Very few people like to travel extensively. There is something about being away from family and resources that we have when we are around home. There are those like Alan, Andrea and in April Sue and Wilma, who leave familiar surrounding to travel to a people in another country. Anyone that has a view about this as a vacation, soon realizes that not only is there real danger but all sorts of challenges. Why would someone do this then? The only rational reason, is love.
It was love for a fallen humanity that caused God the father to send His son to a people who walked in darkness. God showed us His love in this manner that He sent His only begotten son who existed with Him from all eternity, in perfect fellowship with Him, to a people who would largely disregard Him, and eventually kill Him.
John 13 starts the account until chapter 17, of Jesus preparing for His death. The disciples are having their last supper together in the upper room and Jesus inaugurates a new covenant in His blood. His self-sacrificial death shows a new covenant form of love. He shows this love ultimately on the Cross and among them through service even amidst the presence of Judas, until the start of the meal.
If you were about to die, what would your final instructions be to those who you love? What would you think would be the most important thing to remember and do? In the final meal that Jesus has with His disciples having indicated the substance of His future (a new glory) and theirs (a new situation, of being without Christ bodily) Jesus addresses the practical question as to what the disciples should do in the new circumstances that were about to come upon them. He outlines the nature of their discipleship in terms of three main elements 1) A New Commandment (Jn. 13:34a) 2) A New Example (Jn. 13:34b) and 3) A New Witness (Jn. 13:35).
1) A New Commandment (Jn. 13:34a)
John 13:34a [34]A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: (just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another). (ESV)
There is nothing new about God wanting people to love one another:
Leviticus 19:18 [18]You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD. (ESV)
In John 13 the focus is upon the community that Jesus will establish as a result of his Passover departure.
In the establishment of communities, one of the principle factors of success is the establishing of boundaries for action, which we call laws. These laws are based on community or national covenants, whether stated or unstated. These covenants that lie behind the laws, rules, or commands are absolutely crucial. Understanding underlying covenants is therefore crucial to perceiving the significance of laws or commands.
Please turn to Mark 12
To understand the ten commandments of Exodus 20 one must realize that they do not start with v. 3, “no other gods.” The Ten Commandments start with the presupposition of a covenant based on the liberating act of God in bringing the people out of Egypt, the house of bondage, as it is described in v. 2. It is only when one understands the foundational liberating act of God for Israel that one recognizes the responsibility to obey the divine commands. To forget the covenant is to set the commands in a sea of meaninglessness. Rules have to be contextualized to have meaning.
Jesus had already taught that the whole law of Moses was summed up in two great commandments:
Mark 12:28-33 [28]And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, "Which commandment is the most important of all?" [29]Jesus answered, "The most important is, ’Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. [30]And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ [31]The second is this: ’You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these." [32]And the scribe said to him, "You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. [33]And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." (ESV)
Elsewhere:
Romans 13:8-10 [8]Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. [9]For the commandments, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet," and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." [10]Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. (ESV)
And in:
Galatians 5:14 [14]For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." (ESV)
Genuine Christians have always had a tremendous impact on those around them:
Quote: Minucius Felix, the heathen, says of the Christians: ‘They love each other before knowing each other;’(Lange, J. P., & Schaff, P. (2008). A commentary on the Holy Scriptures : John (427). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.)
Illustration: The church leader Tertullian (ß.S.
Because they wouldn’t take even a pinch of incense and put it before the image of the emperor, the Romans felt they might be disloyal. Spies went into the Christian gatherings and came back with a report: “These Christians are very strange people. They meet together in an empty room to worship. They do not have an image. They speak of One by the name of Jesus, who is absent, but whom they seem to be expecting at any time. And my, how they love Him and how they love one another.” Now if spies came from an atheistic government to see whether Christianity is genuine and they came to (our) church, what would be the verdict?” (McGee, J. V. (1997, c1981). Thru the Bible commentary. Based on the Thru the Bible radio program. (electronic ed.) (4:456). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.) (Based on apology 39:7)
With the history of God’s expressed expectations that His people be a people of love, This love for one another is in the present tense (linear action), to “keep on loving.”(Robertson, A. (1997). Word Pictures in the New Testament. Vol.V c1932, Vol.VI c1933 by Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. (Jn 13:34). Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems.)
It is not just for your neighbor and as yourself, as in Lev. 19:18, but is the shared love of believers for one another, but what exactly is new?
We see the nature of discipleship in terms of 1) A New Commandment (Jn. 13:34a) and now:
2) A New Example (Jn. 13:34b)
John 13:34b [34](A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another) just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. (ESV)
Just as God the father presented the Jews of the old covenant with the answer as to “Why should I obey?” the commandments of Ex. 20 after liberating the people out of Egypt, so too Jesus now presents the standard of love in the context of His Passover death for them.
Please turn to John 15
The love that Jesus is calling for is not just one of avoiding hating another. It is not just tolerating another. It is an active, self-sacrificial love, just as Jesus loved us. It is the type of love that Glorifies God the Father and shows that we are a part of His family:
John 15:8-17 [8]By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. [9]As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. [10]If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. [11]These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. [12]"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. [13]Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. [14]You are my friends if you do what I command you. [15]No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. [16]You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. [17]These things I command you, so that you will love one another. (ESV)
Please turn to Jeremiah 31
Quote: John Vianney said: “Love for our neighbor consists of three things: to desire the greater good of everyone; to do what good we can when we can; to bear, excuse and hide other’s faults”. (Barton, B. B. (1993). John. Life application Bible commentary (282). Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House.)
Illustration: A number of years ago Johanne Lukasse of the Belgian Evangelical Mission came to the realization that evangelism in Belgium was getting nowhere. The nation’s long history of traditional Catholicism, the subsequent disillusionment resulting from Vatican II, and the aggression of the cults had left the land seemingly impervious to the gospel. Driven to the Scriptures, he read John 13 and devised a plan. First, he gathered together a heterogeneous group—Belgian, Dutch, Americans—whoever would come. Second, he had them rent a house and live together for seven months. As is natural, frictions developed as the believers rubbed against one another. This, in turn, sent them to prayer for love and victory. Finally, they went out to witness to others, and they began to see amazing fruit. Outsiders called them “the people who love each other.”
Quote: “Left to ourselves, we seek our own. Movie stars marry movie stars. Doctors seek out doctors. Middle-classers seek out middle-classers. Bikers seek bikers. But when Christ comes, that changes. In the church of Jesus Christ, we discover that the people we love and with whom we fellowship are different from us. The more there is of the love Christ exhorted us to have, a love for one another, the greater will be the diversity within the body of Christ”. (Hughes, R. K. (1999). John : That you may believe. Preaching the Word (325). Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books.)
What is amazing with the self-sacrificial love of Jesus, is that it comes from the Father:
John 3:16 [16]"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (ESV)
It models how we should love and also purchases for us the very transformation that enables us to love:
Romans 8:3-4 [3]For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, [4]in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (ESV)
This is what was promised:
Jeremiah 31:29-34 [29]In those days they shall no longer say: "’The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’[30]But everyone shall die for his own sin. Each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. [31]"Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, [32]not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. [33]But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. [34]And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ’Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." (ESV)
Ezekiel 36:24-26 [24]I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. [25]I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. [26]And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. (ESV)
• In the New Covenant we have an internal enabler, the Holy Spirit, who enables us to Love one another in a supernatural way that was impossible under the Old Covenant.
We see the nature of discipleship in terms of 1) A New Commandment (Jn. 13:34a) 2) A New Example (Jn. 13:34b) and finally:
3) A New Witness (Jn. 13:35).
John 13:35 [35]By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." (ESV)
The Love is new, (kainen: “fresh,” vibrantly new, rather than “recent”) in three ways. (1) There is a new focus. We are still to love our neighbor, but now a more intense love is to be directed toward “one another.” (2) There is a new standard. We are no longer to love others just “as you love yourself,” but “as I [Jesus] have loved you.” Christ’s own committed, self–sacrificial and limitless love is the yardstick by which we are to measure our love for our Christian brothers and sisters. And (3) there is a new outcome. As the Christian community is (permeated with) Christlike love, the world of lost humankind realizes that Jesus is real—and that we are His (Richards, L. O. (1991; Published in electronic form by Logos Research Systems, 1996). The Bible readers companion (electronic ed.) (690). Wheaton: Victor Books.) That is how they will Perceive, or come to know.
Please turn to 1 John 4
Love enables “all people” (pantes, 13:35; not merely men) to recognize the accepter as a disciple of Jesus. This way of loving one another is not to be interpreted exclusively as my little in-group (as it was by many Jews; cf. the message of Jonah). Instead, it was to be understood as breathtakingly explosive of old relationships and old patterns of obedience in the way it was pointedly presented in the Sermon on the Mount (cf. Matt 5–7 and particularly 5:43–48; cf. also 1 John 4:7–21).
1 John 4:7-21 [7]Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. [8]Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. [9]In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. [10]In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. [11]Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. [12]No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. [13]By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. [14]And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. [15]Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. [16]So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. [17]By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. [18]There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. [19]We love because he first loved us. [20]If anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. [21]And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (ESV)
Please turn back to 1 John 3
We saw last week with the nature of adoption, the new reality as Children of God. Jesus’ High Calling ties the reality of being part of this new Kingdom family with the holiness and love that would be evident:
1 John 3:1-18 [3:1]See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. [2]Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. [3]And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. [4]Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. [5]You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. [6]No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. [7]Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. [8]Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. [9]No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. [10]By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. [11]For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. [12]We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. [13]Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. [14]We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. [15]Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. [16]By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. [17]But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? [18]Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (ESV).
Love between Christ’s followers is a quintessential proof of their discipleship. That is why Paul emphasized doing good not just to all but especially:
Galatians 6:10 [10]So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith. (ESV)
Quote: Alexander Maclaren describes what happened because of Christ’s command:
“Barbarian, Scythian, bond and free, male and female, Jew and Greek, learned and ignorant … sat down at one table, and felt themselves all one in Christ Jesus. They were ready to break all other bonds, and to yield to the uniting forces that streamed out from his Cross. There never had been anything like it. No wonder that the world began to babble about sorcery, and conspiracies, and complicity in unnamable vices. It was only that the disciples were obeying the new commandment, and a new thing had come into the world—a community held together by love and not by geographical accidents or linguistic affinities, or the iron fetters of the conqueror .… The new commandment made a new thing, and the world wondered” (Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture, Vol. 10 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1974), pp. 227–228.)
The authenticity of the Gospel is not in having:
• Successful Christians in business, politics, actors, artists or musicians. It is not in elaborate programs, great cathedrals, or intricate rituals.
• It is not in wearing a cross on your neck, a suit or carrying a big book.
• It is not in letting people know what you won’t do.
• It is not just in loving people like you externally, that have the same private likes, backgrounds and habits.
Quote: As J.C. Ryle said: “It is more than a notion in our heads but a practice from our hearts”.
The strength of our testimony will be diminished unless we have a love for those in Christ that far exceeds anything in any other context. Regardless of how sound our doctrine or clever our message, we must first be Gospel in flesh:
2 Corinthians 3:3 [3]And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. (ESV)
