Extending Love
John 13:34-35
In our Scripture today, Jesus is sharing His last evening with His disciples before He is crucified. They’re together in the Upper Room and Jesus began the evening with washing the disciple’s feet, teaching them humility and servanthood. While they were eating, Jesus says that one of them will betray Him. In the midst of the resulting questions and turmoil, Judas quietly leaves. Jesus then begins to talk about what it means to be His disciple, his last instructions, if you will. ”Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples when they see the love you have for each other.”
Did you hear how Jesus started his words? “Let me give you a new command.” Love one another is not a new command! I’ve been hearing that ever since I was a kid! In fact, it’s an OLD command, as in Old Testament! Leviticus 19:18 says "Love your neighbor as yourself." That Scripture dates to more than a 1000 years before Jesus was born! How can He say that this is something new? What makes this command new is that we are being commanded to love people the way Jesus loved people! To understand what that means, we have to get back to the original language of the New Testament. In the Greek language, there are more than 13 words used that we translate as love. One of those is “Philia” which is brotherly love. That’s the love friends have for one another. Two other words in Greek translated as love, but not found in the Bible are ”Storge” (store gay) which is Familial Love. This is the kind of love a mother has for a child. Third is Eros which is romantic love. This is the passionate love couples have for one another in the first few years. But Jesus chooses to use Agape. This is best defined as unconditional, selfless, sacrificial love. This is the love which Jesus showed as he washed the disciples feet, a task so lowly that even a servant wasn’t asked to do this. This is the love which Jesus would show on the cross by dying for our sins. It is this love that God wants us to have for others. This is what makes this a new command because most people love only when they are loved. Most people love only when it benefits them or meets their needs. Even though it is forbidden by God to hate another person, to nurse a grudge or to seek vengance, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was the rule of the day, Jesus calls us to love unconditionally, selflessly and sacrificially, while at the same time denying ourselves. This is why his words are a new command.
There are several things we learn about extending love to others. First, loving others is challenging. Have you ever tried to make yourself love someone? Have you ever tried to force yourself to feel love? It’s next to impossible. Yet Jesus commanded us to love one another! A command is not a suggestion or a request. A command is an order! We need that force and authority behind us telling us to just do it! So Jesus commands us to love one another! Loving others is difficult. There are a lot of people in the world who are not very likeable, much less loveable. The world is filled with mean, ugly, hateful people! Even when we fall in love, it’s difficult to maintain those warm feelings for very long. It’s tough for us to love someone all the time, even when we fall in love! And our tendency is when the going gets tough in loving someone, we usually give up. It’s too hard. It’s too difficult. So Jesus commands us to, “Love one another” in other words, not give up but just do it! But even that’s not enough. How do we make ourselves feel love for people?
That leads us to the second point, love is a response. Jesus goes on to say, “In the same way I loved you, love one another.” In these words, the disciples would have recalled the times when Jesus overwhelmingly loved them. When He called them to be a disciple in training to become a rabbi, their childhood dream long forgotten after they had been told they didn’t make the cut. When Jesus came to them in the midst of the storm. When he forgave them as the disciples fought over which of them would be the greatest in the kingdom of God. When he sent them out to minister and heal and how even though they failed miserably, he built them back up and loved them. When he taught them and they failed to understand again and again, the patience and love he showed as he taught them anew. When they failed to understand who Jesus was or even the extent of his power and knowledge, he continued to love and nurture them. When they rebuked Jesus because he said he must go to the cross, he lovingly corrected them. When they tried to intervene on the arrest of Jesus, he looked upon them with compassion at their lack of understanding. When they denied Jesus in his darkest hour and fell away from him, he reclaimed them, forgave them and loved them. And if all that wasn’t enough, in the cross Jesus showed the depth and breadth and height of his love for them as he died on the cross for their sins.
Just what should be our response be to this love? How should we react to this gift of Grace that God has given us? As we have been loved by Jesus, so we are then to turn and love others. The original language of the New Testament is Greek, says, “I have loved you in order that you might love one another.” It is a cause and effect dynamic. Because we are loved, we can love others. Jesus’ love for us is the cause for us loving one another. Jesus’ love for us is also the example for how we should love. And Jesus’ love for us is the source upon which we should draw to love others. We love one another because Jesus first loved us! This love Jesus commands starts with Him and flows from him far beyond how we could love others.
Third, Love isn’t something that happens to us, love is a choice. You hear people say, “I just fell in love.” As if they just fell into a hole while walking down the street. Love is not something that just happens to us, it’s a choice we make. We choose to love others. The problem is that we’re selective in the process. We love those who love us. We love others for what they do for us or how they make us feel. But Jesus’ new command is to choose to love others, not some but all. But that’s easier said than done. What about the guy that stands on the corner panhandling for money for his next drink? What about the mother who puts her child in the dryer and turns it on? What about the man who strikes his wife out of anger? Would Jesus love these people just as much as us, his people? Absolutely! Jesus came to save the wretched and the poor. The sinners. You see, all sin is the same in the eyes of God. He loves you no more or less than those people. This kind of love goes against our every natural inclination. It is impossible for us to practice this kind of love alone. The only way that we can show this kind of love is with the help of God himself. He helps us to set aside our own desires and instincts. Then, and only then can we give love without any expectations in return! That’s when we become more like Christ, when we show unconditional love! But it starts with a decision to love others and to turn to the source of that unconditional love, Jesus, who has loved us unconditionally.
Fourth, love is not about feeling, love is action. Love is usually thought of as a feeling. In reality, it is a choice and an action! In fact, in the New Testament, Love is used as a noun 110 times, and a verb 137 times. 247 times the word love is referenced! Today is Mother’s Day. Now, Moms, how many of you have ever done things for your children that you didn’t really want to do? How many times have you driven car pool, fixed lunches, gone to soccer games or softball games, ballet and piano lessons, read good night stories, rubbed backs when you really didn’t feel like it? Of course you have. If we only did things for each other when we felt like it, chances are we wouldn’t do a lot of the things that provide the safe, loving environment we want in our homes. Love is action, sometimes without the warm, fuzzy feelings. Too often we love when we feel it. The key to choosing to love someone is to act lovingly even before you feel like it. What we sometimes fail to realize is that feelings follow action, not action follows feelings. So we need to act in love first and then the feelings ill come.
Newspaper columnist George Crane writes of a woman who was full of hatred toward her husband. Someone counseled the woman to act as if she really loved her husband, to tell him how much he meant to her, to praise him for every decent trait, to be kind, considerate, and generous whenever possible. Then, when she’d fully convinced him of her undying love, she’d make her move and file for divorce. With revenge in her eyes she said, "That’s perfect, I’ll do it." And so she did...but guess what happened...the more she demonstrated sacrificial love toward her husband, the more she began to actually love him, and at the end of a few months divorce was the furthest thing from her mind because she had fallen
In Matthew 5:43-44, The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told the crowd: You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” The way you love your enemies is through your actions. Jesus didn’t just teach it, he lived it. In his interactions with even those people who hated him the most, Jesus loved. And he continued to love them even while he was being crucified. After the crowds had stoned him, mocked him, whipped him, spat upon him, and screamed crucify him, he hung on the cross, and prayed: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34). That’s our model for loving one another and it starts with our actions, not feelings.
Fifth, love is our greatest witness. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples, when they see the love you have for each other.” That’s the sign! That’s the measure! That’s the benchmark! And if people on the outside can’t look through the windows of the church and say: “Wow! Look at how they love one another!” then they will never be attracted to life in Christ. The church’s life and relationships to one another will be so dramatically from everything they have seen and experienced in the world, and it will be so attractive that the unchurched will be drawn to the body of Christ and into a relationship with Jesus. This is the premise of Will Willimon, and Stanley Hauerwas’ book called "Resident Aliens" where you are and I are resident aliens, called to be and live differently from the world and yet called also to live in the world. As resident aliens, we are called to offer an alternative way of life to the world, one that is so attractive that the world would be attracted to living for Jesus. In other words, we are to be salt in a bland world, light in a world filled with darkness to show the world, there’s a better way and everyone will recognize that you are my disciples, when they see the love you have for each other.”
If we can’t love one another, then we will never be able to extend love to others outside the church. The church is to become a place where we learn to love as Jesus loved so that then we can go into the world and love others in an extraordinary way. Chad Steenerson is a Birmingham cab driver. Steenerson spent $700 of his own money to place a billboard in Indiana that reads: “Pray for McVeigh.” He put his website address on the billboard, too, and, in a five day period, he had 3,000 hits on his website. Chad said: “I’ve been getting lots of nasty e-mail.” Listen to his rationale for the billboard: ”If you believe Jesus died for everybody, that includes people who have done very bad things, who we might not like. None of us deserves grace anyway. God’s gift of grace is not dependent on human opinions of one another. Who are we to deny the possibility of God’s grace to Timothy McVeigh?” He gets it. Chad Steenerson has got Jesus’ command right. We love because Christ loves us. That’s what it means to extend love to others.
