Love One Another
The early Christians tell us that St. John, the disciple of Jesus who wrote the eponymous Gospel, lived about 100 years and lived in Ephesus at the time of his death. We are told he had to be carried into church as he became a very old man. The people would plead with him to say a few words, but he had only one thing he said to the people repeatedly, “Little children, love one another.”
Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’ 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. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
John 13.33-35
How Do We Love One Other?
When they said, “We know, you said that already,” and asked for more, he would look at them again and say: “Little children, love one another.” That was the message of John’s life, the message of the Beloved Disciple. In his first Epistle, John wrote,
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Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
1 John 4:7-8
Pretty strong language, isn’t it?
Knowing God
He is saying that it is impossible to know God—that is, to be a disciple of Jesus Christ—without love. And this “love comes from God,” he says. Why is that? Because God—the Christian God—is the three-in-one. Three persons in one, a constant and eternal relationship of mutual self-giving. This relationship is the basis of what we call love. Mutual self-giving. How can we know this triune God of eternal interpersonal relationship and yet not love one another?
Symbiotic & Personal
This love is not just an act on behalf of others but a gift of oneself, a participation in life together. In other words, it cannot be impersonal. Love is always interpersonal. John says that we are called to a discipleship of love. Our churches are to be people who love “one another”. This is a mutual giving of ourselves to each other. It is reciprocal.
Jesus’ Loving Example
This begins to paint a picture of Christian love. But we still wonder, don’t we, what exactly this profound mystery called Christian love is? Jesus knelt before the disciples and washed their feet, then said to them, “Love one another…as I have loved you.” He reveals the mystery of love – a love that is like the love of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—the mystery is to love as he has loved us. He showed them this love in experience, not in theory.
Jesus’ Love Played Out
He showed them by personally washing their feet, a prefiguring of his death on the cross. He showed them rather than telling them because he wanted to show that love is interpersonal, self-giving, and attractive. All of this flows from God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and is revealed to us through the person of Jesus Christ.
Love’s Effects
When someone encounters this kind of abandonment, this kind of self-giving love, they are immediately struck with wonder. It is only love when we must get down and wash our feet. It is love when we realize that we all get some dust on our feet and all our feet need to be washed. It’s a surprising and Christ-like love when we put up with each other, forgive each other, and choose to overlook each other’s faults.
This a radical and tough love. It is exactly the kind of love that reveals that Christ is here. Every one of us who follows Christ is a human being. We all fail other human beings. We are all the recipients of unlove and the givers of it. Jesus says to us, “Love one another.”
Love in Action
John was sitting beside Jesus when he said, “Love one another.” He had seen Jesus wash the feet of others and had his own feet washed. He had followed Jesus all the way to the cross and seen him die. He has seen the risen Christ and received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. And then he had seen the Church grow and spread all over the known world. And decades later, after all of this, he wanted to take the people back to that upper room. He wanted his final message in life to be simple but powerful. He wanted to simultaneously sum up discipleship and evangelism, the Christian life, and the Christian ethic. And so he said, over and over, “Little children, love one another.”
Photo by Urilux from Getty Images, courtesy of Canva.
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