John 13:34 AMPC
[34] I give you a new commandment: that you should love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you too should love one another.
It may be easy to tell people what to do, but it can be quite difficult to back up your words with behaviour that is consistent with what you say. This is where Jesus found Himself with His disciples at some point on His way to the cross. The very first verse in the chapter from where the verse above is taken says that Jesus knew that the time had come for Him to leave this world and return to the Father. There was no doubt that Jesus loved the men who had left all and followed Him these three and a half years, but He took an opportunity to show them again what love meant. Like Jesus in those days, we also live in a world where talk is cheap.
People have defined love by what they perceive to have received. Nobody talks about the fundamental foundation that must be laid in a man's heart that makes God's kind of love possible. We now have sexually immoral acts defined as 'making love'. We also place demands on broken people by blackmail, saying that if they truly loved you, they would act in a certain way. We forget that broken people must first receive and respond to God's kind of love before they can even know how to respond with the same kind of love they now have. God's love is not first about what we can get, but about who and what we have already received.
There is really nothing we could have first given that could compensate God for what He had given us. In the story before us today, we find Jesus the Lord and Master, stoop down to wash His disciples' feet. It was a menial and thankless job, but Jesus used that alone time with His disciples to teach a lesson and to also lay down a new commandment. The first lesson is that leadership does not confer superiority. Leadership must provide many opportunities to serve other people. Serving others is also an expression of love, because it means that I am able to look outside my own immediate needs, and be a blessing to someone else.
The verse above is not a mere suggestion, but a commandment. He does not just tell me what to do; He has shown me clearly what the new standard is. By His own life of sacrifice, He has made it clear what will be acceptable going forward. I have no excuse to give, because all over the Bible, there are several accounts of the actions and decisions of Jesus that reveal His heart of love. It is also instructive to note that the uncommitted majority was not there when this command was given. It is clear that you cannot command allegiance from someone whose heart you do not control. Does God own and hold your heart? Love, his way, can only come from a heart He contols. Is yours? Is mine? God's time of favour is here.
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