John 13:34

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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."

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.