This sermon explores Jesus’ new commandment to love one another as he has loved us, using the analogy of a ‘real ID’ to signify true discipleship. It challenges listeners to move beyond self-centeredness and cultural definitions of love, embracing the sacrificial and transformative love exemplified by Christ.
Transcript
If you open your Bibles with me this morning to the Gospel of John, chapter 13. Many things take place in chapter 13. We are going to focus on just the last part of this. We are going to read verses 33 to 35 as our text this morning. This is coming from the Lord Jesus. He is with his disciples and he has just shared the Lord’s table with them. This is the night before his crucifixion. He tells them, beginning in verse 33, this is God’s holy word.
Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You will seek me, and as I said to the Jews, now I also say to you, where I am going, you cannot come. A new commandment I give to you, that you are to love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
Let us look to the Lord and ask the blessing on the reading of his word.
Father, we are so grateful to you for your great mercy for us. We thank you for the work of Christ our Savior. We thank you for his great examples of love, for his great love that he has shown us, for the great love that you have shown us. We thank you that you love us with a love that is unimaginable because it is not a love that is earned. It is a love that just freely flows from your nature of love. Help us today to grasp a little more of this love, to understand it, to appreciate it. Father, by the grace and power of your Holy Spirit, to apply the truths of Jesus’ words to our lives, so that we love in some measure in the same way that Jesus loves. Help us with this, we pray, in the name of our Savior, the Lord Jesus, and for his glory, we pray. Amen.
The Real ID of a Disciple
A few months ago, back in the first of November, I went to the Division of Motor Vehicles and renewed my driver’s license. I have it here. It looks a lot like my other driver’s license, except I have changed just a bit. I think this is good for six or more years. It is good for a good while yet. The only significant difference between this thing is that up here in this corner, I have a little star. It is a little star on my driver’s license, and that makes this a real ID. It is a real ID. A few years ago, some of the states started allowing non-citizens to get driver’s licenses, even though they were not legal citizens. It was just less of a hassle for the state. So they let them get driver’s licenses. So it was impossible then to use a driver’s license to identify you as a citizen. So next month, in just a week or so, if you fly somewhere in the United States, you are going to get on an airline, like Jessica did a few weeks ago when she took that little hop up to Pennsylvania. You have to either have a real ID, like that little star on the corner of your driver’s license, or you have to have a passport with you. You have to have something to prove that you are a US citizen.
I was thinking about that. Wouldn’t it be great if in our churches we could have a way of saying, “Can you give me a real ID that you belong truly as a citizen of the Kingdom of God?” Wouldn’t that be a terrific thing? Because the truth is, in our churches, all too often, you might have what Jesus called a wolf in sheep’s clothing. There is that in the Bible. The Bible refers to that as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. A person who appears to be a Christian and yet they are not. There are many examples of that in the world. A few years ago, a man who had had an exemplary life, who was homeschooled in a Christian family, and he established, grew up, he wrote books, Christian books. I never found any error in his theology that I read. It all seemed pretty wholesome. He founded a church which became part of a movement of churches, multiple churches across the United States, significant ministry. Then he apostatized, turned away from the faith. He did enormous damage. Enormous damage. It is hard to figure that out. Wouldn’t it be great when you are going to hire a pastor, you could say, “Do you have this identifying mark? Do you have a real ID that tells me that you are a true believer, a true disciple, a true citizen of God’s Kingdom?” That would be a wonderful thing to have.
Understanding the New Commandment
As we get into this chapter, it reminds me of the Lord Jesus when he was talking. A lawyer came up to Jesus at one point, back in Mark’s Gospel in chapter 12, a year or so ago, we were looking at that. The content there is similar to what Jesus is saying here, so I wanted to refresh your memory of that. A lawyer comes up to Jesus. He is a very shrewd fellow, and he is putting Jesus to the test, and he says to Jesus, “What is the greatest commandment of all? Of all the commandments that you find in the Old Testament, what is the greatest?” Jesus immediately quotes two passages from the Old Testament, from the books of Moses. First, Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might.” Then he quotes Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus says, “If you do these two things, all the law, all the rest of the law of God in the Old Testament, hangs on those two laws. If you fulfill those two laws, you fulfill all the rest of those two laws.”
That is it. It is interesting, isn’t it? That is what we are to be doing, and how we fail to do that. It is the greatest of commandments. I remember I came across, I was reading Martin Luther sometime ago, a quote from him, a passage from him that is talking about this very thing, how he realized, “This is the greatest of commandments.” If you fail to keep the greatest of commandments, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, you have broken the greatest of commandments. Yet, you think about your life, and you think, “Am I living my life in this way, loving God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength?” Have I done that? Have I done that for a year? Have I done that for a month? A day? Have I done it really completely for five minutes in my life? With all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. We love the Lord, and we love the Lord because, really, of what I was talking about last week. We catch a glimpse of his goodness and his beauty. We catch a glimpse in the Gospel, in what Christ has done for us, and we see how gloriously wonderful he is. So our heart is drawn to him. We love him, and we do love him. But do we love him in that ultimate way?
Then there is that second part, to love your neighbor as yourself. In the upper room, just to give the setting of the passage, this is the very last thing of Jesus’ ministry on earth, just before the crucifixion. It takes place in the upper room, and Jesus has just washed his disciples’ feet, and he shared the Last Supper with his disciples. Judas has been identified as a traitor, and he left into the night to do his evil deed. Then it was in those last moments with his disciples, these men that he truly loved, that he spoke this really most important word, the most important words that he could speak. That is these words that we have just read. He tells them, “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you love one another.”
This is his final lesson. So we should treat it with some real respect when we come to it. We should think about it. The command is, “Love one another.” It is a very simple narrative passage, and I do not think I have to spend a great deal of time interpreting it, do I? We can mostly understand what these words mean. But there are a couple of questions maybe you could ask. What does Jesus mean by “disciple”? What does that word “disciple” mean? That might be important. Why does he call it a new commandment? Didn’t we just read pretty much the same thing from the Old Testament, the book of Leviticus, that he cites to the lawyer? Why is it a new commandment?
We are going to think about that just a little bit. First, what does “disciple” mean here? This is what a true disciple does, shows who is real. But what does a “disciple” mean? Is it a Christian? Is that the same thing? I think if you look at John’s Gospel, there is some good direction in what “disciple” means. If you think about this word historically, it can help us understand what “disciple” means, and I think that is important. Because they did not use the word “Christian” when Jesus was speaking here. In fact, the word “Christian” is only used three times in the Bible. It is introduced to us in the book of Acts, and it is mentioned one time by Peter, twice in Acts and once in Peter. You might remember the verse, “They called them Christians first at Antioch.” Christian means a little Christ. It was the outsiders, no doubt, who were referring to these people who were followers of Jesus, referred to them as Christians. It was probably a put-down or something that they thought was funny. But it became the word that was adopted. If you suffer for being a Christian, Peter says, that is a good thing. Do not worry about that.
The primary word for a follower of Jesus was this word “disciple.” In John’s Gospel, we get some ideas about what that means. A disciple is someone who trusts Jesus. There was a time when many of Jesus’ followers turned away from him, back in chapter 6 of John’s Gospel. Jesus turns to his 12 and he says, “Are you going to turn away from me too?” Peter says to him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have believed and we have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.” That is a disciple. That is a disciple, one who trusts and believes and knows who Jesus is. He is the Holy One of God. A disciple is one who abides in the word of God. In chapter 8, Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed in him, they had believed in him. Jesus says, “If you continue in my word, then you are truly disciples of mine.” So a person who abides, is faithful in the word of God, is a disciple.
In John chapter 15, Jesus gives that analogy of the vine and the branches. In verse 8, it says, “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples.” So one of the ways that you demonstrate that a disciple is shown is through the fruit-bearing that they give. All of those are qualities of disciples, but basically, a disciple is the person who follows Jesus, who has a relationship with him, who, for us, is the person who has been redeemed, washed by his blood today. The person who belongs to him is a disciple of Jesus. So people who are not a disciple may claim to be, but they are not necessarily people who fail to have a true relationship with him.
So that is that one question, and I would say that basically it means the same thing that we mean today when we are talking about a true Christian. A true disciple is a true Christian. It is essentially the same thing. There is the other question, and that is, it is interesting, why does he call it a new commandment? Why is this new? We read almost the same words thinking about Leviticus. So why is this something new? Well, it is new because he has elevated it to a new standard, and I will talk about that in a moment. It is a new standard of the relationship. It is a new relationship with God and with the family of God because Jesus is, in what is about to take place, he is instituting a new covenant in his blood, a new relationship that we are entering into with God. That involves the new people of God, the church of God. This in particular has to do with the church of God. When you are saved, you are immersed into Jesus Christ, and you are baptized, you are immersed into the body of Christ, the believers, the Christian church.
When that takes place, there is a new relationship that you have with God, and there is a new relationship you have with the people of God. So it is new. That aspect is new. It is a new empowerment with the power of the cross, the power of the resurrection, and the power of the coming Holy Spirit. So as important as this is, you read this, and you cannot help but get a sense of how significant and important this is. Yet it is evident that this is shrugged off by a lot of people. It really is. It is not taken too seriously.
The Challenge of True Love
Why would that be? When we take a look at ourselves, I think that the first problem is that we are by nature an incredibly self-centered group of people. Our love is for ourselves. We have a mighty love for ourselves. When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, they stopped looking to God as God, and they started looking at themselves as God. That was Satan’s temptation. That was the essence of the appeal to them. So they started looking at themselves. “You will be like him. You are going to be your own little gods.” That is what they believed, and that is exactly what started happening. Their love shifted away from pleasing God to pleasing their own appetites and themselves. It was an example of their love for themselves, just self-centeredness.
Stephen Charnock, who was a Puritan theologian, wrote, “When we believe that we ought to be satisfied rather than God glorified, we set God below ourselves. We imagine that he should submit his own honor to our advantage. We make ourselves more glorious than God, as though we were not made for him, but he made for us. This is to have a very low esteem of the majesty of God.” That is true. That is the problem. You see, the problem is a lot of people who come to worship and who say good theological things are in that worship, in that relationship, and it is all about them, really. They are pursuing God because of what they want from God. So they are not loving God, as I said at the beginning, because he is loving and wonderful and glorious and beautiful and deserves that love. It is not because of the attraction. It is because of what they think they will be able to benefit and get from God. So the God they worship really is not this majestic God of the Bible. That is a problem.
That is one reason. Many of us are caught up into our own self-love, and even though we have been redeemed, our hearts changed, we still have old practices and ways of thinking, and it is difficult sometimes. But then there is also the fact that we think we measure up pretty good. We read a passage like this, and we say, “I love a lot of people. I love people. I love quite a lot of people. I love my mama, I love my daddy, I love my children, I love my friends at school and at work, and I love my friends at church. I love lots of people. So I am pretty good. I am doing real well.”
We probably need to deal with what Jesus said back in Luke 6:32 when he said, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.” That is not exactly what Jesus is talking about here. He is talking about a love that loves people who do not deserve your love. That is what he is talking about. He is talking about brothers and sisters in the body of Christ. That is the ultimate view. That is the context of this. We do not have to move too far out of that. Yet there are brothers and sisters in the body of Christ that do not rub you exactly the right way, who you have problems with, who gossiped about you, who insulted you in some way, who just did not say hello and walked past you. There are all sorts of things that stir us up and cause us to have problems with people who are fellow believers in Jesus Christ.
We are to love those people. Or we think, “I am pretty nice to just about everybody. I am a nice person. I am nice to people who I do not know. I am nice to people who maybe even treat me badly.” You have lots of examples of that. Well, there is a little problem with that too, and that is this, that our culture’s definition of what love is is being nice. Our cultural definition of love is that we are nice people. But love is not really about being nice to people. If that were the case, then Jesus is not an example of it, because he was not always nice to everybody in the sense that we mean it today. Not in that sense.
The truth is, Jesus loved with a mighty love at all times. Jesus loved with a mighty love when he said to the Jewish religious leaders, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” Jesus loved Peter when he said to him, “Get behind me, Satan!” Jesus loved the multitude when he said to them, “You unbelieving and perverted generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you?” Jesus loved them when he said that. The Apostle Paul in the book of Acts was filled with the Holy Spirit of God when he said to Elymas, “You who are full of all deceit and fraud, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease to make crooked the straight ways of the Lord?” Then Elymas was struck with blindness.
We would not consider that nice. But you see, Christian love is giving sacrificially for the good of the other person, for the good of the other person. Sometimes the good of the other person does not come across as nice. Jesus was always loving. He was corrective, and he was loving. So love is willingly giving not because of any merit for the one loved, but resulting in action for the one loved. It is a love that has its exclusive source in God himself.
The Distinguishing Mark of Christ’s Love
So it is easy to think we are okay or not take this passage too seriously. But God takes it seriously. I think that is very clear. Jesus’ command for us to love one another is serious business with God.
To get an idea of how important this is, consider the verse that came just before it. Just before it says, “A new commandment I give you,” Jesus says, “Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You will seek me, as I said to the Jews, now I also say to you, where I am going, you cannot come.” Jesus is leaving this physical world. The Lord Jesus Christ is about to depart from the world, and Jesus is the only true example of love that this world has ever seen since the fall of mankind. The world cannot see love when Jesus leaves, unless it sees that love through his disciples. So it is crucial. It is important. Jesus is going to prove his love on the cross that next day, but then he is going to ascend to heaven. How will the people know what true divine love is? They will have to see it in the disciples, or they will not see it at all.
1 John 4:12 tells us, “No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.” The same idea. If the world is to see love, it has to see it in the life of the Christian.
I mentioned earlier that this is a new commandment, and it is a new commandment because Jesus elevated it over the older commandment. Do you remember that other commandment that says, “Love your neighbor even as you love yourself”? Jesus said, “Love your neighbor, love your brethren, love your brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ as I have loved you.” Do you hear the difference? It is one thing to love a person the way that you love yourself, to look out for them the way you look out for yourself. It is something else completely to love another person the way Jesus Christ has loved you, the way Jesus Christ does love you. It is a radical difference. It is a new commandment. It is a higher standard.
Because when Jesus said, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you,” in that same night, he says, “This is my commandment, love one another as I have loved you.” He continued by saying, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down his life for his friends.” Romans 5:7 says, “For scarcely for a righteous man will one die. Yet perhaps for a good man, someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Jesus introduced this dialogue with the disciples, first of all, by washing their feet, humbling himself before them, washing their feet, and he says to them, “The disciple is not above his master. You are to do what I am doing.” That is to love the way that Jesus loves means that you bend down. You sacrifice. You humble yourself before another person. To love like Jesus Christ does means that you are willing to sacrifice even your own life for other people.
We get that, as those words from Romans 5 says, “For a righteous person, one might even dare to die.” There are plenty of examples of people who give their lives, have given their lives because of someone that they dearly love in their place. There are good examples of that. About 10 years ago, there was a man, Dwayne and Donna Johnson, a man and wife, and their two daughters. They lived in Colorado, and they had a perfect day planned. They went on the couple and their two daughters, teenage daughters, went on a day hike up a really popular mountain trail. But then the unexpected happened. There was a rockslide right at the summit, at the vantage point. When they get there, there is a rockslide, and these rocks start coming down. It killed Dwayne and Donna Johnson and the oldest of the daughters. But just before the dirt and the boulders swept down on them, Dwayne made a decision that saved the life of his daughter. She was 13-year-old Gracie. She was there, and she was trying to cover herself, but she said she was in the open, and her dad grabbed her, pushed her under a sheltering rock. Then just as the rocks started to fall, he sheltered her with his own body. So when the deputies came up through there, they heard her calling out under the rocks, and she was the only survivor.
Very similar, Northwest Airlines flight back in 1987 crashed just after taking off. It killed 155 people. One four-year-old survived. When the rescuers came, she was walking around, and they thought that she had come from the outside. They did not think that she was on the plane. But what happened is that her mother sheltered her in that accident, sheltered the little child, took all of the blows on her own body, and she was protected.
A person will die for someone they love. I would give my life for a number of people, particularly my children. I certainly would do that without thought. That is not a difficult thing. But Jesus died for us while we were yet his enemies. It is easy to love people in the church that are like us, that have things in common with us. It is something else to love people because God loves us, and his love is in us, and that love of God flows out through us.
There are people who do it. There are Christians who have these kinds of examples of love. Adoniram Judson, the sacrifice. Read about his life. What he sacrificed and suffered for Jesus Christ in order to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a people. Or think about someone like Elisabeth Elliot, who goes back to the tribe of people who murdered her husband and the other members of that missionary group and ministers to those same people, telling them, “Come to the Lord.” People love with a sacrificial love, and we can love with a sacrificial love if Christ’s love is in us.
You know what? That is the real ID. Jesus says in this last verse that we read, “By this, all men will know that you are my disciples.” This is the distinguishing mark that sets you apart from everybody else in this world, that tells them that you are real. This is the final apologetic. This is the argument that demonstrates the reality of the faith. This is the true mark. If someone knocked on your door, and they said that they are from the IRS, it would be a really good idea to take a good look at their ID and make sure they are who they say they are. You want to know, do not you? Well, here, God has given us an ID. It is his love that flows through us to others. The place it is particularly visible and is meant to be visible is in the body of Christ, in the family of God. We are to love the family of God with a mighty sacrificial love, with a love that gives, that sacrifices, that puts up and does the things that we do not necessarily want to do, because we are caring more about them, even if it is not appreciated, even when our love is slighted or twisted or not received. That is the way Jesus loves.
If you go to an orchestra, which I like to do, but rarely do. If you go to a good orchestra, and before anything happens, the concert master comes out and strikes a note on the violin, and then the orchestra tunes. They all tune so that they all come into harmony. They come into harmony because they are all in tune with the note of the concert master. Jesus Christ is the master, and he struck the note. Are we going to tune our hearts to that note? Let us pray.
Father, thank you for your mercy and kindness, and infinite love that you have shown us in Jesus Christ. We thank you, Father, that you loved us when we were unlovable, that you worked to our good, and out of abundant grace, you sanctify us, and ultimately perfect us so that we share the beauty of Christ. That is more than we can comprehend. Yet, Father, it is what we are to be. Help us, Lord, to take this truth, this commandment, this new commandment that Jesus has given, and Father, live to that standard. May we, in the display of our love for one another, may we be visible to this world, so that they will judge us rightly as true disciples, as the real thing. Thank you, Father. Do this work in us, we pray, and to your glory. Amen.