John 13 31-35 CPR
“Love . . . As I Have Loved You”
Theme of the Day: Love One Another
Goal: That the hearers receive the love of Christ and are shaped by it.
Rev. David C. Fleming, pastor, Our Savior Lutheran Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Liturgical Setting
The Good Shepherd has risen from the dead, and his sheep hear his voice and follow him. He has shown his glory in self-sacrificing love and calls us to the same.
The Introit for this Fifth Sunday of Easter begins to move the focus toward Christ’s ascension, the end of his post-resurrection appearances: “In a little while you will see me no more” (Jn 16:16). While in its original context this referred to Jesus’ death, the similar reference in the Gospel (Jn 13:33) looks also beyond the ascension to the age of the New Testament church. The Collect prays that we would “love what you command,” which surely includes Jesus’ “new command” in the Gospel to “love . . . as I have loved you.”
While not a liturgical matter per se, it should be noted that Easter 5 this year falls on Mother’s Day.
Textual Notes
V 31: Jesus speaks to his apostles on the night of his betrayal. Judas is the one who has just gone out from the Upper Room.
Vv 31–32: ejdoxavsqh, “glorified.” Frequently Jesus connects his glory and that of the Father to his suffering (Jn 7:39; 12:23–28; 17:1).
Vv 34–35: Both noun and verbal occurrences of “love” in this passage are consistently forms of ajgavph. This, of course, is that love that is always self-sacrificing and thus, in the ultimate sense, always rooted in God’s love for us (1 Jn 4:19).
Sermon Outline
Introduction: The world is in a crisis of love.
Only in Christ’s Self-Sacrificing Love for Us Can We Love One Another.
I. Jesus calls us to love one another “as I have loved you.”
II. On our own, we naturally live for ourselves rather than loving one another.
III. Jesus rescues us with his glory—his sacrifice of love to forgive and restore us.
IV. Restored and renewed by Christ’s love, we are able to love.
Conclusion: In Christ’s self-sacrificing love for us we can indeed love one another.
Sermon
Introduction: Our world is in a crisis of love. For each of us, our mother was the first person to carry us, feed us, and protect us—while we were not yet born—but today some children have to be protected from their mothers. Parents and children do not display the kindness, care, and closeness that God designed and desired for us. Divorce is commonplace. The answer to this crisis is not getting together and promising to be better. Nor is it in giving up. The answer is in Jesus Christ, whose glory is his self-sacrificing love for us. Love can come from us only when we receive his love: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5). Jesus’ love alone teaches us, calls us, and enables us to love.
Only in Christ’s Self-Sacrificing Love for Us Can We Love One Another.
I
The setting is Maundy Thursday night, the Upper Room in Jerusalem. Jesus has washed the disciples’ feet, identified the one who will within hours betray him, and instituted the Lord’s Supper. And as a kind of last word, Jesus speaks: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (v 34). This is the new command to which Jesus calls us. Of course, the Lord taught in the Old Testament, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18). So in one sense this command is not new. But it is new here because Jesus changes the wording. He’s changed the basis for love. He has fulfilled love. He has made it deeper, broader, fuller. No longer is it “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It is “Love one another as I have loved you.” With these words, “Love . . . as I have loved you,” Jesus has given each of us an important, lifelong, critical task: to love one another with all the glory of total self-sacrifice. He has given us the full power to serve this way when we receive his love for us—the love of the true God that fastens him to a tree, breaks every grave, and opens heaven for you, me, and every single rebellious sinner!
II
Of course, Satan is calling us too. When God calls us to repentance, forgiveness, and love, when God summons us to deny ourselves and to spend our lives strenuously in self-giving love, Satan sings another song. He calls us to consider the good things of life, to take it easy, to take care of ourselves. “I know what I want out of my marriage, and if my wife wants something else, I can play hurt until she gives in.” “I have my schedule and my social engagements, and if that leaves me too pooped or too hassled for ‘mom time,’ well, the kids will just have to accept it.” “Mom and Dad like me best, and I’ve got plenty of dirt on my brother to keep it that way.”
Satan is luring us back to where we were before God’s searching love found us. He is seeking to make us old Adams and Eves once again. He wants us turned in on ourselves, not thinking of God’s good will, but only our desires. We have fallen. We’ve forgotten God’s relentless love for us. Then we start choosing whom we’ll love and whom we won’t, who deserves our help and who doesn’t. We decide not by considering whom God has called us to serve and who is in need of our love, but by who can do the most for us. We get frustrated with this approach because it seems we never get enough back from others. So we become stingy, dried-up, curled-in, and self-centered. We wonder why life seems so boring, so meaningless, so exhausting. We imagine God is far away.
III
To rescue us, to bring us back, our Lord Jesus, on the night of his betrayal and arrest, lingers with his 11 apostles. After the institution of the Supper he talks with them further. Jesus beautifully demonstrates the remarkable will and love of God. As Judas leaves to betray him, Jesus says: “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him” (v 31).
Now? The Son of Man is glorified now? Judas’s betrayal is Jesus’ glory and the Father’s glory. This betrayal and its resulting suffering and death is the glory of all God’s planning since the fall. In Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, suffering, crucifixion, and death, the Lord God is fulfilling all that he promised. Jesus’ passion is the sacrifice to fulfill, complete, and replace all the endless sacrifices of animals slaughtered at the altar of God. Jesus’ passion is the fulfillment of all that God had promised through the prophets. He’s the one to bear our iniquity, the one to crush Satan for us, the one to set the captives free. This eternal love of God has broken into our cold and loveless world ever since the angels proclaimed it at night to shepherds in their fields: “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord” (Lk 2:11). This love finds its glory now, here, at his betrayal. God’s glorious plan since the fall was that Jesus would be betrayed, would suffer and die.
This plan is truly glorious because it is done for only one reason: to rescue us. Jesus’ only concern was the rescue and restoration of those whom the Father had called his children—all people. Jesus pursued those who had left the family circle. We had been trapped under the reign of death and the condemnation of the Law. He won our restoration by beating death at its own game and by satisfying the Law’s demand for the execution of the sinner. His death destroys death. He dies in our place as our sin. Yes, now at his betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion, the Son of Man is glorified! He goes where we cannot go. He alone pays for all sin. The God-man is showing the greatest love ever. He loves a world of God-haters. He sacrifices himself for each of us.
The comic strip B.C. once depicted God the Father proclaiming about his crucified Son, “That’s my boy.” As Jesus says it, “God [the Father] is glorified in him” (v 31). The Father is glorified at Jesus’ betrayal because this shows the Father’s love for us. He gave up his only-begotten Son freely, out of the deepest, eternal love for us.
This eternal, deep, self-sacrificing love of God comes to you today in the Word of Jesus—the Word proclaiming that his glory is paying for our sins and bringing his blood-bought forgiveness. God’s unchanging, powerful love comes to us here in the blessed Sacrament of the Altar, where the very Savior who died on the cross is the living Savior who puts himself into us to forgive, save, and strengthen us. And by the miraculous power of God’s holy Word connected with water, we have been born again. He plucked us out of death and hell and planted us in life and heaven. God gives forgiveness, eternal life, and salvation—the undeserved and generous gifts from the cross and open tomb of Jesus—to poor, miserable sinners.
IV
The self-sacrificing, unchanging, and persistent love of God reaches us. Received in faith, God’s love makes us new trees—good trees. And by God’s Spirit, good trees bear good fruit. The love of Christ in redeemed sinners produces love—love for God, love for one another.
Some Mother’s Day cards say, “God couldn’t be everywhere, so he made mothers.” Well, no. God is everywhere, of course. And he gives us all good things out of his great kindness and goodness, including mothers. He gave us mothers and gives them the command to serve their children in love. He gave our mothers children and gives us the command to honor our father and our mother. And through the vocations, the callings, of mother and child, and for that matter, of husband and wife, boss and employee, teacher and student, and on and on, God has given us places to love as he has loved us. He calls us to love, by his power, as he does. We are to love not only when someone has done something good for us, or is lovely or wonderful, but to serve everyone in love all the time. We are to put aside our selfish desires and seek to serve our mother, our child, our spouse, our neighbor, even our enemy, the way Christ serves them—forgiving, sacrificing, helping.
Jesus never says to himself, “David doesn’t deserve my love anymore—so that’s it. I’m finished.” If he did, no one would ever receive his love, because no one deserves it. As his unconditional love reaches us, it leads us to do what is good, right, and loving to our neighbors, no matter what they’ve done to us. His love never leads us to excuse what is bad, mean, or cruel by the constant whine of “She started it—it’s her fault.” His love always serves sinners. Such love is powerful and unusual. And such love points to only one source: the crucified Lord Jesus Christ. As Jesus teaches, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (v 35).
A former professor of mine loves to tell of the congregation he served in Australia. It was in a farming community. One day a man came to him and said he wanted to become a Lutheran Christian and join the church. “This is wonderful. May I ask you why?” “I’m a farm supply salesman. I work with farmers all over. And I’ve worked with many of your members. They never told me they were Lutherans. They never spoke a lot about their Christianity. But I knew they were. For they have always been honest, fair, and good to me and to many other people as well. I want what they have.”
St. Peter teaches wives who have unbelieving husbands to serve their husbands with constant humble love. Such service may win them without words (see 1 Pet 3:1–6). To be sure, when we’re asked about the hope that fills us, we should gladly confess Christ Jesus. But to get that opportunity, Jesus instructs us to love one another as he has loved us. “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (v 35).
Conclusion: None of us except Christ Jesus is perfect in loving one another, and it is only through his work that we are saved. It is also only in him that we can love one another as he has loved us. But the crucified and risen Lord Jesus gloried in giving his life to save us, and he continues to love us forever. In Christ’s self-sacrificing love for us, then, we can indeed love one another.
