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This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.
(John 15:12)
Scriptures to explore: John 15:9; Romans 5:8
There is a common pattern within every area of Christian growth. It begins with us not knowing Jesus Christ nor being influenced by him. We do not listen or submit to him. Jesus is unknown to us. That is where everyone starts. What we need is to be transformed by the gospel. Without the transformative work of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, we will never live for Christ and thus we will not live like Christ. Nor will we ever love like Christ. Human beings were designed to love. We were designed to receive love and express love. First and foremost, we were designed to love God. Secondly, we were designed to love others, those whom God created. But in our fallen, sin filled, self-centered nature, it is impossible to love as we were designed. We traded love of God for unbelief and disobedience. We chose to rebel against God rather than love Him. Our fallen form of love is not the biblical form revealed through Christ. To have that kind of love, the type Jesus has, we need to be born again. Only then can we even begin to love as Christ loves. Apart from Christ, real love is not found in our lives.
Loving as Jesus loves requires that we encounter, and consider who he is. Once we conclude that Jesus is whom he claimed to be, our life changes. As we discover Christ, we grasp the message of God's love for us, embodied in the truth that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. We accept that long before we were born into this world of sin, Christ died for sinners, which includes us. We begin paying close attention to Jesus. Transformation is taking place within us, sometimes to our surprise and amazement. We see more clearly that our heart has been far from God and begin grasping His love. Our transformation is the result of the Holy Spirit coming to dwell within us. The Spirit stirs a desire within us to be more like Christ and to love as he loves. We are no longer the same person we had been. We are not yet the person God is forming us into, but changes are taking place and we know Christ's love. We find the love of Christ changing the way we love others. For example, we note how Jesus loved his disciples and we start loving others like he did. In Jesus we discover that love is not an emotion or a feeling, but a continuous choice.
In Jesus' day, Jewish tax collectors were despised by the Jewish community. They were considered to be among the worst of sinners since they collected taxes for the Roman Empire from their own people. They would collect more than owed to the government in order to make themselves a profit. Since they were ostracized they figured they would live in financial comfort. Tax collectors had a bad reputation and Matthew was a tax collector when Jesus met him. How did Jesus show love to Matthew? First of all, Jesus spoke to Matthew when there was no need to do so, violating a cultural norm. What did Jesus say? He invited Matthew to join him, to become one of his disciples, when He said, "Come. Follow me" (Matthew 9:9). No respected teacher in that day would have chosen someone like Matthew to be a follower. But Jesus didn't stop with the invitation, he attended a party Matthew threw, whose guest list included other tax collectors and sinners. The religious leaders in particular were angry with Jesus because he was hanging out with such people (Luke 5:29-30). Yet Jesus demonstrated his love by befriending such cultural outcasts. He not only befriended Matthew, but Jesus also selected him to be an apostle (Luke 6:13-16), bringing heat from others and showing how he loved Matthew. As we mature in Christ, we encounter people whom our culture rejects. They may be the unpopular at work, school, in our neighborhood or even in our church. They are the outcasts, people with bad reputations. They are the ones in whom others see no value. Knowing the love of God and how Jesus laid down his life for us, we choose to love those others reject. When we lived in selfishness, being more concerned about our reputation and being accepted, we did not love like Jesus. But having been transformed in Christ, we now choose to love as Jesus does. We willingly allow our own reputation to be tarnished by those who do not know Jesus so that we may reflect the love of Christ. We love those rejected in our culture and point them to Jesus. We love like Jesus, recognizing that he loved his disciples even though it hurt his reputation with some people.
Thomas, a disciple about whom we do not have many details, is known best for one incident that highlights Jesus' love for him. Following his resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples but Thomas was not there (John 20:24). When Thomas finally showed up, the disciples told him they had seen Jesus who had risen from the dead. But Thomas did not believe them. He said he would only believe if he could see Jesus for himself and put his fingers into the nail imprints in Jesus? body (John 20:25). The next time Jesus came to his disciples Thomas was present. Jesus knew that Thomas had doubted their report and claimed that he would only believe if he could put his fingers into the holes that scared Jesus? body. When he appeared, Jesus didn't get on Thomas? case for not staying with the other disciples. Jesus didn't lay a guilt trip on him about his doubts. Instead, he simply invited Thomas to see for himself. He offered his nail pierced hands and his side for inspection (John 20:26-27). Jesus loved Thomas through his doubts and Thomas was convinced and moved to a deeper faith (John 20:28-29). As we mature in Christ, we come across people whose faith is weak. In their weakness they let us down, perhaps at critical moments. Their doubts may cause problems with other followers. They are not able to grasp things that guide more mature believes. As a result, tensions can develop and relationships may become strained. Had we encountered such people previously, in our selfishness we would have abandoned them or found ways to show them the frustration and pain they cause. But being in Christ and learning to love as Jesus loves, we choose to give ourselves for the sake of others (I Corinthians 10:24). The motivation for such love is so that God might be known and glorified through us, and those who are weak in faith or without faith may come to know Christ and live for him (I Corinthians 10:31-33). Our focus is not on ourselves, but God.
Peter was the disciple who was quick to speak boldly. One moment Peter recognized that Jesus was the Christ, the next he denied what Jesus said about things to come (Mark 8:29-32). On the night Jesus was betrayed Peter said that he would go to his death with Jesus even though Jesus had just told his disciples that they would all scatter that night (Matthew 26:31-35). Peter was the guy with his foot in his mouth who just didn't get it. How did Jesus love Peter? He loved Peter with warnings of the things about to take place. He told Peter that even though Peter was about to reject him, that he had prayed that Peter's faith would not fail (Luke 22:31-32). Jesus loved Peter even when Peter operated with false presumptions. Jesus showed his love by always speaking the truth to Peter, often catching him off guard. Perhaps the most significant demonstration of love came after Peter had denied Jesus three times. Peter must have felt horrible, especially after Jesus was crucified and buried. But following his resurrection, Jesus didn't deny Peter. Since Peter had denied he knew Jesus three times, he restored Peter by allowing him to affirm his love three times (John 21:15-19). Jesus took the initiative to restore the relationship. He didn't wait for Peter to come to him, he went to Peter. As we mature in Christ, we learn to respond in love to those who do not understand what we are doing. Because we love them, we always speak the truth in an honest and loving way. We correct situations without beating them up. In loving like Jesus, we seek to restore relationships, even when we did not cause the problem. We are not concerned with finding fault, but expressing love. In our fallen view of love, we would stop loving others if we do not get what we want out of the relationship. In that state, we would expect the other person to come make things right with us. But in Christ, we approach others from a completely different perspective. We realize that God took the initiative to redeem us from our fallen state in order to bring us back into a right relationship with Him. Therefore, we love those who do not get it and speak before they think, just like Jesus.
One of the most striking examples of love is seen in the way Jesus interacted with the man whom he said would end up betraying him. Though Jesus knew of Judas? betrayal from the beginning (John 6:70-71), he still selected Judas to follow him and never sent him away. What's more, Jesus gave Judas a key responsibility among the disciples, for it was Judas who handled the group's money (John 12:4-6). Only in hindsight did the apostle John recognize that Judas was a thief (John 12:6). Furthermore, nothing suggests that the disciples realized that Judas would betray Jesus (John 13:26-29). If they had known, they would have likely taken things into their own hands to stop him. That means that Jesus did not give his disciples any specifics about who would betray him. He never played one disciple against another or asked them to stop Judas. Jesus gave Judas no reason to betray him, nor did he do anything to stop Judas. When Judas went to carry out his plan, Jesus told him to do it quickly (John 13:27). When Judas brought the armed crowd to arrest Jesus, Jesus did not resist even when greeted with a kiss (Matthew 26:47-50; Mark 14:43-45; Luke 22:47-48; John 18:2-5). Jesus showed love for Judas even though he knew he would be betrayed by him. Loving those who harm us is one of our greatest acts of grace of a mature Christian. Only in Christ can we possibly love the one who, for whatever reason, wants to be the means of our undoing. Unlike Jesus, we probably will not see it coming. We may even be blindsided by their words and actions. Our response isn't based on the severity of what the other person does or says, it is based on our being in Christ and loving others as Christ loved Judas. Our being in Christ enables us to see things from a different perspective, an eternal perspective. We do not have to fear the one who can kill our body but when they have done so cannot destroy our soul (Matthew 10:28). No, we love those whom would hurt us. We do not put ourselves in harm's way. But when someone does harm us, we do not harm them or seek revenge. How can we love this way? Because of Christ's love! We realize that selfishness could lead us to be a Judas to Jesus or to anyone else when we pursue our own interests. But as a mature Christian, we are concerned about the interests of Christ. We are concerned more about the other person's soul than our own body. If they lose their soul, it will not be because we did not demonstrate the love of God to them.
Then there is the man named Saul, better known as Paul. In some ways, Paul was like Peter in that he thought he had things all figured out and he went about doing what he thought was right. In some ways Paul was like Matthew. Following his transformation he was not initially trusted by the disciples because of the harm he had done to them. And he was no longer accepted by the Jews because he had betrayed them by becoming a follower of Jesus. Paul can even be compared to Judas in that he caused pain and suffering to Christ's followers; some were killed for their faith as a result of his efforts. Paul was a man whom we might classify as hopeless. Yet, Jesus selected Paul for the key role of taking the gospel to the ends of the earth by going to the Gentiles. Paul was not a disciple during Jesus? life, though he was present when a disciple named Stephen was stoned to death (Acts 7:58). He worked to destroy the early church, saying later that he thought he was completely devoted to God at that time (Galatians 1:13-14; Philippians 3:5-6). Then in an encounter that radically transformed his life, Jesus appeared to him and told him that he was persecuting Jesus by hunting down his followers (Acts 9:1-5). Jesus could have chosen anyone, but chose a man aggressively persecuting his church. Paul received mercy and grace, and was given the commission to take the gospel message to the Gentile world (Acts 26:16-18). He knew he had been selected only because of God's mercy, not his own efforts. Though he once believed he was on the right track, he realized that everything he had valued was worthless in comparison to knowing Jesus Christ (Philippians 3:8-11). Years later he said that, as the foremost of sinners, he had found mercy so that Christ could demonstrate his perfect patience in him (I Timothy 1:15-16). In Paul we see Christ's love and redemption for the totally misguided. Jesus loved Paul. When we love those who fight against us, those who persecute us, we are loving like Jesus, who chose to love Paul and gave him a kingdom job. We do not know who will undergo transformation and follow Jesus, so since we do not know, we choose to love even those who are hostile to us, praying that they will be radically transformed and join us. In our fallen condition, we could not fathom such an idea. It seemed ludicrous. But knowing and experiencing Christ's love, it now seems ridiculous not to love those who fight against us. We choose to love them like Jesus loves.
Jesus loved his disciples. His love for them wasn't based on what they did, but on who he is and how he chose to relate with them. He expected their love to mirror his love for them, as he explained in one of his last commands (John 13:34; John 15:12). Not only were they to love one another for their own benefit, but by loving one another all people would know that they were his disciples (John 13:35). Loving like Jesus would transform relationships and reveal the truth of the gospel. Jesus had brought together people who would not normally associate with each other. He chose people who would not have chosen to share life or love one another. He chose people that the culture deemed unworthy of the honor of following a teacher, people such as Peter, Matthew, and Thomas who were just a sample of those watching and listening to him. But even more significant is that this ragtag group remained together once Jesus was no longer with them. Furthermore, their acknowledging Paul as a disciple was clearly a point of growth and trust for them (Acts 9:26). Ultimately they recognized Christ working in and through him. Their unity in Christ was evident, enabling them to love one another as Christ loved them. As we mature in Christ, we live in light of Jesus? command to love one another. We love like Christ. It can certainly be challenging, even painful at times. It may cost us to do so, yet Jesus said there is no greater love than to lay down our life for someone else (John 15:13). While we may not be taken to the point of death as Jesus and other disciples have throughout the centuries, we do lay down our life every time we choose to love in difficult situations. Loving like Christ impacts the way we interact with others. We reach out to those the culture rejects because we see them with Christ-like eyes. We are patient with those who are weak in faith, even sacrificing our own rights for their sake if need be. Such love drives our response among those who do not understand or seem to get in the way of what the Lord is doing in and through us. Loving as Christ loved extends radical grace and love to those who seek to betray us. Should a former enemy be transformed by the living Christ, we welcome and embrace that person as a brother or sister in Christ. Growing in Christ equips us to love one another as Jesus loves us. Loving like him becomes more and more natural as we experience his love and do what he says. We recall our transformation, never having imagined that we could even be capable of loving others as we do now. We are living like Christ, loving as he loves.
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