of Jesus’ in the Old Testament refers to glory, in the other gospels to humiliation, but in John’s gospel both glory and humiliation are brought dramatically together. Jesus is glorified in His suffering unto death. He is exalted by the laying down of His life as the Son of man. And God is glorified in the sent Son and the completion of His mission, namely His “obedience, sacrifice, death, resurrection and exaltation—one event.” Jesus more clearly unpacks what he means in 17:4-5.

John 17:4–5 (ESV) — 4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

The Son glorified the Father by completing His work; in reciprocal nature, the Father glorified the Son by accepting His work and receiving him back in heaven.

Where is Jesus going?

Which helps us answer the next question: where is Jesus going? Jesus addresses His disciples as a Father would address his children at the Passover meal, little children. Not at all meant to be belittling. It was a term of endearment, one of intimacy. He then unpacks what he had told publicly to the Jews, He is going somewhere that they cannot come. The time is short now, for he is about to depart. It would seem, on a journey, so he gives instructions to those left behind. But where is he going?

Although he does not make it explicit, we who have the completed canon, and have read the rest of the gospel know that very very shortly Jesus will go to the cross, suffer and die, and then be buried, where for three days he would continue under the power of death, and after being raised from the dead would show himself too many before he ascended back to heaven. So, while it was true that they could not come with him to death, it is much more so that they cannot come with Jesus when he ascends to heaven.

The Ascension is a much neglected doctrine. But without it the story of the gospel is incomplete. Jesus had come from God and was going back to him (Jn. 13:3). He must complete his journey, for he had to go to the far-country to bind the strong man and plunder his house, and then return home the conquering hero. But in reality, the work of plundering the house of the strongman was one he would accomplish from heaven through his church. So that in his session at the right hand of His father on high, he would build His church as prophet, intercede for them as priest, and rule over them as king of kings. And although absent in body, he would make himself present with His people by His Spirit, which he would send to help them in their mission. In subsequent chapters Jesus will explain more about the sending of His Spirit, the Paraclete, who would be their comforter, their advocate, and who would lead and guide them into the truth, convicting them of sin, and producing works consistent with new creation life in the kingdom of God.

You may ask at this point Jesus, where is this all going? Why did you begin talking about glory and then your ascension? He did that to set the stage for giving them a new command.

What is new about loving?

But What is new about loving one another? Hasn’t God called his people already to love one another? Certainly he has. But the shape of that love has changed. How? Well, notice in the ESV the semicolon: Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. The new command to love is a new standard and a new order. As one theologian put it:

The new command is simple enough for a toddler to memorize and appreciate, profound enough that the most mature believers are repeatedly embarrassed at how poorly they comprehend it and put it into practice…The more we recognize the depth of our own sin, the more we recognize the love of the Saviour; the more we appreciate the love of the Saviour, the higher his standard appears; the higher his standard appears, the more we recognize in our selfishness, our innate self-centredness, the depth of our own sin. With a standard like this, no thoughtful believer can ever say, this side of the parousia [glory], ‘I am perfectly keeping the basic stipulation of the new covenant.’ (Carson, Pillar NT Com. John, 484).

So the newness of this command is the new standard, which Jesus taught and modeled. He taught them by just having washed their feet, and he modeled it by laying down his life for them in death. Love is one of those things that seems perpetually susceptible to mission creep. As always with the law, there is the letter of the law and its spirit. There is the floor and the ceiling.

I’ve used this example before, but the floor of keeping the seventh commandment is not to commit adultery. But just keeping that law does not make you a good husband. You could be an absolute tyrant and treat your wife like an object. Meanwhile, you never commit adultery. Technically, you have kept the seventh commandment. But God’s intention for that law was much higher than that. The ceiling of the seventh commandment is the example of Christ, who loved his bride, the church, by dying for her on the cross. Husbands, you are called to imitate that love by laying down your life for your bride, just as he did. It’s really tough to be a tyrant when you’re dying for your wife.

So keeping the law by doing good and right by your neighbor is likewise the floor, the ceiling is laying down your life for them. It isn’t just the jews who do jujitsu to get out of keeping the law, by circumscribing it. Remember, the context for the parable of the good Samaritan was some smart alec who asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus asked the man what the law taught. He said, love God and love your neighbor. To which Jesus replied, you’re right, do that and you’ll be fine. But surely God didn’t mean to love everyone, so smarting he asks, yeah but who is my neighbor? (Lk. 17:25-37). We are terribly good at studying excuses for not loving our neighbor. The easiest, of course, is to say that person over there is not my neighbor and therefore I have no obligation to love them. Often this is done along class or racial lines. But Jesus says, your neighbor is anyone who crosses your path. A liberal is one who loves the neighbor he has never come in contact with. His heart bleeds for that poor minority that he has never encountered in real life. Partly this is the problem with our global economy and the news cycle. Without the internet it’s doubtful the plight of those in Ukraine would be so widely known. Now I am not suggesting we don’t love people we never meet, but we certainly ought not to love them more or above those who are needy and hurting right here in our own city.

Not only is there a new standard for love, which although it is brought to its fullest expression in Christ, was always implicit in the law, but there is also a new order. “The new command [to love one another as Christ] is the new rule of life for the new age, the kingdom of God.” (Beasley-Murray, WBC: John, 247). We see then that the new command goes beyond the old order calling us not to love someone as you would love yourself, but to lay down your life for them.

Matthew 5:43–48 (ESV) — 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

The standard of love is so high that we often find it unreasonable. How could anyone do that? So while you must strive to follow Jesus, the truth is you can’t.

Why can’t they follow Jesus where he is going?

Peter, as I’m sure others were thinking but too timid to mention, seems to side-step the new command to love, moving directly to Jesus concerning the statement that he is going somewhere they cannot come. Where this could be, we have already discussed, but it was certainly not clear to the disciples. But Jesus makes His statement temporal saying, now he could not follow him, but afterward he would. As the context will make clearer in Ch. 14, this is a place he is going to prepare for them in His Father’s house (Jn. 14:2). Since Jesus is preparing to go back to his Father (Jn. 13:2), here he is telling Peter that now is not the time for Peter to go with Jesus to heaven.

Partly this is because, despite Peter’s confession that he is ready to lay down his life for Jesus, the truth is he is not. Peter is not quite ready for heaven since he has not yet learned how hard this laying down of his life will be. Peter must walk through the terrible ordeal of denying Jesus and doing so at His greatest hour of need. When we get to the account of Peter’s denial we will consider in greater detail what could have been his motives for doing so, for now I want you to see that it was necessary for Peter to learn how difficult it is to put this kind of love Jesus now commands into practice.

Since this love takes a kind of dying, one that Peter is not yet prepared to give, Jesus shows him that he is not now ready to go where He is going. For the path to glory for Jesus, the path to return to His father is a path that leads first down into the grave. Jesus must first, give himself for the sins of His people, for Peter to begin to understand the great cost of this new standard of love. Only after absorbing this through a life of self-denial would Peter be ready for heaven; only when Peter held his own life loosely would he be able to lay down his life for Jesus. And he did, considering himself unworthy to die as his Lord had done, he insisted on being crucified upside down.

But why would Jesus give a command that is nearly impossible for us to follow, why does it take most of us a lifetime to figure this out? The reformed have rightly seen that there are three uses for the law. The first is to restrain evil, keeping us from making a hell of earth. The third use is a rule of life, showing us what is pleasing to God by giving us a guide. But it is the second use that is important in this context. In that, the law is given to show us our inability to keep it to drive us to Christ, to find refuge in His perfect righteousness. Here specifically that he has first loved us.

You see, Peter needed to become as John had when he wrote this gospel (most likely after Peter had already been martyred), which is one who knows himself only as one whom Jesus loves. Until Peter has learned to come to terms with just how hard it would really be to lay down his own life, even for Jesus, the new command of Jesus would seem to him something easier and less demanding than it really was. Peter needed to see that it was hard by denying Jesus, but also he needed to see that through it all, Jesus still loved him. That he loved him all the way to the cross, through the wrath of God, into the grave and out again on Sunday.

Peter may be preoccupied with the notion that he can’t follow Jesus, but Jesus is preoccupied with the notion that Peter has missed the new command to love. Time would remedy this, for not until Jesus goes to the cross, and is raised from the dead would the standard of love Jesus calls them to sink in. They needed to see it in action, and for Peter, he needed to see it in action, but set in the context of his on inability to love like Jesus. To conclude, I want to draw out three implications from this new command. Love because you have been loved; Love because you have been loved so others will see and believe; and keep on loving as you’ve been loved, even when you fail that nearly impossible standard.

Application

First, you love because you have been loved. Unless or until you know this, you cannot follow Christ in this kind of self-giving love. I am serious here. Until you have come to terms with the fact that Jesus loves you, there is no way you will be able even to begin to follow Christ in His new command to love.

Partly this is because there will always be something mercenary about your love. You will always love out of self-interest. To often, worldly love is essentially just quid pro quo. It loves only for what it can get out of it. Even the best worldly love struggles to be disinterested. Which is why love must be grounded in and motivated by God’s love for you. The apostle John fleshs this out in his first epistle.

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another…There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 Jn. 4:10-11, 19-21).

Remember I God does not love you because you are attractive, God’s love makes you attractive (Luther). His love is unconditional, and the reasons for it resting on you, in a special way, are grounded in the inscrutable will of God. So there is nothing in you that you can pint to and say, see, this is why God loves me. Rather, you take it on faith, because the bible tells you so.

For some of you this is perhaps too easy. You think, "Yeah, I believe God loves me—I mean, what's not to love? I'm a pretty good catch for God's kingdom; He should be glad He found me." Many self-deluded people have assured themselves that God loves them. But the evidence will be seen by all through whether or not you love others as Christ did. If you do not love your brother whom you see, how can you love God whom you don't? John warns. So the mark of someone who loves God is shown in their horizontal relationships—do they love others?

You can claim Jesus loves you, that you love Him, that you're following Him, that He has saved you from sin, and that you know without doubt you're going to heaven. But if your wake is filled with broken relationships, if people avoid you because you're difficult to get along with, if they say, "Oh her? Yeah, she's just mean like that, always got it out with someone," or "Him? Well, he's a curmudgeon, just doesn't like people and has no bedside manner," then, friend, I must warn you sincerely: you may have falsely assured yourself. You may think you love God and He loves you, but if you can't point to real, tangible love in your life and relationships, I seriously doubt that you love God.

You must repent and plead with the Lord to soften your hard heart and break open its stony ground. Ask Him to help you see your sin and what pain you have caused the people God has called you to love. Perhaps He will allow you to see yourself as others do, and that glimpse of reality will lead you to genuine repentance.

Others of you struggle to believe that God loves you. You think, "I don't love myself, and all I see is my sin—that must be all God sees too. And if that's all He sees, there's no way He loves me." For you, assurance doesn't come easily, if at all. You fight just to take hold of the gospel—not to believe it's true, but to believe it's true for you. While you may not have the same relational wreckage as the self-assured person, you still cannot love as Jesus calls you to love. You might try to love others to earn Jesus's love, but people will always see through that. Or you might create relational wreckage by avoiding people altogether, not wanting to be a burden, held back by low self-esteem. You may be alone with all your doubts.

For you, repentance isn't about seeing your sin more clearly—it's about getting a healthy dose of the cross. You must lift your eyes from yourself and fix them on Jesus. You need to understand, deep in your bones, that your salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Your sin doesn't prevent Christ from loving you. In fact, it's what draws His love to you. Your sin is the very thing that qualifies you to receive God's love, poured out in the death of Jesus Christ. Faith recognizes that sin isn't the stumbling block keeping you from enjoying Christ's love—pride is, specifically pride in the form of self-pity. That's what keeps you from experiencing Christ's love. Remember, being assured of Christ's love doesn't make it so. Christ loves you whether or not you have assurance, but your experience of Christ changes. And when someone struggles with assurance, they will inevitably struggle to love others the way Christ calls us to.

Secondly, loving others as Christ has loved us serves as evidence that you are His disciples. I will be briefer here, as I have already alluded to this. The proof that you are Jesus' disciple lies in your love for others. So, do you love others? When was the last time you asked yourself this question? If you're uncertain, examine what kind of love you have for others. Is it merely selfishness disguised as love? Is it narcissistic love, centered on yourself?

Husbands, be especially watchful of this. Your love for your wife may be only thinly disguised self-love if you love her only to receive something in return—whether it's intimacy, meals, or a clean house. Sacrificial love, in contrast, is selfless love, motivated not by potential rewards but by genuine care for the one you love.

But husbands aren't alone in struggling with narcissistic love—mothers face this challenge too. Do you love your children as Christ loves you, or does your love come with hidden conditions? Is your love truly about them, or is it about what they can do for you, justified by the fact that you brought them into this world? Many mothers have found themselves mysteriously estranged from their adult children because their "love" was controlling and manipulative. The children eventually learned it wasn't worth being around someone they had to tiptoe around, constantly trying not to trigger an emotional response.

The world will know us by their love, and sadly, they don’t. More often than not, the world points to a clear lack of love as a reason they don’t want to be a Christian. And it is true we sure could work on modeling this Christ-like love to the world. But on the other hand, I don’t think that assessment is fair. People take for granted how much of western society would not be here if it weren’t for Christianity and the ethics of Christendom. Some able authors have traced this theme out, such as Tom Holland in his book Dominion. Much of what the west holds dear can be traced not to pagan roots, or even to the enlightenment, but the Christian faith and the teachings of Christ. Still could we improve our witness, sure? And the way to do it is not to double down on apologetic methods, or line up better arguments for the plausibility of Christianity, but just to love as Jesus loved. More often than not, we want to virtue signal our Christianity online by putting some sticker on our avatar, supporting the latest right-wing political issue. That way they’ll know I’m for God and country. How is that different from the Pharisees and phylacteries, or all the outward show when they practiced their religion? Instead, get off Facebook, and go introduce yourself to your neighbor. Yes, even the one who still has the Harris/Walz campaign sign in their yard. Build a relationship with them, which is rather hard to do if you just write him off as a damn liberal.

Lastly, the sober fact is—love is hard. It’s really hard. In fact, as Jesus articulates this new command to love as he loved you, its nearly impossible to do. I say nearly. To steal the quote from Chesterton: The problem with this love is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult and left untried. We will do this badly, which is why we need humility and the grace of repentance to fall down and get back up and try again. Start with your neighbor, by that I mean the one you are in the closest proximity to, and then work out from there. Start here in the church and then move out into the world. I mean, if you’re looking for difficult people to love, we’ve got plenty here at Hope church, don’t we. So practice love using a new standard, the dying-for-you pattern Jesus set. Don’t be discouraged if at first you don’t succeed, or your efforts are rebuffed. Love anyway. If it feels easy, you’re probably not doing it right. If it feels like dying, then that’s just about where the Lord wants you to be, only not in the dread of death, but in the glad acceptance that they are worth dying for. So let us love one another, just as Christ has loved us, amen.

Lord’s Supper Meditation

The beauty of the Lord’s Supper is that it keeps in front of us, as often as we meet, the love of Jesus. Without seeing that constantly we are prone to forget, but much more than that, to change subtly our definition of love. Here in very visceral ways the love of Christ is displayed in bread and wine which show forth the death of Christ, the greatest act of love the world has ever seen. But it not only shows forth his death, it also solidifies our union with Him in it, and therefore our union with one another. So look around you this morning, these are those whom Christ loves, and he has called you to do the same. It wasn’t easy for Him to die for them, and it won’t be easy for you to lay down your life as He did for them. But this meal reminds you that in Him all of us have been brought together in one family, and Christ calls you to put in practice His new command first here, in the household of faith. When we, a colony of heaven begin to live like that is true, that will be the greatest testimony of our devotion to Christ. You say to yourself (hopefully) how can I better follow Christ, well lift up your head and look around: love those Jesus has loved by laying down His life for them. He loved them to the end, so should you. So while we eat to remind ourselves of the love of Christ, we also remind ourselves that Just as Jesus has loved you, you also are to love one another. If however, you are here, and you don’t believe that Jesus has loved you, and you certainly don’t love these people around you, then this meal is not for you—it’s a family meal, not those by blood, but those by water and the Spirit, those adopted into the family of Jesus, with God as their father. If that is you, come and see and savor the love of Christ. May it sanctify your love for one another.

Charge

Just as Jesus has loved you, you also are to love one another.

Benediction