Love as Jesus Loves

Having loved his own who were in the world he loved them to the end.

A new command I give you: Love on 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 13.1,34-35

Josh Moody:

They are the church, the community of God, the family of God. And they are to show that by the love they have for each other. This new community is to be expressed by this new love—the love for each other that has been the mark of God’s people from the beginning [Lev 19.18] is now given specifically to Christians as their special sign and distinguishing aspect.

We can have many different programs and initiatives and techniques. But the sheer love of Christians has won more converts than any marketing campaign ever achieved. Our love comes straight from God himself, and displaying it fulfils our special new commandment. “Love one another.” Love the annoying person next to you at church. Love the person who sings loudly and flat. Love the person whose breath smells. Love the person whose social dexterity is borderline weird. Love the person who sins, even when the sin is against you (without loving the sin; hate that). “Love one another.” In this sense, the reality of Christ is proved by the love of Christians as it displays Christlike (v 1). 

F.F. Bruce put it like this: 

“The standard of the love which the disciples are to have one for another is the love which their Lord has lavished on them … If the Christian fellowship is marked by such love … then it will be recognized as the fellowship of Christ’s followers; it will bear the unmistakable stamp of his love. So Tertullian reports the pagans of his day (a century after this Gospel was published) as saying of Christians, ‘See how they love one another!’ And it was no merely superficial love that they spoke of, for they went on: ‘How ready they are to die for one another!’” (The Gospel of John, page 294) 

Is this what characterizes our churches today? Or are we more characterized by bickering over amendments to regulations and constitutions? Are our congregational meetings or parish councils marked by such love, or marked by a worldly suspicion of motives? Are we the kind of people of whom the non-Christians around us would say—begrudgingly, even while disagreeing with what we believe—that those are people who love each other? If not, it is time for us to pray that verses 34-35 would be the predominant attitude among our fellowships and churches. Rather than a new program or policy, it may be that the key missing ingredient in our attempts to win people to the cause of Christ is this: love.