What does it mean to love like Jesus?

A New Commandment. — So far what concerned Him. But what about His disciples, left here below for a time? Changed indeed would be their condition, as bereft of the Lord's fostering care! So dissensions and divisions might rear their heads, and go far to break up the company. Already had such a danger been seen. A question had been debated among them, as to which of them should be the greatest in the kingdom of the heavens (Matt. 18:1); and even disputing had arisen with reference to it (Mark 9:34). And such a hold had that spirit got of individuals, that James and John, with their mother Salome, came, and asked, she being the mouthpiece, for the two best places of honour for her sons in the coming kingdom (Matt. 20:20). Such a spirit, though checked by the Lord each time it had appeared, might readily break out afresh, and bear bitter fruit, when He should be no longer with them on earth. For even on the night of that Supper there was a contention as to this matter among them (Luke 22:24). Hence the new commandment now given was opportune and needful. We quote it: "A new commandment I give to you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another" (34). His disciples they had been. His disciples they were to continue. As His disciples men had known them accompanying their Master in His movements in Galilee, Samaria, and Judaea. As His disciples they were still to be known; and that henceforth as loving one another, the new, the Divine nature seen active in each of them. Profession of faith, confession of a creed, would not settle the reality of discipleship, though a necessary part of it. But love to another would attest that Christ's word was hearkened to, His command obeyed. Truly the Lord loved them. So "as I have loved you" was the example put before them. The command followed, any attempt of the enemy to divide them would be defeated.

(Vv. 34, 35). Moreover the coming parting would mean that the disciples would be left without the powerful bond of the personal presence of the One they all loved. Hence the Lord gives a new commandment, "That ye love one another; as I have loved you." It has been suggested that the Lord speaks of this command as a new command, in contrast to the old command, well known to these Jewish disciples, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." The new commandment is, "That ye love one another as I have loved you." Christ loved with a love which, while never indifferent to evil, yet triumphed over all the power of evil. If we love one another after the pattern of Christ's great love, we shall not suffer evil in one another, but we shall find a way of dealing with the evil without ceasing to love one another. Nothing but the bond of love, after the divine pattern, will hold together a company of people each having a distinct personality, with different shades of character, and diverse temperaments.

And so here. The Lord had laid it down as a new and distinguishing commandment He was giving them in John 13. Here He repeats love to one another according to the pattern of His love to them. How pure and unbounded it was! Do we believe this as His will about us? Do we love as if we believed Him and appreciated His love? Can anything be more hollow, or dangerous, or nauseous than the highest words with low and inconsistent ways? "Gnosticism" ate out the heart of early Christendom, where it fell not into superstition and formality, ever growing more dark and cold; and the same spirit is yet more destructive now, because it has more abundant materials, and hardens itself in unbelief even to "Agnosticism." Loving one another, not merely those who think alike, least of all those who think alike on some comparatively small and external point, but loving those who are Christ's, spite of ten thousand things trying to our nature, is of all moment along with the truth, and guarded as it is here, loving one another as He loved us. He delights in love up to death.

Greater love none has than to lay down his life for his friends. The love of God in Jesus went infinitely beyond this; but then necessarily it stands alone, and it is meet that it should. We ought to lay down our lives for the brethren, as we are taught elsewhere. But where is the worth of such a theory if we fail in everyday going out of heart to common wants and sufferings of God's children (1 John 3:17-18)? The Lord at once binds love up with obedience, without which it is but self-pleasing, not having Him in it or before the soul. "Ye are My friends if ye do what (ever) I command you." It is not reconciling enemies He speaks of, but why He calls us His friends. Obedience is the character and condition. Nor does He here indicate how He stood as our friend when we were enemies, but He calls us His friends if we practise what He enjoins on His disciples.291

Thus things are followed to their full result, as we have seen them traced to their hidden sources before God. How different was all with Christ! "Hereby perceive we the love" … To add "of God" spoils the sentence. There is no ground for interpolating any words. But One showed such love, and He was man as surely as God. "Hereby perceive we the love, because he laid down his life for us." If you want to know what love is, look here. This was love indeed. "And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." The same life of which we live was in Him: ought it not to be exercised in similar love? We may not often be called to lay down our life for our brethren; but are there not plain, simple, common ways by which it may be tested every day? My brother may have need: it is no use talking about readiness to die for my brother, if I at once shrink back from meeting his ordinary and perhaps urgent necessity? There is nothing great here; it is homely, but how practical! How it puts the heart to the test, and one that might be presented any day of the week!

Many are spiritually deaf and do not hear such things. They have intentionally closed their ears to the things of Christ. But the Lord then spoke to those who would hear. He told them, "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you." Love is not merely having a kind feeling, but being genuinely concerned for the true, proper welfare of another If that person returns hatred, it is all the more reason to be concerned for him, for he needs special help. Doing good in return for evil is both rightly representing God and providing an example that should touch the hearts and consciences of others. This, and returning blessing for cursing, requires the lowly dignity of true faith, as do those things that follow, such as praying for one who acts despitefully (v.28). Our natural resentment is greatly modified by the power of the Holy Spirit when we allow Him to work in us ungrieved and unquenched (Eph.4:30; 1Thes.5:19).

To love our enemies, to pray for those that persecute, is wholly above the law or the duty of a people in the flesh. An Edomite or an Egyptian was not to be abhorred, and their children might enter into the congregation of Jehovah in the third generation; an Ammonite or a Moabite only in the tenth generation, like a bastard. But Christ brought in grace and truth. In the light of the Son of man all were lost, even the sheep of Israel. As He was come to seek and to save that which was lost, those that were His were to love their enemies and to pray for their persecutors. It was the mind of heaven for His saints on earth, applicable to them and to none but them. They receive life, His life, in receiving Him, and are called to show it thus. It is as incumbent now as when the Lord thus spoke; and His resurrection made it clearer and stronger, as the Holy Spirit when given made it of power. Thus were the disciples to be sons of their Father in the heavens.

Next we come, not to a definition of love, but to its qualities as in this world, specified for our instruction. It is what Christ was here, active as well as suffering in love above evil. "Love is long-suffering, is kind; love is not emulous, is not vainglorious, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeks not its own things, is not easily provoked, reckons not the evil, rejoices not over iniquity, but rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." (Vers. 4-7.) Patience in the midst of trial is the first-mentioned attribute of love, which even shows positive kindness instead of harbouring a vindictive thought. Again, as it does not indulge in envy or jealousy of another, so there is no self-display (or, as some think, forwardness), nor the arrogance whence it springs. Hence indecorum, or rude behaviour, is incompatible with love, as it is marked by disinterestedness and slowness to anger, and by readiness to forget the wrong that is done.

"This is my commandment that ye love one another, as I have loved you." If I look at the love of Christ for them, what I see in it is, that it was above all the wretchedness of the poor disciples - above all their failure. When I am not above a thing it acts upon myself, but when I am entirely above it I can think for it all, as well as with it. The Lord being above all the failure and wretchedness could, if a right feeling, feel with His disciples; if an infirmity, He could feel for them. He can enter into it all in a divine way, because of a divine mind; and with divine goodness, because He is above it all! His word to us is, "Love one another, as I have loved you." By clinging close to Christ, and learning from Him, we can love in the same kind of way in which He loved; and in this way we can recognise anything good, and of Him in our brethren, and learn to esteem others better than ourselves; that is what He expects - looks for in us. It is impossible unless we keep with Christ. What a path was His here! There never was such an isolated man as Christ, and yet there never was one who felt for others as He did.

And shall we he neglectful or find excuse for not obeying when He commands us, not simply by the word of command, but by His own most infinite love that gave Himself, saying, "This is My commandment, that ye love one another as I have loved you." But, Lord, is not the demand too great? How can we love one another as Thou hast loved us? Yes, but that is His command He does not say as much as, but after the same character. How has He loved us? He has loved us by going beneath all that we were that He might lift us into His love. And you and I, beloved saints, are to think of the members of His Body, of those for whom He died, wherever they may be on this wide earth, as objects very dear to Him, and to love them not in word only but in deed and in truth. Let us confess our poverty in such love. He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

Now it is especially in this character that Jesus, the perfectly instructed and wise Servant, holds Himself up to our imitation. "The disciple is not above his Master, nor the servant above his Lord: it is enough for the disciple that he be as his Master, and the servant as his Lord. If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more those of his household? Fear them not therefore." But there are two spheres of service, and although the same principles guide in both, yet the circumstances are so very different, as to give a different character to the service. The world and the church are the two places of service. The ministry of the Lord was chiefly confined to the former; for He came as the Servant of Jehovah to Israel — "He went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him." Here was active service, such as man could recognise, and in which He sought to hide Himself, that God might be glorified. It was attended too with present results, and had its value in measure appreciated by man. But if we look to our Lord's service in the church, we find it characteristically presented in one beautiful incident, leading Him to take a lower place than ever He had taken in His service in and to the world. "When Jesus knew that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end; — Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God and went to God; He riseth from supper and laid aside His garments, and took a towel and girded Himself: after that He poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded. So after He had washed their feet, and had taken His garments, and was set down again, He said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call Me Master and Lord, and ye say well: for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you. Verily, verily I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his master; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him. If ye know these things, happy are ye, if ye do them."