“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-35 (Read John 13:31-35)

Before going to the cross to suffer and die for the sins of all, Jesus sought to prepare His disciples for the next phase of their discipleship — going out into the world and calling all to repentance and faith in Him as their crucified, risen and ascended Lord and Savior!

Their discipleship would be different because Jesus would not be visibly present with them but would ascend to the right hand of God the Father in heaven, a position of power and authority over all things that He might direct the ministry of His disciples and build and preserve His church, as promised in Daniel 2:44, a kingdom established by God that would supersede all the kingdoms of this world and endure forever.

Before returning to the Father, Jesus also gave His disciples a new commandment to guide them in their ministry, a command crucial to building the church: “As I have loved you, that you also love one another.”

How is this new? Jesus had already summarized the law by citing from the Old Testament Scriptures, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:37,39; cf. Deut. 6:5; Lev. 19:18). The difference between these commandments and the new commandment lies in the example of how we should love. Not only are we to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, but we are to love one another as Jesus loves us.

How has Jesus loved us? We see that love explained in Romans 5:6-8: “For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

In 1 John 4:10-11, we read: “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

Do you see Jesus’ point? We, as disciples and followers of Jesus, are to emulate Jesus’ sacrificial, patient, and enduring love for us in our dealings with one another. In fact, Jesus said, “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Since the goal of discipleship is to become like our teacher (cf. Luke 6:40; Rom. 8:29; Eph. 4:11-16), our goal is to be more and more like Christ Jesus as we grow in our knowledge of His great love for us, love that moved Him to take our guilt and punishment upon Himself and to die in our stead that we might turn to Him in faith and be pardoned and forgiven and given spiritual and eternal life through faith in His name.

This leads to the question: Do people recognize us as Christians, as followers of Christ, by our love for one another? Do we love one another as Christ has loved us? Do we live for others? Lay down our lives for others? Deal patiently with others? Forgive others? Seek the eternal welfare of others?

Sadly, it seems that Christians are often the worst when it comes to emulating the love of Jesus in their dealings with each other. We are often quick to judge and condemn, impatient, unloving, unforgiving, and self-serving. If Jesus loved us as we love others, He would have given up on us and condemned us to the fires of hell long ago!

How thankful we can be that Jesus’ love for us is far greater than our love for one another, that we are called to emulate Him rather than He to emulate us! Despite our unloving and self-serving nature, Jesus loved us, died in our stead on the cross to pay the just penalty for our sins, and now lovingly and patiently calls us to repent of our unloving ways and trust in Him and His cross for pardon and forgiveness. And He continues to work in us, His disciples, to cleanse us from our unloving ways and make us more and more to emulate His love in our dealings with one another.

Dear Lord Jesus, my loving and merciful Savior, let me see Your selfless love for me so that I might look to You for pardon and forgiveness and emulate Your love in my dealings with others. Amen.

[Scripture is quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Copyright © 1982 Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved.]