“A new command I give you: Love one another.
As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”
JOHN 13:34
These four words summarize Jesus’ lifestyle and give us the secret of His influence. Jesus was notorious for His love. The words “how He loved him” were uttered by Jesus’ enemies, regarding His obvious concern for His friends—especially Lazarus, who had died.
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus…. When Jesus saw [Martha] weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled…. Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
JOHN 11:5, 33–36 (EMPHASIS ADDED)
In order to escape the crowds and persecution of Jerusalem, Jesus often retired to the home of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha, located in Bethany on the outskirts of Jerusalem. It is interesting that this observation—that Jesus loved His friends—is lodged in the story of Jesus’ raising Lazarus from the dead.
That Jesus loved deeply was evident. After arriving and finding Lazarus dead and Mary and Martha in mourning, He was “deeply moved.” He was “troubled.” He “wept.” Those observing the scene had only one response—”See how he loved him!” What a statement. If we hope to be healthy people with good relationships, we need to be like Jesus. We must be people of evident love.
Secret #3
Love.
Jesus is our model of healthy humanity, and He is the master of relationships. A quick read through the Gospels makes it clear—Jesus loved people.
When He saw the crowds, it broke His heart.
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
MATTHEW 9:36
Mark records Jesus’ interaction with a wealthy young man. He notes, “Jesus looked at him and loved him” (Mark 10:21, emphasis added).
For example, the apostle John was one of the most influential men in church history. Yet he chose always to refer to himself in one way—”the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7, 20).
Jesus had an expectation that His disciples would love others based on His love for them. Note how many times the word love is used in just one section of Jesus’ teaching on the vine and the branches:
As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. … This is my
commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends…. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
JOHN 15:9–10, 12–13, 17 ESV (EMPHASIS ADDED)
As His ministry moved to the climax of Calvary, Jesus’ dealings with religious leaders intensified. They began to question Him, hoping to trap Him in words and expose Him as a fake. Of course, they failed.
On one such occasion, the question had to do with the greatest commandment. The Old Testament includes more than six hundred, to which the Pharisees had added hundreds of others. How could Jesus pick just one? Even if He did, the Pharisees reasoned, it would devalue the others. They thought this approach would work.
Yet with piercing insight, Jesus answered their question and summarized the entire law in two commands, both focused on love.
When the Pharisees heard that [Jesus] had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.“
MATTHEW 22:34–40 ESV (EMPHASIS ADDED)
Jesus cut through the external trappings of religion and revealed the law of God in its purest sense: life is all about love.
Jesus commanded His followers to love one another:
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
JOHN 13:34–35 (EMPHASIS ADDED)
Note that He said that we are to love one another as He has loved us. Jesus loves us with an absolute, amazing, astounding, unearned love. His love is very precious—and was extremely costly. He loved us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8).
You and I can consistently have such love only by allowing Him to love others through us. It is a fruit of His Spirit that springs forth as we yield our lives to Him (Galatians 5:22–23).
The command to “love one another” must become our lifestyle. It is so significant that it is repeated ten times in the New Testament. (John 13:34–35; 15:12, 17; 1 John 3:11, 23; 4:7, 11–12; 2 John 1:5). Peter and Paul also remind us of this important command (Romans 13:8; 1 Peter 1:22; 4:8).
Every Christian is obligated to love others because that’s what we’ve been commanded by Jesus. Every person who wants to enjoy better relationships will love others, because that is the example set by Jesus. So we might reasonably ask: What does it look like to love people as Jesus has loved us? Consider five descriptions of love.
Love, like faith, does not exist until it is expressed. Jesus expressed His love for His disciples by taking action and washing their feet.
Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end…. Jesus… rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.
JOHN 13:1, 3–5 NKJV (EMPHASIS ADDED)
The love of Jesus was actively expressed. He actively served His disciples. Love is more than nice thoughts or words. It is active expression.
I admit that I used to struggle with loving others because I did not always feel like loving them. Then I noticed the command Jesus gave us to love our enemies. I realized that no one feels love for an enemy. Yet God can command us to love them because love is more than a feeling. It is a choice.
“But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you. To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also. And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who asks of you. And from him who takes away your goods do not ask them back.”
LUKE 6:27–30 NKJV (EMPHASIS ADDED)
Repeatedly God commands us to love each other. You can’t command an emotion. Love is not merely an emotion. It is a choice.
Recently I noticed a little prayer Paul offered in behalf of the Thessalonians.
May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for
each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.
1 THESSALONIANS 3:12 (EMPHASIS ADDED)
He prayed for their love to “increase and overflow.” This implies that love is something that can be developed and cultivated.
As an example, think of learning to play the piano. When you first start to play, you’re not very good. You are restricted to your beginner’s music. It does not come easily. Yet as you practice over and over, day after day, you improve. Your speed increases. You can take on more difficult assignments. You can branch off from the printed page.
You can learn to become better at loving others. Practice the principles of love and grow in your people skills.
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” JOHN 15:13 (EMPHASIS ADDED)
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.
And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.
1 JOHN 3:16 (EMPHASIS ADDED)
Jesus spoke of His love for His followers. He actively served them. But His love went beyond that. He also sacrificed His life for them. Those with effective relationships love others with a sacrificial, often costly, love.
Generous sacrifice is a great expression of friendship and love. Love is a matter of giving, not getting. Too often people talk about relationships in terms of what they get as opposed to what they give. Real love is not selfish; it’s sacrificial. It’s not taking for me, it’s giving to you.
Love is costly. It carries the price tag of time, effort, vulnerability, humility, and self-denial. Laying our lives down for others may not mean that we physically die for them, like Jesus did for us. But it does mean letting ourselves be used up for others. It will cost us. But ultimately it’s worth it.
I don’t know if it’s a true story, but my pastor used to tell a beautiful tale of a little boy whose sister needed a blood transfusion. The doctor explained that she had the same disease the boy had recovered from two years earlier. Her only chance of recovery was a transfusion from someone who had previously conquered the disease. Because the two children had the same rare blood type, the boy was an ideal donor.
“Would you give blood to your sister?” the doctor asked.
The little boy hesitated. His lower lip started to tremble. Then he smiled and sighed, “Sure, for my sister.”
Soon the two children were wheeled into the hospital room. The sick sister was pale and thin. Her brother was stronger and healthy. Neither spoke, but when their eyes met, he grinned at her.
As the nurse inserted the needle, the smile faded from his face. He anxiously watched the blood flow through the tube.
When the ordeal was nearly over, the little boy’s quavering voice broke the silence. “Doctor, when do I die?” he gulped. “Will it be much longer?”
Only then did the doctor realize why the little boy had been hesitant at first. He thought that giving his blood to his sister would mean giving up his own life. In a moment he had made the decision to give the blood—because he loved his sister with a costly love.
Charles Colson was one of President Nixon’s cabinet members who went to jail in the Watergate scandal. There he met God and began a marvelous ministry to prisoners.
Years later, a letter came to Colson’s Prison Fellowship headquarters. An inmate in New Hampshire was asking the staff to “please pray for Grandma Howell, ‘cause she’s sick and may be going to die. Nobody has ever loved me like she has. I just wait for her letters, they mean so much.”
A few months after that, Prison Fellowship received a letter from Grandma Howell herself, in which she asked Charles Colson to someday speak at her funeral. When Colson wrote back, he discovered she was a ninety-one-year-old woman who kept up correspondence with as many as forty prisoners at a time.
One day Colson got the opportunity to be in her area of Georgia. Looking forward to finally meeting her, he was shocked to find that she lived in one of the dreariest nursing homes in the state. As he entered the soot-covered building, he was sickened by the number of people waiting to die. But when he visited her room, Colson found she was unlike the other residents he had seen. While they radiated death, she radiated life. This tiny, crippled, white-haired grandma lit up as she told Colson of the joy she felt spending her days sharing the love of God with prisoners through her letters. She went to them in the only way a crippled old woman could—by mail. She contacted them and connected with them. And they loved her for it.1
Reuben Welch writes, “When I began to love, care for, and become involved with people, I had more life, more tears, more laughter, more meaning, and far greater fun and joy than I ever had before.”2
List the names of ten people in your current sphere of relationships. Prayerfully think of ways you can actively show love to at least five of these people this week.
Notes