John 13 is a complex chapter about one really big idea: love. Specifically, Jesus’ love for his followers. The first half of the chapter gives a picture of the kind of humility Jesus carried himself with as he washed his disciples’ feet. In verses 21-30, Jesus showed extraordinary love to Judas, even as Judas was intent on handing him over to be executed.1 He shows equally extraordinary love to Peter at the end of the chapter.2
But he also makes a profound statement about love in John 13:34–35. In this, which comes immediately after Jesus told his disciples (again) about what was to happen, he gave them a charge for how they were to live after he returned to the father and while they awaited his return. He gave them a new commandment:
I give you a new commandment—to love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. Everyone will know by this that you are my disciples—if you have love for one another.
John 13:34–35, NET
What is “new” about this new commandment?
“Love one another.” This commandment is both incredibly simple and deeply profound. It is one clear enough that a toddler can memorize it, as one commentator has pointed out. But it is also so profound that we will spend our lives seeking to live according to it. But there’s a natural question here: what, if anything, is actually new about this commandment?
In terms of basic content, nothing. Jesus previously taught that the greatest commandments are to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength’ (Deuteronomy 6:5) and “…love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). All the Law and Prophets—all of Scripture’s commands—are summed up in these two commands (Mark 12:28–33; cf. Romans 13:8–10; Galatians 5:14).
So if we are expecting the content of the commandment to be new, we’re going to be disappointed. But there is something new here. It is the standard. “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (emphasis added).
Jesus’ love for his disciples was, and is, the standard. A higher standard than what we would naturally gravitate toward or acknowledge. Consider how the world around us—and even how we as Christians—use the word “love.” We use it to describe our affinity for a person. That kind of love is the sort that there is certainly nothing wrong with, but it’s not what Jesus was talking about.
He was talking about something much deeper.
How did Jesus love his disciples?
When Jesus talked about love in this passage, it came with it the idea of sacrificial service. And no one was more sacrificial than Jesus. Hearing the command, Jesus’ washing of their feet and declaring them clean (John 13:4–10) would have come to the Eleven’s minds, certainly. There’s also every other way he served them throughout their three years together. Jesus reached out to the lost. He healed the sick. He welcomed the outcast. And he went to the cross to die for us, for the forgiveness of our sins.
But his service didn’t stop there. (And still doesn’t.) After his resurrection, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to help, guide, and comfort us. And even now he prays for us us continually, always interceding on our behalf.
This kind of all encompassing love is what he calls all his followers to. Not that we would die as a sacrifice for sin, but that we would follow in his supreme example of sacrificial love.
This kind of love makes Christians distinct. This commandment doesn’t mean to merely love the people who are like us. It is loving people who aren’t like us. People who, by any other standard, wouldn’t know one another, but Jesus brings them together and calls them family, concerned for one another’s needs.
To suffer together when one suffers. To rejoice together when one is honored. As Augustine put it, to love:
not as those who are corrupt love one another, not as men love one another because they are men, but as they love one another because they are…sons of the Most High (Psalm 82:6), so that they may be brothers to his only Son, loving each other with the love with which he himself loved them, who will lead them to that end which may suffice for them, where their desire may be sated in good things (Psalm 103:5). For when God will be all in all, then nothing will be lacking to their desire (1 Corinthians 15:28).3
How do we reflect the new commandment?
That call to love one another is one that should encourage and convict us. When I think about my own church, for example, I’m grateful that we are a community that strives to be known for this kind of love. We’re not perfect by any stretch, but the love we have is real. And God is working through it.
I genuinely hope the same is true of your community as well.
But as much as we should be encouraged, it probably comes with some conviction. Yes, we love one another, but are there places where the Lord is calling us to grow? In what ways might we live out this call even more faithfully than we already do? In what areas are we struggling?
Ultimately, in this command we have an opportunity: To glorify God. Because that’s what our lives are to be about. We glorify God by obeying Jesus’ command. By loving one another as Jesus first loved us. And as we do, our communities will become healthier—and others will want to experience it as well.
- The article referenced and the one you’re reading are based on my message at Refuge Church in Franklin Tennessee, September 17, 2023. ↩︎
- Look for that in my next article. ↩︎
- Augustine of Hippo, Tractates on the Gospel of John 55–111, ed. Thomas P. Halton, trans. John W. Rettig, vol. 90, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1994), 51. ↩︎
