John 13, 31-35
When Judas had gone out, Jesus said, ‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’
I like the word Love. It brings to mind warm feelings of acceptance and nurture. Yet, If you were to ask me to defive love, I might be hard pressed to give you an adequte definition. After all, the greatest poets of the world have yet to come up with a simple definition of what the word means.
In this passage from John’s Gospel, we see Jesus using the word love. I didn’t look up the greek because from the context I can see that this isn’t some warm and fuzzy type of love. It’s not about walks in the park on a spring day holding the hand of your loved one and letting the infatuation of the moment flow across you. The love that Jesus is referring to here is love with some teeth. How do I know, look at what he says: “Just as I have loved you…” At this point, he is telling the disciples about a future aspect of his love for them, but with the advantage of hind sight, we know that he is referring to his sacrificial giving of himself on the cross. Perhaps an earlier verse from John will corroborate my viewpoint: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believed in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)
It seems from the beginning that Jesus knew and was ready to practice a radical kind of love. He was willing to offer himself for those that he loved. Elsewhere in John, he says, “Greater love hath no man than this. That he should lay his life down for his friends.” If you read carefully enough, you’ll begin to see that Love for Jesus was a costly thing. It wasn’t just some fleeting emotion. It was a deliberate action of his will. It was what his whole life was about. He lived out his love for his followers.
That is a hard kind of love to live up to. Lord, help me to make that kind of love the standard in my life.
