ταῦτα ἐντέλλομαι ὑμῖν, ἵνα ἀγαπᾱτε ἀλλήλους. — κατὰ Ἰωάννην 15:17
tauta entellomai hymin, hina agapate allelous. — kata Ioannen 15:17
These things I am commanding you so that you may love one another. — John 15:17, translation mine
For a third time in this discourse, Christ enjoins the apostles to love one another (John 15:10, John 15:12, John 15:17) in order to underscore the importance of this missive. Only the prefatory addition of the phrase “Amen, Amen” could have added more weight to Christ’s words. The command to love one another is the literally crucial point at which Christ is driving and toward which Christ is headed that very evening.
It is tempting to quickly dismiss this and say that one heard Christ the first time or even the second time. Yet Christ repeats himself so that the message will not be lost but will stick in the mind of the listener. Love one another. This is not the natural human response in man’s fallen state. As it is written, “Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find?” (Proverbs 20:6, ESV) Christ is sending out His apostles so that they might faithfully proclaim this message which He has entrusted to them.
Christ has begun the discourse by assuring the apostles that if they remain in Him, then they will bear much fruit (John 15:4). Here, Christ encourages them that if they observe His commands then they will be able to love another. By this, He teaches them that love comes from the Father in the Son through the Holy Spirit, but one must continually practice love as He has commanded in order to remain in Him and His love.
This raises the question naturally as to what love is. From Scripture, one sees that love is not indulgence but sacrifice, i.e., that which makes holy. The apostle Peter writes, “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” (1 Peter 4:8, ESV). Love after the pattern presented by Christ, that is, sacrificial, forgiving love, redeems that which was unclean and heals that which was wounded, “for if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15, ESV).
Love is not passivity but passion, and this passion is not the lust of hedonism but the devotion whose root is πάσχειν, “to suffer or be affected for good or for bad by anything as opposed to acting for oneself” (Liddell and Scott, 536)1. Love in the vein of Christ’s sacrifice and the apostles’ martyrdom obeys the command: “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” (Deuteronomy 6:5 ESV). This command is part of the Shema, one of the cores of Jewish worship of God the Father whose importance is such that Christ stated that “this is the great and first commandment.” (Matthew 22:38, ESV). The ardent fervor of this love holds God in the highest esteem and others before oneself, driving each to share one another’s burdens that all loads may be lightened — a suffering that brings relief.
Some may question the rationality of such an attitude, but such love is not irrationality. Rather, presenting yourselves to God as living sacrifices offers Him τὴν λογικὴν λατρείαν ὑμῶν (ten logiken latreian hymon), “your logical service” (Romans 12:1c, translation mine). This service springs from the root of all love who is love, namely God. It is a service of love freely and consciously given as God’s grace is given.
To reckon love as an irrational tempest of emotion or physicality is to cheat love of its identity. Where God’s love grants life and hope, irrational counterfeits of love deal death and despair. The life of David sharply illustrates this in his encounter with Bathsheba. Spurred only by the sight of her bathing on her roof, David perpetrates adultery, fraud, and murder in a fit of lust. He literally abandons Uriah, a most trusted general who would have gladly given his life honorably in sacrifice for his king, to a dishonorable death in order to cover the shame of the adultery when Bathsheba’s pregnancy by David dissolves all chance of dissembling (2 Samuel 11:1-17).
The Bible speaks of David as a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14), but even such a man like David is riddled with flaws and imperfections. That David approximates the heart of God does not preclude the fact that he is a man, prone to err and wander on account of his own lusts. The memory of his own corrupt heart in the Bathsheba incident and other incidents likely induces David to cry out in conciliation when confronted later in life with the sin of his pride, “Let me fall into the hand of the LORD, for His mercy is very great, but do not let me fall into the hand of man” (1 Chronicles 21:13, ESV). David knew that God, the author of justice, would deal more justly with him than man, whose notion of justice ultimately issues from his belly or his loins.
Rational love after that which comes from the heart of God stands firm regardless of circumstance. With such love, Christ admonishes the apostles and all men to love one another, knowing that He is poised to make the consummate act of love upon the cross, choosing to offer service in obedience to God and for the benefit of men so that no barrier may exist between God and man except man’s unwillingness to choose to love God as God has loved him. Christ’s love extends so far as to subjugate Himself in such service while fully cognizant of His own right to authority. It is by this logical act of humility that the Son fully shares with men the love He has shared with the Father from before the dawn of time. The interposition of Christ’s blood pays the debt which man owes to God and frees man to fully love with all of his heart, strength, mind, and soul.
1Liddell, Henry George, Robert Scott, Henry Stuart Jones, and Roderick McKenzie. A Lexicon Abridged from Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon. London: Oxford University Press, 1966.
