Love as I have loved you
The measure of the cross
Jesus gives his followers a commandment and sets its standard impossibly high: this is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you. The measure of the love we owe one another is not our own capacity, not what feels reasonable, not even how we love ourselves — it is how Christ has loved us. And he immediately shows what that love looks like at its summit.
Greater love has no one than this, he says, than to lay down his life for his friends. The love Christ commands is cross-shaped — self-giving to the point of laying down one's life. He is not asking us to love one another with a mild, convenient affection, but with the same sacrificial, self-emptying love he showed in going to the cross for us. As I have loved you sets the bar at Calvary.
This is daunting, but it is also the source as well as the standard. We are not asked to generate this love from our own resources, but to love one another out of the love we have first received from him; having been loved like this, we love like this. The cross is both the measure of the love we owe and the wellspring from which it flows. To love one another as Christ has loved us is the summit of life together — a love willing, if need be, to lay itself down. Whose good are you willing to put ahead of your own, even at real cost?
“This is my commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you.”
— Jesus, in the upper room — John 15:12 (WEB)
Love one another by the measure of the cross — the self-giving love Christ showed you — drawing it from the love you have first received from him.
“Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
We measure the love we owe others by what feels reasonable, convenient, or by how we love ourselves, missing that Jesus sets the standard at himself — love as I have loved you — a cross-shaped, sacrificial love. The interior work is to receive this both as the daunting standard, measured at Calvary, and as the source, since we love out of the love first received from him, enabled to love sacrificially because we have been loved that way.
This week, love someone by the cross's measure: put their good ahead of your own at real cost, drawing the strength to do so from the love Christ has shown you rather than from your own resources.
Self-protection sets the bar of love at the convenient, loving others only so far as it costs nothing and pulling back the instant it does. But the standard is the cross and the cross is also the source — and a soul that loves as Christ loved, drawing on the love it first received, pours out the self-giving kind that proves the gospel and binds the body together past any power that would fracture it.
Jesus sets the standard of love among his people not at what feels reasonable or convenient, but at himself: love one another as I have loved you. And he shows what that means at its height — greater love has no one than to lay down his life for his friends. The love he commands is cross-shaped, self-giving to the point of sacrifice, measured at Calvary rather than at our own comfort.
This would be crushing if it were only a standard, but it is also a source. We are not asked to manufacture such love from our own thin resources; we love one another out of the love we have first received from him. Having been loved all the way to the cross, we are enabled to love that way in turn. The cross is both the measure of the love we owe and the wellspring from which it flows. To love as Christ loved is the summit of community — a love willing, when needed, to lay itself down. Whose good are you willing to put ahead of your own, even at real cost?
- By what measure do I love others — my comfort, or the cross?
- Am I drawing my love from the love I have first received from Christ?
- Whose good am I willing to put ahead of my own, even at real cost?
Lord, I measure the love I owe others by my own comfort, when you command me to love as you have loved me, all the way to the cross. Let me draw that self-giving love from the love I have received from you, and love your people willing, if need be, to lay myself down. Amen.