Love one another
The new commandment
The room is small and the hour is late. A borrowed table, the remains of a meal, thirteen men in the lamplight, and one of them about to be handed over to the dark. Jesus knows what the next hours hold, the betrayal already walking toward Him, the cross already cut and waiting. And out of all He could say in the little time He has left, He gathers everything into a single sentence His friends can carry the rest of their lives. This is my commandment, He tells them, that you love one another. Then He adds the part that takes the breath away, the measure that turns a kind instruction into something staggering: even as I have loved you. Not love as far as is comfortable. Not love the deserving. Love the way I am about to love you, all the way down to a cross. Decades later, an old man who had been in that room cannot get over it. If God loved us like that, John writes, then we too ought to love one another. The reconnection to a people does not begin where you might expect. It begins here, with a command, and its measure is a Savior who loved His own to the end.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you.”
— Jesus, in the upper room — John 15:12 (WEB)
“Beloved, if God loved us so, we also ought to love one another.”
Reconnect turns horizontal here, and it begins not with finding a people but with a command. On the night before the cross, Jesus distills everything into love one another, and sets the measure at His own love, all the way to a cross. To be re-rooted in a people starts here, with the new commandment, the costly, undeserved love by which the world recognizes whose we are.
You may be waiting to find the right people before you risk loving again, the community without sharp edges, the friends who will not let you down. Jesus reverses the order. Hear where Jesus actually starts. He does not say first locate the worthy and then love them; He lays a command on you and fixes its measure not to their worth but to His own love for you, even as I have loved you. That measure is steep, steeper than any of us can manage on our own. That steepness is also a strange freedom, for it lifts the whole weight off the question of whether anyone has earned it. You do not love because the people are safe enough or good enough. You love because you were first loved like that, at a cost you will never finish counting. Let the love you received in the upper room become the love you extend, slowly, even toward the ones who make it hard. This is the badge Jesus said the watching world would read. Not your rightness.
The Church can organize itself around almost anything, the right doctrine, the polished program, the commanding personality, and still miss the one mark Jesus actually named. On the night before the cross He made love for one another the badge by which a watching world would know His people, and across every age the Body has been recognizably His only where it loves with the costly, undeserved love it first received. Whole traditions have drifted into being known for their rightness, their power, their precision, and forgotten the measure He set, all the way to a cross. The evidence the world reads in the whole Church is not its opinions or its strength. It is its love.
People will fail the measure, and so will you. What does not fail is the love that set the measure, a Savior who loved His own all the way to the end and the cross. That love came before your loving and holds it up. You give it because you were first given it, and the giving will never exhaust the supply.
- Am I waiting to find worthy people before I love, when the command was given before any of them earned it?
- What would change if the measure of my love were not whether others deserve it but how I have already been loved?
- Who is the hard one, the person who makes the new commandment cost me something, and what would loving them look like this week?
Lord, I have been waiting for safe and worthy people before I risk loving again. You did not wait. You loved me all the way to a cross before I deserved a thing. Let that love I received become the love I extend, even to the ones who make it hard. Make Your love the badge others read in me. I cannot manage the measure alone, so love through me. Amen.