Loving each other as Jesus loved us

A devotional by Randy Roberts

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” —John 13:34–35, NIV

Jesus speaks these words the night before his death. He reclines at a low table, surrounded by his disciples in the Upper Room. They have just eaten the Passover meal, which, by the time they had finished, Jesus has transformed into the Lord’s Supper, a meal his followers will celebrate forever after.

The setting is intimate. Somber. Deep.

Yet, Luke, in his gospel, tells us that even as Jesus shares this intimate time with his disciples, they are fighting over who is the greatest among them. (See Luke 22:24). Almost unimaginable, isn’t it?

It is in this context, then, that Jesus speaks the words: “Love one another.”

On the one hand, the words are critical because they are among the last words he will speak to his followers before his death. On the other hand, they are vital because they identify the one key quality that would identify them as his followers: love for one another.

The command to love others is not new. It is as old, in fact, as the third book in the Bible. In Leviticus, God commands his people to love. “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord” (Leviticus 19:18, NIV).

Why, then, does Jesus say that his command to his disciples is new? “A new command I give you,” he says. How is this so, especially in light of Leviticus?

What is new about the command is not what is commanded but its standard. In other words, what is new is the standard by which their love for each other is to be measured. In Leviticus, the standard was love for oneself: “… love your neighbor as [you love] yourself.” Self-love was the standard. And it’s not a bad standard, though it is a standard more easily accessible to those who are not fully mature.

“Johnny! Stop treating your sister that way! Would you want her to treat you that way?!”

The standard is self-love. Treat her the way you would want her to treat you. Johnny values himself—a reality that becomes the standard in how he is to treat his sister.

Jesus, though, offers an infinitely more lofty standard. “Love each other as I have loved you.”

Mercy.

That will be an arduously difficult journey. Consider how William Barclay characterizes it:

There was no limit to what [Jesus’] love would give or to where it would go. No demand that could be made upon it was too much. If love meant the cross, Jesus was prepared to go there. Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that love is meant to give us happiness. So in the end it does, but love may well bring pain and demand a cross. (William Barclay, The New Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of John, 2:175).

That’s what makes it “new”—its standard. It will be measured not by self-love but by Jesus’ love.

That’s what makes it new.

Curiously, Jesus had two choices of Greek words to use for the word that in English is translated new. The first is the word neos. It’s a word used to describe the newness of something in terms of its chronological age. “That’s my new car; my old one’s over there.” There are many other cars in existence—hundreds of millions of them, in fact—but this one is new.

That’s not the word Jesus chose.

The other word is kainos. This word commonly describes something new in kind, as in, “There’s never been something like this before. This is new—unique, previously unknown.”

That’s the word Jesus chose.

“A new command”—unique, previously unknown—“I give you: love each other as I have loved you.”

Our fractured planet, our divided nation, our polarized communities, and our ruptured relationships need something new. Truly new.

We need love. Jesus' kind of love.

He commanded it. He’ll empower it.

Are you willing?

—Randy Roberts, DMin, LMFT, is vice president for spiritual life and mission at Loma Linda University Health.