Love One Another (Part 2)

Love One Another (Part 2)
John 15:9-17

Jesus gave his disciples a specific command, and told them that if they loved him they would keep his commandments. He added to the authority of the command the requirement of relationship. Their obedience is more than a fulfilment of obligation, a duty performed. Their obedience is an expression of their own heart for Jesus himself (just as their disobedience would be an expression of their true heart toward Jesus.) If they truly loved him, their love for him would show in their love for one another. If they did not truly love him, it would show in their disdain for one another.

This is the commandment that Jesus gave to his followers then. It is the commandment that comes through the eternal word to His followers today: “That you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 5:12)

We have begun to identify three broad categories into which Jesus’ own acts of love fall into place. Jesus loved incarnationally. He was and remains the embodiment of God’s love, love both for God’s glory and the people God creates. When a man came to Jesus and asked him what is the greatest commandment, Jesus responded by saying, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.” He continued by pointing out the second greatest commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus embodies these two love commands. Every act and every attitude toward God and the people around him expresses the love within him. He loves the Lord with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength; he loves his neighbor as himself.

We know that because Jesus was raised from the dead that he perfectly fulfilled every command of God upon men without failure or flaw. We know then, by virtue of his resurrection, that Jesus is the perfect embodiment of love for God and love for one another. Jesus loves incarnationally and commands his followers, the Body of Christ in the world, to love incarnationally as well, to embody in our lives, individually and corporately the love of God for God’s glory and the love of God for God’s people.

We also identified that the only way we can love incarnationally, as Jesus loves, is to be born again and filled with the Holy Spirit. We cannot be filled with the Holy Spirit until we are genuinely born again, and we cannot genuinely love incarnationally until we are filled with the Holy Spirit.

The first and greatest fruit of the Spirit, the true evidence of being filled with the Holy Spirit is love, love for Christ and love for one another. Paul listed the fruit of the Spirit for us in Galations 5:22-23, “But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” In the middle of his discussion on spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14 Paul points to this fruit of the Spirit as the greatest priority in the entire discussion, suggesting that the condition of our heart in the Spirit is of greater priority than the work of our hands in the Spirit. He writes, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. Pursue love” (1 Corinthians 13:13-14:1).

Within the context of Paul’s teaching on spiritual gifts and Christian life and community he essentially says, above all, be filled with the Spirit from whom you gain the ability to love, for, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Cor. 13:1-3) Without love, we are nothing. Love is the condition of faith and the command we follow, but unless we are filled with the Holy Spirit we cannot love as Jesus loved.

But let’s take a step back here and ask an important question. What is this love that we are talking about? Is Jesus commanding us to have a specific and consistent emotional response to the people around us? Is he asking us to feel about everyone the way we feel toward our beloved spouse or our precious children? Is Jesus saying that in order to follow and obey him we must have a warm, fuzzy feeling about all the other Christians we may encounter? Is Jesus commanding us to take a specifically prescribed action toward every other Christian we encounter? Are we being asked to treat the people around us in a “cookie cutter” fashion, doing the same thing for everyone as though love has only one single strategy we are to continually and consistently apply? Is love an emotional response or a prescribed action?

Before I give you a “yes” or “no” answer to that question, let me suggest this: Love, as Jesus loves, is a condition of the heart that influences the emotions and directs the will toward seeking the greatest good for those who are the objects of love.

Emotions serve an important purpose. Created within us by God himself, emotions provide the context in which we respond from the world within us to the world around us. Emotions are about us. They are personal. They are self-derived. They are self-focused. They give a means of self-expression for self-experience. They are created by God to be self-centered so that we have a way of interpreting and coping with our life experiences.

When we talk about love as an emotion, we are often talking about the feelings of joy, security, pleasure, encouragement, meaning that we derive from someone or something else. It is possible that taking seriously Jesus’s command to love one another will result in some pleasant responses from within ourselves to the people with whom we develop these relationships, but it is also possible that our investment of love in other people will reap sorrow, pain, anxiety, fear, or some other unpleasant emotional response to our experience. While we will undoubtedly experience some emotional response as we love one another, I do not believe Jesus is primarily commanding us to seek an emotional response for ourselves when he command us to love one another. I believe he is commanding us to obtain from him, through faith and the Holy Spirit, a condition of the heart that influences our emotions AND directs our will toward seeking the greatest food for those who are the objects of love.

Love as Jesus loves, may be accompanied by a pleasant emotional response or it may not. When Jesus, dying on the cross, looks upon those whom he loves and who have demanded his death and nailed him to a cross, he says, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Whatever Jesus’ emotions may be at that moment, he makes a choice. He expresses an act of will. He chooses what is the greatest good for them regardless of what it costs him or what he may or may not feel in that moment.  That is the way Jesus loves. The condition of his heart is love and he brings his emotions and his will into conformity with love and does that which is best for those he loves. He gives his life for them. And as he said, “No greater love has any man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

Love as Jesus loves is a condition of the born again, Spirit-filled heart that influences the emotions and directs the will toward seeking the greatest good for those who are the objects of love.

Now, since love seeks the greatest good for those who are the objects of love, let’s nail down two ideas. One, Jesus commands that fellow believers be the objects of our love. There are other instructions, commands and life examples that apply to non-believers, but this command is to Jesus’ disciples that they are to love one another. The followers of Jesus focus their love under this command on the other followers of Jesus they encounter in their lives.

Take a moment and look around you. While Jesus does require us to think and act globally in our discipling mission, he commands us to love locally, to love one another, to practice compassion for the world by expressing genuine, incarnational love for the Christians in our lives. Love one another.

The second idea we need to get a hold of is this: the greatest good for any person at any time, but especially for believers, is a genuine, vital relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ. Love one another means helping one another to have the clearest, purest, holiest, most Christ-centered, Spirit-filled love for God through a relationship with Christ that we can possibly have in this world. God is the greatest good there is. A relationship with God in which he is rightly cherished, adored, honored, respected, obeyed, loved is the greatest good to which we can possible lead one another.

We may need at times to provide resources to one another, point out sin to one another, extend forgiveness to one another, practice discipline of one another, offer comfort to one another, teach truth to one another, but whatever specific action we take, we must be guided by a commitment to seek the greatest good for those who are the objects, the recipients of our love.

The command to love one another as Christ has loved us is a command to do everything necessary, within the power of the Holy Spirit, to help one another know and love God, even if it costs us our life. Love aims for the greatest good in the life of the beloved, so Jesus says, “Love one another as I have loved you.” He loved us with his life for God’s sake.

Now, if you truly love Jesus, love one another.