Jesus Commands Us to Love One Another as He Loves Us

David W Palmer

(John 13:33–35 NKJV) “Little children, I shall be with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come,’ so now I say to you. {34} A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. {35} By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.

Jesus was preparing his apprentices for his death: “Where I am going, you cannot come.” The season of having him present physically was drawing to a close. This was the reason he continued by saying, “So now I say to you …” The Master then commissioned his apprentices, graduating apostles, and new friends to obey a “new commandment”: “Love one another as I have loved you.”

At the beginning of John 13, the Holy Spirit narrated thus:

(John 13:1 NKJV) 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’s primary function with his “own” was to love them. He had trained them, led them, provided for them, and prepared them to replicate his ministry; but the Holy Spirit summarized it all with the words, “Having loved his own … he loved them to the end.” Jesus loved his disciples, and trained them to be like him.

Obviously, if Jesus trained them so he could send them as his Father had sent him, then he must have prepared them to love those they would disciple as he had loved them. This is highlighted in his one new commandment: “love one another as I have loved you.” Jesus’s role as the apprentice’s Master and the disciple’s Teacher was all done and fully completed within the constraints of love.

Through the apostle Paul, the Holy Spirit put it like this:

(2 Corinthians 5:13–15 NLT) If it seems we are crazy, it is to bring glory to God. And if we are in our right minds, it is for your benefit. {14} Either way, Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. {15} He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.

Paul recognized that if he were to “live for Christ,” then he could say: “Christ’s love controls us.” Being led by the Holy Spirit and living for Christ are the same thing. Either way, it equates to being led by God—who says of himself:

(1 John 4:8 NKJV) He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

God is love; if we allow Jesus to disciple us, then we will be coached, trained, and led by God’s love to be loving to each other:

(John 13:35 NKJV) “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.

I repeat; if Jesus is discipling us, we will display his depth of love for each other. Love is his style and the culture of his kingdom; it is the motivation and objective of his apprenticeship. What’s more, love is his one new commandment. Our Lord’s vision is that love be the hallmark and distinguishing factor of our life and ministry. In fact, he wants it to be so obvious and so abnormal that people can only draw one conclusion when they witness our love: “Those people are being discipled by none other than the Lord Jesus Christ himself.”

Jesus—God’s living word and gracious Lord—commanded us to love each other with his depth of love. Then he sent the Holy Spirit to enable us to do it:

(Romans 5:5 NKJV) … the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Born again Christians have many unique, distinguishing factors that contrast to the world’s culture; but God’s supernatural love is the standout. We have received God’s very own love, poured into our hearts by the Spirit of Holiness. With his help, we can be holy, and we can love as Jesus dreams.

What is the depth of the love that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are talking about?

(John 15:13 NKJV) “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”

The Holy Spirit—who knows the power and potential of the love he has poured into our hearts—applies it to us like this:

(1 John 3:16 NKJV) By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

While teaching in Bible College, one day I said to the students, “Turn to the person next to you and ask them if they would lay down their life for you.” After asking her friend, one young woman immediately yelled back, “She said she wouldn’t do it.” The first student was shocked to hear the honest confession of her companion. But we shouldn’t be surprised, because Jesus’s depth of self-sacrificing love is not appealing to our flesh. That’s why what I told the students to ask each other is a very confronting question.

Laying down our own lives for our brothers and sisters in Christ is very costly; we would have to give up our self-directed and self-pleasing choices to yield to meeting the needs of others. This is why Jesus said, “Count the cost,” before beginning to build your tower (Luke 14:28 NKJV). Paul must have seriously counted the cost, and weighed up the alternatives, before he came to the place where he could say:

(2 Corinthians 5:14–15 NLT) “… Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. {15} He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.”

And …

(Galatians 2:20 NKJV) “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me …”

Today, I believe Jesus is freshly challenging us: his command to love one another really is a command. He is our Lord; he owns us, and he has every right to direct our lives. Our response is not to try to find a way around this, or to seek justification for failing to lay down our lives for Jesus’s friends. On the contrary, our wisest response is first to accept that he expects us to obey his new commandment, and then to discover his way of fulfilling it.

We can obey Jesus’s command to love: his commands are carriers of grace—the power to obey them; and the Holy Spirit has already poured God’s own love into our hearts. Our role is to put our faith in Jesus’s gracious words, and to activate and externalize the full potential of what the Holy Spirit has poured into us.

Let’s adopt Jesus’s dream and the compelling, constraining, motivating factor of his discipling program—love. Jesus will love you to the end. Do you have the vision to love those you are discipling “till the end”? If so, his grace will enable you, and his love-pouring Holy Spirit will comfort, counsel, and help you.