Love One Another

Badges identify people. There’s the policeman’s badge (make a paper star). Every service company has its’ employees wear a badge (plastic cover with name inside). Boy Scouts and Awana children have badges telling you about their achievements (Awana shirt or sash).

Christians have badges too. There’s the fish or dove symbol on the back of the car. Maybe it is a church bumper sticker. Some Christian’s wear a cross necklace. What does the Bible teach as the most prominent badge of a Christian? It is love.

A man asked Jesus what the most important commandment in the Bible was. Without hesitating, Jesus answered it is to love God and to love people. All the commandments in the Bible point to either a love relationship with God or people. You know the first part of the Ten Commandments deal with loving God and the second half deal with loving people. This is a problem.

What are you good at doing? Are you good at building or fixing things? Maybe you have an artistic gift. When you draw a horse, it doesn’t look like a camel. I’ve known a few people who are good at making money. I had a friend who bought a used ski boat at the start of the summer, played with it all summer, and sold it at the end of the summer and made money! I didn’t even know that was possible.

I can tell you what we’re not good at doing. We’re not good at loving God and loving people. All our life we’ve practiced being selfish. Most of life is observed from the perspective of how this is going to affect me. It comes natural to us. We don’t have to work at it. We don’t need lessons to be taught to be selfish. We’re naturals when it comes to being the center of our universe. Then we become a Christian. We learn that Jesus wants us to be good at what we are terrible at doing: loving God and loving people.

The reason why our churches struggle in forgiving one another, agreeing with one another, and encouraging one another is we are not good at loving one another. Tertulian was a Christian apologist that lived from 160-230 A.D. He quotes the pagans as saying of Christians, “Behold, how they love one another.” People had never seen a love that didn’t discriminate between men and women, rich and poor, free and slave, or Jew and Gentile. One of the most powerful witnesses for Christ was the community of believers that loved one another with a selfless love.

When the great Methodist missionary and evangelist E. Stanley Jones met with Mahatma Gandhi in India, he asked Gandhi why he seemed to respect Jesus’ teachings but rejected becoming His follower. Gandhi responded, “Oh, I don’t reject Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are unlike Christ. If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today?” Gandhi tried to enter a church in South Africa when he was a young man and interested in Christ. They barred him from entering.

One of the core values of Northeast is community. You will see it framed on the walls. We define community as imperfect people sharing life together. Sharing life together means we have responsibilities for how we treat each other. Those responsibilities are found in the “one another” passages in the New Testament. I’d like to look at a few of those. One of the responsibilities that we have is to love one another. Love should be a Christian’s single most defining attribute.

First, Jesus commands us to love one another.

I. JESUS COMMANDS US TO LOVE (JOHN 13:34-35)

(34) “I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. (35) By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

The scene is the upper room as Jesus and the disciples share the Last Supper. Jesus has washed the disciple’s feet. Judas has gone to do his dastardly deed of betraying the Son of God. Jesus has told the disciples He will soon depart, and they can’t go with Him. This means His departure will be the crucifixion. He begins to lay out what He expects of them while He is away. Peter interrupts Jesus and asks where He is going. This prompts Jesus to give an extended explanation about his departure of going to heaven and preparing a place for them. He will return for them. In the meantime, the followers of Jesus are to love one another.

Why did Jesus call this a new command? We know that Leviticus 19:18 says, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” By the time Jesus said this to His disciples, He had already cited love for God and love for people as the two greatest commandments (Matthew 22:34-40). In the Sermon on the Mount, He taught us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:43-48). So what was “new” about this command to love in John 13?