Loving One Another
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
Stuart Scott in his book 31 ways to be a one another Christian introduces the subject with a significant point.
Scott says
People, created in the image of God, are made for relationships. Although the term” relationship” does not appear as a word in most modern translations of the Bible, the concept is found in all the books of the Bible. The term “one another” is repeated numerous times in the New Testament - and always in a way that demonstrates how one believer is to relate to another believer.
Because sin entered the world, the way people relate to one another is often disrupted. The breakdown of relationships is apparent in the home, in the church, and i society all around.
The good news is that the Bible has a lot to say about how to build God-honoring relationships with one another. It all starts with God, and your love for him - something that begins when you come to repentance and faith.
I want to start this morning with the one another that all of the others are based upon.
Love one another.
This command flows out of Jesus summary of the the ten commandments.
When a Pharisee asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was, Jesus responded
37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
When you look at the ten commandments they can be broken into those two categories - our relationship with God, and our relationship with one another.
It is not traditions or morality that are to make us look different than the world around us.
It is the relationships we form because of the beliefs we hold.
On the night He was betrayed, when His disciples were anxious and confused, He said something that still cuts straight to the heart of what it means to follow Him:
34 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. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
That is our focus today — the defining mark of a true disciple of Jesus Christ.
Our love for one another.
This Jesus gives this statement in the context of what is known as the upper room discourse.
This time began first with Jesus doing something completely unheard of for a rabbi/teacher.
He washed His disciples feat.
An act of service, and an act of love.
The measure of Christ’s love for us becomes the model of our love for one another.
Jesus says, the world will know we belong to Him by our love.
After washing His disciples’ feet, Jesus began to speak words that would prepare them for His departure.
Judas had just left the room to betray Him (John 13:30). The atmosphere was heavy.
Jesus knew His time with them was short.
Verse 33 — “Little children, yet a little while I am with you.”
Calling his disciples “little children” (Greek teknia), a term used nowhere else in the Gospels but often later in John’s letters (1 John 2:1, 12, 28; 3:7).
Jesus was expressing tender affection.
He is not speaking to them as a distant master, but as a loving father would to his children.
Jesus is preparing them for His absence: “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.’”
This statement would have pierced their hearts.
For three years, they had followed Him everywhere — through storms, crowds, and conflict.
Now He says they cannot come.
But His leaving is not abandonment; it is redemptive.
His going is the very means by which they, and we, are brought near to God.
The truth that we must always remember is that our love for one another begins with being loved by Christ.
Before Jesus ever commands, He communes;
before He sends, He saves.
The “little children” cannot love until they have first been loved.
You cannot pour out what you have not received.
Jesus’ tender address reminds us: love is born out of belonging.
Part of the reason that believers struggle to love others — especially within the church — is often because they have forgotten or failed to rest in the love Christ already has for them.
The other dimension that I would argue causes believers to struggle to love one another is the same reason that all people struggle.
Selfishness.
Jesus addresses this with his statement in verse 34.
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.”
This is the heart of the passage — “a new commandment.”
The word new, does not mean “new in time,” as though love had never been commanded before —
Leviticus 19:18 commanded love for neighbor long before Jesus spoke these words.
18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.
New here is referring to “new in quality” or “new in kind.”
This love is new because of how it is defined and measured.
That new point of measurement will be the cross.
Jesus says “Just as I have loved you.”
How had Jesus loved them?
So far Jesus had been the example of selfless love.
He had just selflessly stooped to wash their feet.
He did this on the way to loving them them sacrificially — soon to give His life for them.
The standard for our love is not cultural niceness or personality compatibility; it is the self-giving love of Christ.
The “newness” of this commandment lies in its Christ-centered reference point.
Jesus replaces self-love as the measure (“as yourself”) with His love as the measure (“as I have loved you”).
This transforms Christian relationships from being mutual agreements of convenience to gospel-shaped acts of grace.
The verb agapate (the deepest form of love in greek) appears twice — first as an imperative, then as a model.
It is present active, implying continuous action: keep on loving one another.
This love is not a one-time emotion; it is a habitual pattern of life.
Love is not primarily a feeling but a choice — an ongoing act of obedience.
It looks like giving when others take, serving when others ignore, forgiving when others wound.
The church flourishes when believers stop waiting to feel love and start walking in love.
Which to be the example for the world to see -
Verse 35 — “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
This statement was to define the disciples witness and in turn the witness of the church.
Jesus does not say, “They will know you are my disciples by your theology, your worship style, or your political opinions.”
He says, “By your love.”
The distinguishing mark of the Christian community is not its perfection, but its persistent love.
The phrase “all people” (Greek pantes) indicates the watching world — outsiders observing the family of God.
When they see believers forgiving, serving, and caring for one another despite differences, they see something supernatural —
something that cannot be explained apart from Christ.
This love reveals the reality of the new covenant community — a people formed not by ethnicity, social status, or preference, but by the self-giving love of Jesus.
The love of Christ in His church is both the evidence and the extension of His redeeming work in the world.
The world is starving for authentic relationships.
When they see the church loving across lines of age, background, and personality — they catch a glimpse of heaven’s culture breaking into earth.
Every act of love between believers is a sermon to the world that Jesus is alive.
Jesus’ words leave no room for passive Christianity.
Love is not the advanced class of discipleship; it is Discipleship 101.
Everything else — forgiveness, encouragement, service — flows from this first “one another.”
Before we move to practical expressions of this love, let me remind you:
The kind of love Jesus commands cannot be produced by mere effort.
It is the fruit of His Spirit living within us.
The Spirit not only reveals Christ’s love to us, He reproduces it through us.
John clearly understood this, we know this because of what he writes in his first epistle.
The Model of Love — Christ’s Sacrifice for Us (1 John 3:16)
The Model of Love — Christ’s Sacrifice for Us (1 John 3:16)
16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
When John writes these words, he is echoing the same truth that had burned in his heart ever since that night in the upper room.
He had seen love—not as an idea, but as a Man—kneeling to wash his feet, and later hanging on a cross.
A. Love Defined by the Cross
John does not say, “By this we feel love,” but “By this we know love.”
The verb know here means to know by experience—to have grasped something that changes you forever.
That is what Christ love does.
John is telling us that love is not defined by emotion but by revelation.
The cross is not one example among many; it is the definition of love itself—
self-giving for another’s good.
Every worldview defines love differently—some as attraction, others as tolerance, or sentiment.
Scripture defines it as sacrifice.
Love gives, even when it gets nothing in return.
Love chooses the good of another even when it comes at great personal cost.
When the Son of God laid down His life, He forever redefined what love means.
Love is not passive warmth—it is costly action for the undeserving.
The more deeply we grasp what Christ gave for us, the more freely we will give for others.
The believer who has truly seen the cross cannot love cheaply.
B. The Substitutionary Example
“He laid down His life for us” — hyper hēmōn — literally, “on behalf of us.”
Jesus did not simply die as a martyr to inspire; He died as a Savior to redeem.
His love bore our guilt, absorbed our punishment, and satisfied divine justice.
At the cross, God’s love and holiness met perfectly.
That kind of love—vicarious, self-giving, redemptive—is the pattern for how we are to love one another.
This means love is not merely doing good when convenient; it is absorbing the cost for another’s gain.
Parents who stay up through the night with a sick child,
a believer who forgives a wrong without repayment,
a servant who bears another’s burden quietly—
all of these mirror the love Jesus showed us on cross.
“The cross is not only the proof of God’s love for us, but the pattern of our love for others.”
C. The Christian Obligation
John says, “We ought (opheilomen) to lay down our lives for the brothers.”
The word for ought is a lot stronger than our English translation gives.
It means we owe it—it is a moral debt, a binding obligation.
We do not love others to earn God’s favor;
we love because we owe a debt of gratitude to the One who first loved us.
Not every Christian will die for others, but every Christian is called to live for others.
To “lay down your life” may look like laying down your preferences, comfort, time, or resources for the sake of a brother or sister in need.
The church is not a gathering of consumers but a fellowship of givers.
Each believer’s life is meant to be poured out as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1).
This means love will sometimes look like inconvenience.
It will interrupt your schedule, stretch your patience, and challenge your pride.
But this is the life Christ modeled.
John shows how this principle is put into practice in the verses that follow.
The Practice of Love — From Talk to Action (1 John 3:17–18)
The Practice of Love — From Talk to Action (1 John 3:17–18)
17 But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
John now moves from principle to practice.
Love that remains theoretical is not love at all.
A. The Test of Genuine Love
He begins with a simple scenario:
A believer “has the world’s goods” (literally, the means of life),
sees a brother in need, and yet “closes his heart” .
The phrase closes his heart refers to the inward parts, the seat of compassion.
To “close” them is to shut off the flow of mercy—to see need and turn away.
John asks pointedly: “How does God’s love abide in him?”
The implied answer is: it does not.
True love cannot coexist with indifference.
God’s love is active by nature; it moves toward need.
Whenever compassion stops at awareness, it has fallen short of Christlike love.
In the church, this means love is tested not by how we feel during worship,
but by how we respond when someone is hurting, lonely, or in need.
The presence of need is God’s invitation to display His love.
B. Love that Takes Form
John concludes: “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”
This does not mean words are worthless—
encouragement matters—
but words without deeds ring hollow.
Love “in deed and truth” describes genuine, practical, and consistent care.
Love acts, not for show, but in sincerity.
A fire cannot be real without heat.
Likewise, faith cannot be real without love expressed.
If there is no warmth, there is no flame.
If love is not expressed, I would question the genuineness of the faith.
Love takes form when we:
Give generously when others are in need.
Offer hospitality to those who are lonely.
Speak encouragement to those who are weary.
Forgive those who have wounded us.
In each act, Christ’s love is made visible through us.
Just as the Word became flesh in Christ, so love must take on flesh in the lives of believers.
The incarnation was love embodied; Christian love must be the same.
“Love is not a feeling we fall into; it is a choice we live out.”
Our world does not need louder Christians; it needs loving Christians—
people whose faith is visible in hands that serve, hearts that forgive, and lives that give.
When Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are My disciples,”
He was not describing an optional virtue; He was defining our witness.
John’s letters show that decades later, this command still burned in his heart because it is the lifeblood of Christian community.
Love for one another is not only our duty; it is our identity.
It is the echo of Calvary, resounding through the family of God.
Love is not what mature Christians eventually learn to do;
it is what marks every true disciple from the very beginning.
Our love for one another is both the evidence of our salvation and the expression of Christ’s presence among us.
It is the visible proof that the gospel has taken root in our hearts.
When the church loves well, the world gets a glimpse of Jesus Himself.
John tells us that love begins with knowing Christ’s love for us —
“By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us.”
The cross is where we see love defined, displayed, and demanded.
Christ’s self-giving love becomes our daily pattern.
If He could stoop to wash feet, then we can bend to serve one another.
If He could give His life, then we can give our time, our resources, and our hearts for the good of others.
So the question for us is not whether we know the command, but whether we are living it.
Do I love others in a way that reflects Christ’s love for me?
Have I closed my heart to a brother or sister in need?
Is there someone in the body I need to forgive, encourage, or serve?
This week, let your love take form:
Write a note of encouragement to someone who is struggling.
Offer to pray with someone after the service.
Meet a tangible need you see — no matter how small.
And above all, ask the Lord to make His love visible through you.
When we love one another this way —
not just in words, but in deeds and truth —
our fellowship becomes a living testimony.
The world will not be drawn to our programs or our buildings, but to the unmistakable reality of Christ’s love at work among His people.
“The love that sent Jesus to the cross is the same love that sends us into one another’s lives.”
