There are few memories I have as a young child. But one memory I do have is when my baby sister, Katy, was brought home from the hospital. I remember the babysitter telling me she had arrived. I remember feeling nervous and hiding in the kitchen behind the door. Then, as I peeked around the door frame, I saw my mom and dad walk through the front door. Katy was brought home and into our family.
When Jesus calls us as His disciples, He not only calls us into a personal relationship with Himself, but He also brings us into relationship with others: a family, a community of people called the church. And as the church, we are to love one another.
EXPECTS LOVE
Jesus expects love. He commands love: “A new commandment I give to you” (John 13:34). The command is not to change one another, but to love one another.
Love is natural to God and it should be natural to His people. In fact, Jesus describes eternal life as knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent (John 17:3). Eternal life is relational in both scope and focus. John writes for us in his first letter that we know we’ve passed out of death into life - that we’ve been born again, that we’ve become a disciple of Jesus - because “we love the brethren” (1 John 3:14), other disciples. But not just any disciples (though we should love all); rather, in particular, those of the family He’s brought you into. The local church, then, suddenly shoots to the top of the priority list for us. Relationships are a central component to discipleship. Being in and committed to a local church is the way to grow up “to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).
EXEMPLIFIES LOVE
Jesus does not command what he does not supply. Jesus is the sustenance for every command of God and the source of all that we need to follow and obey. He doesn’t command us, and then leave us to tap some inner reserve of strength or hidden potential within us. He calls us in our inadequacy to Him, and then empowers us to live through Him and for Him.
“As I have loved you” (John 13:34). Jesus exemplifies, and is, the new and fullest expression of the love of God. In the Old Testament, God descended to the top of Mount Sinai to communicate through Moses to His people. But the command to the people of Israel was not to touch the mountain or they would die (Exodus 19:12). In Jesus, something changed. Rather than men approaching God at a distance, from the foot of the mountain, God approached men in the form and flesh of Jesus Christ.
This radical difference can be understood from John’s opening words in his first letter: “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life...we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:1-4).
In Jesus, love is manifest. And in and through us as His disciples, His love becomes manifest. Love, then, is the visible, audible and tangible evidence and expression of what has always been since the beginning - eternal.
So, what did eternal love do? Washed feet. Jesus, the fullest expression of God’s love, touched water and dirt. This simple act of washing his disciples’ feet led to the cosmic act of dying on the cross for the world. And this is still how we love one another today: in simple acts that lead to the glorious cross - to Jesus Christ.
EMPOWERS LOVE
When we love each other as Christ commands and exemplifies, no matter how small or big the act of love, it is empowered by Jesus Christ. As His disciples, we live in a new reality. “...you also love one another” (John 13:34). We love one another with the very love of Christ!
In this new reality, love becomes prerequisite to everything we do as disciples. It is possible to preach and not love those you preach to, or to serve and not love those you serve. The most magnificent acts we could ever accomplish would mean nothing apart from the love of Jesus. Imagine an artist without a brush, a writer without a pen, a disciple without love. It is an incomplete picture.
As disciples, you and I are servants and messengers who proclaim the love of Christ to each other and to the world in our actions and words towards each other. This is both powerful and critical, because the love of Jesus Christ will not, cannot, be known apart from our love for each other: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
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