I have been struggling for some time now about what it means to be crucified with Christ – to follow Him in the death of self: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, pick up his cross daily and follow me.” “The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”
These verses are at the core of the Christian life. They distinguish who are God’s children among we who claim Jesus Christ as Lord. And those words are a whole lot more difficult for some than for others. Last week we talked about where we might find Jesus. You felt strongly that Jesus can be found where His people are gathered, and you were right. Conversely, God’s people can be found where Jesus is – outside the gate of the world of commerce and industry. The followers of Jesus are strangers and aliens, engaging in the world of commerce and industry but not being of the world of commerce and industry.
I don’t know about you, but these words hit me where I live. Be aware that the world of commerce and industry thrives at every place in human life, even in a prison. We might say especially in a prison. The world of commerce and industry is a world in which we use power and money to gain influence, and we use our influence to gain more power and money. It is trusting in the arm of flesh rather than in the hand of God.
In
What we are going to consider today is a different slant on the person and work of Jesus Christ that moves Christians on from the OT to the New. This is a rather subtle distinction that makes all the difference in the world. If you are afraid of being a NT Christian and would prefer to be under the law, we are going to try and encourage you this morning to look at God’s grace in a different light.
The question we are going to wrestle with today is, “What is new about the commandment to love one another?
As a background, we turn to the 12th chapter of Mark. Jesus is debating the Resurrection with the Sadducees who did not believe in the Resurrection. They create this scenario of a woman whose husband dies, leaving her with no children. Since the essence of marriage among the ancient Jews was the producing of offspring, and since it was customary for a widow to marry the brother of her husband, this woman married 6 brothers, having no children by any of them. Their question to Jesus was, “Teacher, at the Resurrection (in which they did not believe), whose wife will she be, since the 7 were married to her (and there were no children)?”
Jesus’ answer is in Mark 12:24 – one verse: “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?” They thought they knew the Scriptures. They had searched the words of God and missed the Word of God. They knew something of God or about God, but they knew nothing of the whole counsel of God. Jesus’ answer to them is the same as it is to us who presume to understand what God is doing and when He is going to do it: “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.”
How often I have written about and preached about the root problem with American Evangelicalism – the failure to know the whole counsel of God and the refusal to bow to His absolute sovereignty. This morphs into a belief that we can bring in the
Jesus is talking here with OT scholars who cannot get beyond the do’s and don’ts of legalistic religion – who want to find within themselves something good so that they can earn eternal life. They want to look good to others and somehow believe that God can also be fooled. Just like what we find in prison, they want to think that there is some gradient of goodness and that somehow God draws a line in the middle of the sin spectrum and says, “Everything to the left of this line is bad sin; everything to the right of this line is good sin.” They have forgotten that God cannot look on sin of any kind.
Another OT guy comes up to Jesus and, hearing the debate, asks Him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” Jesus tells him, “The most important one is ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
The response of this OT guy is this: “Well said, Teacher. You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.” “More important,” we might add, than all the politics and all the parachurch ministries and all our own efforts to try and persuade ourselves that we are holy because we are not abortionists and not homosexuals. That should be fairly easy for most of us, I would think.
The point is this: This OT guy knew that love of God and love of neighbor was the summation of the Ten Commandments. If we love God, love of neighbor should come naturally. We will want for our neighbor the best of what we want for ourselves, especially if that neighbor is considered to be either our enemy or a weak Christian.
What we need to understand here is that the commandment to love is an old commandment obvious to more OT types of guys. Jesus, however, takes this one step further. When He saw that this OT guy had answered wisely, He said to him these words: “You are not far from the
In other words, to understand and to adhere to the commandment to love was short of but not far from the
Jesus is acknowledging that the commandment to love was an old command. Here in the 13th chapter of John, however, He makes it clear that He is giving His disciples a new command that, on its surface, is identical to the old command: “A new command I give you: ‘Love one another.’”
There is a sea-shift in context here. In the previous example, Jesus is sitting around debating with a bunch of OT guys. In this example, He makes clear in v. 31 that the line of demarcation is this very moment: “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him.” There is a sea change in the simple word, “love.” That sea change is a change in the meaning of the word. The glorification of God through and in Jesus Christ is the shift that changes the way we look at love. Put very simply, the difference between the OT guys and the NT guys is the meaning of the word “love.” The difference between being not far from the
For our OT Christian friends, then, who somehow prefer to depend on the old interpretation of the word love, they tend to put the Kingdom away somewhere and want to do a rain dance on the
Jesus demonstrates this new interpretation of love by washing the feet of His disciples. You will recall that Peter, as an OT guy, wanted no part of that. Jesus tells him that, “Peter, unless I wash you, you have no part of me…I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is the messenger greater than the one who sent him.”
The example Jesus gave them was that they were to abase themselves and lower themselves as did He. Jesus was their Master – their teacher and Lord. Yet, here He was being a servant to His servants. Unless they, and we, are willing to permit God, in the person of Jesus Christ, to become our suffering servant, we will have no part of Him. The believer in Jesus Christ, then, should not be focused on being better than others but must focus on getting under others. That’s what it means to follow Jesus.
So what does the glorification of God in Christ Jesus do to make new this old commandment to love? What is novel about this new commandment, and what is the spirit of this new commandment to love one another?
What is it that would propel the Apostle Paul to cross oceans, not to conquer other nations, but to spend himself? On they went, a glorious band of brothers, over oceans, through forests, through dungeons to the throne of the human heart. Vast armies of ants moved across nation after nation, drowned in thousands of rivers, burned to a stake, consumed by wild animals, always to be replaced by fresh hordes of others. Why would they do this?
In the new command is a new voice in human history that was like no other voice before – the cry of a young church branching out from
The old commandment to love your neighbor was to the Jew a love of fellow Jews, narrowing down to his select friends. “Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy.” To the Gentile, then as now, the old commandment referred to friendship, patriotism, domestic relationships, etc. But Jesus gives us a new commandment.
“You have heard it said, ‘’Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies.’” We move from a close circle of friends, our country and our relatives to all the possible people in life with whom we have contact, whether we like them or not; whether we like their political affiliation or not; whether they are nice people or not.
We move from a law of obedience to a new principle. Christ’s new religion is not a law. It is a spirit. It is not a creed. It is a way of life. To the one principle of love, God has entrusted the whole work of winning the souls of His elect. The heart of man was made for love. Only in Christ can that heart expand. This new love, then, is the fulfillment of the law – the principle placed in our hearts by the HS that cannot be obeyed in the flesh.
The new commandment to love one another is the Easter message. We can love one another with an unconditional love because in Jesus Christ we have been showed how. We have met the living, loving God face-to-face. Because we have met Him face-to-face, we have been given the tools we need – the evidences – to love Him with all our hearts, minds, souls and strength. To love God that way empowers us to love our neighbor in a new way never before conceived by mankind.
The measure of that new command is “as I have loved you.” How has He loved us?
He gave all that He had to give. His love was not a sentiment. It was the giving of self, a concept unheard of in times past. The very fact that He was mocked from the foot of the cross with the words, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save,” proves the point. How could He, having saved others, keep for Himself what He has given? How can anyone live for self when he is living for others? These enemies were declaring the very principle of Christianity – the grand law of all existence – that only by losing self can you save others and yourself.
What that means for us is letting go of our pseudo morality, our superior biblical understanding and our desire to be greater that others in order to save them. We want to be above others so that we can reach down and rescue them. How He loved us, however, is to get beneath us and reach up.
Recall how Jesus fed the multitude: “I have compassion on the multitude because they continue with me now three days and have nothing to eat.” There is a tenderness there that we don’t often see. Unspoken is that Jesus Himself had had nothing to eat for 3 days. To His disciples He once said, “Come apart with me into a desert place and rest awhile.” While He Himself was overworked, His eye was on their welfare. From the cross we hear the words, “Son, behold your mother. Mother, behold your son.” Too exhausted to say more, His concern was for His mother’s welfare rather than His own suffering.
We live in a time when people are out to do great works. Someone once said that “All sin goes back to ‘I want to be somebody.’” The fact is that while many of us wait for great opportunities to do great works, life passes us by, and acts of love are not done at all. Opportunities for doing great things seldom occur. Life is made up of infinitesimals – little victories and little defeats. The sum of happiness in any given day is not the great things that happened but the small attentions, kind looks and charitable gestures that make the heart swell.
Inasmuch as we are to love as Jesus loved, we are left, of course, with the question of how Jesus loved. His was a love that was never thwarted by the unworthiness of those around Him. It was a love that human faults, desertion, denial and unfaithfulness could not dampen. It was a love that trusted Judas, even though Judas was committed to an act of treason against God at the very time he dipped in the same dish and managed the budget.
The Pharisees called Him “Good Master,” even while they plotted to have Him killed. The people shouted “Hosanna,” while 3 days later they were shrieking for His blood. A disciple was ashamed of Him and denied Him. Three fell asleep while He was sweating drops of blood in the
In a day in which we have all learned not to trust anyone until they have earned that trust, the only preservation from this withering of the heart is love. Love is the ultimate fount of strength. The Savior loved His disciples infinitely more than they loved Him because His heart was larger. His was a love that knew that once you and I were exposed to its power, it would be irresistible.
The only way that power could be seen, however, was in obedience to the Father. In the Resurrection we have love made effective. Because He lives, love trusts on – ever hoping; ever longing; ever expecting. His last prayer was for the hope of the race who had rejected Him so that we also might hope in love for our enemies.
The way, then, to life abundant, is to hold fast to that kind of love commanded of us who have witnessed the glorification of the Father in and through His Son, Jesus. We win by serving; we conquer by forgiving. We are strong by being meek in an overbearing world.
Go forth, then, children of the Cross. Carry everything – your own cross – before you daily. Win victories for God, not through politics or military might or power or money but through the conquering power of a love like His. That is the spirit of the new definition of an old command – “love one another as I have loved you.”
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