A new commandment I give to you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
The command comes on the last evening. Judas has gone out. Jesus has just told the eleven disciples still with Him that He is leaving and they cannot follow. What He leaves behind is not a rule to earn anything. It is a bond to hold His own together once He is gone. Its measure is His own love for them.
The disciples were not an easy group to keep together. That is why this word came just when it did.
So far, that concerned Him. But what about His disciples, left here for a time? Their situation would change: they would lose the Lord's care over them. So arguments and divisions could spring up and break the group apart. They had already shown this danger. They had argued among themselves about which of them would be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven — and they were still arguing about it on the night of that Supper. So this new commandment came at just the right time, and they needed it.
They were about to lose the one bond they had known.
When He left, the disciples would lose a powerful bond: the personal presence of the One they all loved... Only love of God's own kind can hold together a group of people who each have their own personality, character, and temperament.
Israel already had a command to love. What makes this one new is not the word "love" but the circle and the relationship it belongs to.
The nation disappears. It is not a question of loving one's neighbour, but of Christ's disciples and of their mutual love according to His love. New relationships would become clearer and clearer when He rose from the dead and sent down the Holy Spirit. This new duty of loving one another would flow out of that new relationship... Their love was to be made of the same material and shaped in the same mould as His own.
Because it is new, it cannot be part of the older law. And it asks more than that law asked.
Jesus said to His own, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you." John's practical comment on this is, "He laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers." If this commandment is new, it cannot be part of the law, which was already old... This new commandment of the Lord governs a relationship the law knew nothing about, and could know nothing about: being brothers in Christ. The law only told a man to love his neighbour as himself. This command tells him to love his brothers in Christ more than himself.
The standard is not an amount of affection but a pattern already acted out in front of them that same evening.
It is His love in verse 33 that leads to verse 34... It was a new commandment because it had never been expressed this way before. "Just as I have loved you." That should be the character as well as the measure of our love to each other. His love had been shown in washing their feet. We too should wash one another's feet (v. 14). But did the disciples live this out then? They first needed the power of the Spirit living in them — the Helper He would send from the Father. Only then could these words be true of them: "which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining."
That pattern also shapes how the love behaves when a brother is in the wrong.
Christ loved with a love which, while never indifferent to evil, still triumphed over all the power of evil. If we love one another the way Christ loved, we will not put up with evil in one another. But we will find a way to deal with the evil and go on loving each other.
It is called a commandment, but it is not kept the way a legal code is kept.
The new commandment is not a legal rule. We can only carry it out as we live His life, and so stay in communion with Him... The commands of the New Testament become an outlet for the renewed heart, under the influence of the love of Christ. Love that has to be "worked up" is fake. The Lord is speaking of love that flows out freely between brothers. We see this in the words "just as I have loved you."
He gave the command to a group He had just gathered into one, and it is what keeps them one.
In chapter 13 Judas had gone out. Jesus could now look on the rest as one in the life He had brought them into. So He gives them the new commandment, to keep them one in practice... He has brought us together into one flock, one family, one assembly, as brothers of Christ. He did this so that this love would have room to grow and flow out to one another. It cannot grow in isolation. Everything that divides the children of God gets in the way of it.
- New relationship. The command is new because the circle is new. Not neighbours in one nation, but disciples tied to each other through the risen Christ.
- New measure. The old rule said: love your neighbour as yourself. This one says: love as He loved. That love washed feet and laid down its life.
- New power. The disciples could not live it out that night. It waited for the Spirit, so that what was true in Him alone became true in them too.
- New bond. Once He was gone, love of His own kind is the only thing that holds together people of very different temperaments.
- New room. Love needs company to flow in. So whatever divides God's children chokes the very thing the command was meant to produce.
By this shall all know that ye are disciples of mine, if ye have love amongst yourselves.
Jesus is about to be taken from His disciples, and He tells them what will mark them out once He is no longer with them. The sign He chooses is not their teaching or their gifts but their love for each other — and He says the world will read it.
The disciples would soon be left without Him. One writer ties the sign to that absence — they would be His disciples with Him gone, and one thing would show it:
But though they were not with Him, they were His disciples. One thing made this clear: a new commandment — and He was One who could give a new commandment. It was, "That you love one another." The commandment came from Him to them, a sign in them, telling unbelievers that they were His disciples. This was the sign to the world.
Christ sets the standard by His own love, not by their love for Him. One commentator notes how the Lord words it:
The Lord's love to them was pure, patient, untiring, persevering; it never flagged. Nothing on their part could turn it aside. Nothing less than this is the pattern of their mutual love. The Lord does not say, Love Me as I have loved you; it is, Love each other as I have loved you.
This is not another rule laid on human strength. It fits a nature they had already received:
He has one striking new commandment to leave with them. It is not a legal commandment, as those given by Moses, and nothing that would tend to puff up the flesh. He had loved them: let them show the same love toward one another. Indeed, His love was because of His very nature: they too had been given this blessed nature by new birth. The command therefore is really to allow that nature its proper expression.
The world had no such love until Christ appeared:
Love is of God, not of man, which accounts for the blank until He came Who, though God, showed love in man and to man... This is not zeal that goes out searching for sinners, precious as that is. It is the unselfish seeking of the good of believers as believers, in humility of mind and in Christ's love.
Love like this looks out of place in the world, and that is what makes it visible:
A company marked by love would look so strange in a place ruled by lust and selfishness that even the world would realise these people must be the disciples of Christ. The world cannot appreciate the faith and hope of Christians. But divine love and what it does they can at least see and admire, even if they cannot imitate it.
The other marks of following Christ look like folly to onlookers:
A disciple giving up everything to follow Christ would be thought a fool... In chapter 13 the Lord gives a mark that the natural man can recognise. It might make him wonder, but it would be clear evidence of a power greater than the selfishness of nature.
Not every Christian can preach. One writer points to a testimony that leaves no one out:
Now love to fellow believers is evidence of divine life. It is evidence first to ourselves: "We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers" (1 John 3:14). Second, it is evidence to the world: "by this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35)... Do you want to bear testimony for Christ, to preach the gospel? Good! it is a good desire. But not everyone is gifted for this. Yet there is a testimony everyone can display, even the humblest: he is greatest who shows it most, and the most splendid gift is nothing without it. It is love!
One writer turns the verse into a test, and applies it to the state of Christians:
So what proves that we are the disciples of Christ is not holding certain truths, and not having light, but loving one another. Let us not shrink from facing this divine fact. As we face it, let us ask ourselves whether this testimony has failed completely. The broken state of the Church, the divisions across the Christian world, and rival parties and jealousies all proclaim our disgrace.
- Absence. Christ was going away, and left one visible sign that they still belonged to Him.
- Pattern. The measure is not their love for Him but His for them — pure, patient, untiring, never turned aside.
- Source. It is not a law added to human effort; it is the new nature from new birth showing itself.
- Reach. The world cannot appreciate faith and hope. But it can see and admire love in a selfish world, even if it cannot copy it.
- Verdict. Holding truth is not the sign. Love among believers is — and divisions among Christians are the plainest confession of failure.