What does it mean to have love for one another (John 13:35)?

However, 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 (v. 34). 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. In this all men would recognize them as His disciples.

But the Lord loved them all. "As I have loved you." Their love to each other was to be of the same character, and to grow in intensity; though it can never reach the purity and strength of His love to them. Not even their love to Him is a measure large enough for the love which they are commanded to have for each other. Surely they all did love Him, but not perfectly. When James and John sought the highest places in the kingdom, they raised the indignation of the others, thereby proving that all had self as an object, not the Lord alone. It was their glory that occupied their minds. Peter loved the Master, came behind none in fervour, but fear made him deny his Master. 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. Such power of love in them could only be the result of grace, of the power of the Spirit in their heart, she wing its reality in acts of human kindness, as well as in caring for each other's spiritual welfare. It is heavenly love in a human heart and manifested through a human medium! How greatly the Lord desired the mutual happiness of His disciples! What a divine preventive of strife and of the workings of a selfish nature! Had the church given heed to the loving Lord's injunction, disciples would have been one body in visible manifestation before men. In no mark of discipleship has the church failed more than in this. The varied and numerous names under which true believers range themselves afford sad proof. All the parties and divisions which now deface the church owe their origin for the most part, not to zeal for the truth, but to lack of love. Love does not seek occasion for separation, nor will it separate save upon scriptural ground; and when compelled by obedience to the word, always in sorrow and hoping for re-union. It is such a solemn thing, that the Lord has not left it to His disciples to decide when a man that is called a brother ought to be put away, or when au assembly is to be left. 1 Cor. 5 is plain for all immoral cases, and the Second Epistle of John decides with equal precision for the doctrinal. The touch-stone is the doctrine of Christ, the truth of His Person, His essential Deity and His manhood. Any one not bringing this doctrine was not to be received even into one's own house, much less at the Lord's table. The word being so explicit forbids us by implication to separate from any other cause. Upon any other ground separation is sin. False doctrine may arise in the church from which, according to the word, separation is imperative. But separation upon unscriptural ground is the place where evil doctrine finds a genial soil and a rapid growth. Divisions are not only the effect of false doctrine but the cause and occasion too. So we get a sorrowful sequence. Want of love works divisions, and divisions work departure from the truth, which in its turn opens the door to every kind of evil doctrine. Obedience to the word, "love one another," would have prevented the shame of such a scene; the Lord would not have been so dishonoured as we see.

But He meanwhile lays a characteristic injunction on them here below. "A new commandment I give to you, that ye love one another; even as I loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love among one another" (verses 34, 35).

The nation disappears. It is no question of loving one's neighbour, but of Christ's disciples and of their mutual love according to His love. New relationships would come out with increasing plainness when He rose from the dead, and sent down the Holy Spirit; and this new duty, loving one another, would flow out of the new relationship: a convincing proof to all men Whose they were, for He alone had shown this throughout His life and death, as also alive again — love unfailing. How far were the Jews from such love? The Gentiles had not even the thought of it. And no wonder. Love is of God, not of man, which accounts for the blank till He came Who, though God, manifested love in man and to man, and was thus, through His death and resurrection, to bear much fruit. Their love was to be, if we may so say, of His own material and mould — to abide, if it did not begin, when He went away. For, as is written in 1 John 2:8, the new commandment now "is true in Him and in you; because the darkness passeth and the true light already shineth." While He was here, it was true perfectly, but only in Him; when He gave them redemption in Him through His death and resurrection, it was true in them also. The darkness was passing ("is past" being too strong to say), and the true light already shines. It is not here activity of zeal in quest of sinners, however precious, but the unselfish seeking of the good of saints as such, in lowliness of mind and in Christ's love.267 [Cf. "Exposition of the Epistles of John," p. 96.]

232 "Little children, yet a little while I am with you." There was immediately involved in this the leaving of His disciples, the other thought which came in with that one "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him"; and this introduced by His betrayal. "Little children, yet a little while I am with you." They should plainly feel His loss - they should seek Him, but they could not go where He was. This was their condition. It was true of them, as of the Jews. The Jews nor the Church were to follow Him there. Both seek Him, even if differently; neither be, nor could come, where He was. But though not with Him they were His disciples, manifest in one thing, "a new commandment" (for He was One who could give "a new commandment"): "That ye love one another." It was a commandment from Him to them a sign in them (and being as such therefore on positive commandment) to unbelievers that they were His disciples. This was the sign to the world, and so on His commandments, and so applied to them. So the Lord knew that it would so act on the minds of men as an unknown thing, which must depend for its power on something out of this world, and verify thus the truth of discipleship to an absent spiritual working, a heavenly (divine) Lord. There is also force in not merely "commandment," but "as I have loved you"; therefore so known as His disciples; this the standard and power, and therefore not only obedience but love "one to another." On the whole it is the full relationship resulting from the Lord's absence and their being left.

If this be so, it will readily be apprehended that it is not only the absence of Christ which is here supposed, but also the presence of the Holy Ghost. For love in activity amongst this new company could only spring from the divine nature, from their having been quickened together with Christ, and this expressed in divine power. But it would take us too far to explain the teaching of this now; it will suffice to call attention to this new company bound together by the indissoluble tie, and clad with the beauteous robe of the divine nature — which is love. Remark also that the manifestation of this love to every member of the company, and to all alike, would become their proper testimony in the world. "By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another." It is not, therefore, the holding of certain truths, not the possession of light, but loving one another which is the testimony that we are the disciples of Christ. Let us not shrink from facing this divine fact; and, as we face it, let us ask ourselves whether this testimony has not utterly failed. The broken state of the Church, the divisions of Christendom, and sectarian rivalries and jealousies alike proclaim our disgrace. And there is another question we might ask. It is whether in the circle of our own fellowship loving one another is the prominent characteristic. Surely if we are faithful in the answer we render, it will bring us into deeper humiliation before God. If this be the effect, it can only lead to blessing, as it must produce self-judgement and restoration. Then the hindrances to the manifestation of love being removed, there will be soon seen, at least in the little circle of believers in which we live and move, the normal testimony of the church in the midst of the world.

IT is worthy of note, that the testimony of the disciples in the world was to be love - love one to another. Having told them that He was about to be glorified, Jesus gave them a new commandment, "That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." Each one was to become to the other, and to all, the expression of Christ's own heart; and in this way their hearts, knit to Christ, would be bound together in the living unity of divine affections. And the mutual display of this love would be the unmistakable sign for all men that they were the disciples of Christ.

For the moment no one could follow Him. Who could pass through death, Satan's power, and the judgment of God, being made sin before God, and enter beyond it all into glory? It was thus for them as well as for the Jews. For the Jews, it was an outward thing, but looked upon in connection with God's glory and the power of evil; but a thing as impossible for the disciples as for them. The Lord shews His disciples that their strength would be in the love they would have to each other, loving one another as He loved them: this was the new commandment He gave them (v. 34). He was love; He had loved them; His love had been like a strong central stake, which held up all the poles that met around it. He had been the bond of their union; now, this same love in their hearts should bind them together, as poles that supported each other, when the central support should be taken away. In reality, this would be the power of the Holy Ghost who would fill their heart with this divine love of Christ Himself, and would thus make them all one. Their love for one another would be the characteristic proof that they were disciples of Jesus, for He had loved them, and He was shewn out by love in them.

Moreover a company marked by love would be so passing strange in a scene governed by lust and selfishness, that the very world would realize that such must be the disciples of Christ. The world cannot appreciate the faith and hope of the Christian circle, but divine love and its effects they can at least see and admire, if they cannot imitate. Thus a company marked by love to one another, after the pattern of Christ, would become a witness to Christ in the world from which He is absent, so that Christ, if glorified with the Father in heaven, would be glorified in the saints on earth.

Yes; as He loved John; as He loved earnest and true-hearted Peter, who was about to deny Him, under Satan’s sifting, with cursing and swearing; as He loved all His own; in view of their having part with Him; thus are we to love one another. It is this which will bear the most eloquent witness to the world, as He said: “By this shall all men know that ye are disciples of Mine, if ye have love amongst yourselves.”

Now love to the brethren is an evidence of divine life. First to ourselves, ‘We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren’ (1 John 3:14); secondly to the world, ‘by this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another’ (John 13:35). Thus, then, love amongst Christians is a positive testimony for God in the world. Do you desire to bear testimony for Christ, to preach the gospel? Good! it is a good aspiration. But all are not gifted for this. Yet there is a testimony which everyone can display — even the humblest: he is greatest who shows it most, and the most splendid gift is naught without it. It is love! Love ‘in truth’ (2 John 1; 3 John 1), manifested amongst believers, preaches Christ to the world.