God’s Love on Display

John 13:34-35

What is this? (put pictures up on the screen)

Duck, baseball, trumpet, jack-o-lantern(For each one ask, “How do you know?”)A Christian (puts up the words “A Christian”)

How can someone know you’re a Christian? By seeing you go to church? Not necessarily. A lot of non-Christians go to church. Going to church makes you no more a Christian than being in a garage makes you a car. By hearing what you believe? Not necessarily. You can know all the answers and even believe them and not be saved. I can say I believe that stool will hold me up and even tell you why it will, but unless I demonstrate it, you can never know if I truly believe it or not. By seeing it lived out. How? By the way you LOVE. We are to love God and love our neighbor (sums up all commandments). And by the way you LOVE other Christians. This is the model Jesus gave. He calls it a new commandment.

John 13:34-35 – “34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

We’re going to break down this passage and see what it means and what it means for us.

“A new commandment I give to you…” What is this commandment and how is it new?The commandment is to love one another. This doesn’t seem new, though.Jesus summed up all of the commandments by saying to love God and others[1]How is it new?Nowhere in the Bible is this phrase “new commandment” found except for in the Apostle John’s writings, here and in his first and second letter.[2]  Why of all the New Testament writers and apostles did only John pick up on this term?

1 John 2:7-8 – “7 Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. 8 At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.”

It’s new because it is demonstrated and embodied in Jesus. 1 John 2:8 – “…is true in him and in you…”

John 13:34– “…just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”

Think about John for a second. He was reclining right next to Jesus the night that Jesus said these words. This stuck in John like no other thing. I think it completely changed how John viewed everything – Jesus, his own life, the mission that was before him. He saw Jesus single out Judas, who would betray Him, yet wash that same disciple’s feet, along with Peter who would deny Him. He partook of that last supper where Jesus spent time in community and fellowship before He was to willingly walk to the slaughter. He saw Him mocked and ridiculed and tried and falsely accused. He saw Him beaten to a bloody pulp. He was at His feet while blood was dripping down from His cross…Jesus, bloody and dying, there asked this same John to take care of his mother Mary.

John, unlike the other disciples, saw Jesus die. Saw Him breathe His last. I’m sure John replayed these moments over and over in his mind. And it started that night when John was sitting right next to Jesus and heard those words. Those words that He was about to fully embody. “Love one another as I have loved you.” This moment was so impactful for John that essentially his whole first letter is a guide to this new commandment Jesus gave and he referred to himself as the one whom Jesus loved.

Hear some of what John has to say about what this means…this new command to love one another as Jesus has loved us.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. (1 John 4:7)

We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. (1 John 3:14)

By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteou