A New Commandment, A New Way

 

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

 

Consider the context of what Jesus says, how do verses 34 and 35 work in the passage?

 

In verse 33 Jesus says, “Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’”

 

Then in verse 36 we read, “Simon Peter said to Him, ‘Lord, where are You going?’ Jesus answered, ‘Where I go, you cannot follow Me now; but you will follow later.’”

 

It is as if Simon Peter ignores the New Commandment and wants to get on with what Jesus is saying about going away and coming again, about being seen and then not being seen, about the disciples not being able to follow and then being able to follow. (Recall the passages on this theme listed in the previous reflection that we find throughout the Upper Room).

 

We tend, I think, to view verses 34 and 35 in isolation from its context, an enigmatic context if we will follow the theme of Jesus appearing and leaving and appearing, of Jesus being seen and then not seen and then seen, of us not being able to follow and then following. (Do we not see this motif in the Song of Solomon, with the Bridegroom appearing and then withdrawing, and then appearing again? Do we not see the Bride searching for her Beloved?)

 

Is this not a dance of the Bridegroom and the Bride? Can we not “see” that when our Beloved withdraws Himself it is an invitation to follow Him into deeper intimacy?

 

The depths of this invitation to intimacy are seen yet again in John 15:12 – 13 where the New Commandment contains the “greater love” of laying down one’s life for our friends. For us to love as Jesus loves means that we lay down our lives for the brethren, it means that we know Him in the koinonia of His sufferings (Phil. 3:10).

 

“We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” (1 John 3:16).

 

The way to follow Jesus, the way to go where He is going, is to love one another as He loves us, and this is to be how all men are to know that we are His disciples.  (Note also John 17:23. Our love for one another and our unity in the Trinity are the marks by which we and the Gospel are to be known – they are our testimony!).

 

Living in the Holy of Holies of John 17 entails the ever-present and unfolding Way of Life of John 13:34 – 35 and John 15:12 – 13.

 

There are at least two great dangers in pondering the New Commandment, the first is to gloss over “even as I have loved you” and say, “That is impossible. We’ll just do the best we can.” The second great danger is to think that we can obey this command in and of ourselves.

 

We have no warrant to edit the Word of Jesus Christ, to dumb it down, to lower the standard, to make excuses – including the excuse, “Well, I’m just a sinner saved by the grace of God.”  God forbid that we should think that, in Christ, we are anything but saints – the sons and daughters of the Living God, born of the Holy Spirit and made new creations in Jesus Christ! (2 Cor. 5:11 – 21; Rom. Cp. 8; Jn. Cp. 17).

 

To love as Jesus loves means that the Cross, the laying down of our lives, is ever working within us and through us. It also means that we know the reality of abiding in the Vine and that “apart from Me you can do nothing” (Jn. 15:1 – 5). Jesus Christ is our organic source of life – not a religious or moral or ethical system, no matter its Christian trappings, and certainly not a political or economic or nationalistic system – no matter the pressure exerted upon us.

 

The New Commandment brings us to the end of ourselves and to our new life in Jesus Christ. It brings us to the end of ourselves because we cannot obey it – we have not the life to do so. It brings us to our new life in Jesus Christ because in Him, in the Vine, we have resurrection life – the working out of the Cross and the Resurrection in the ebb and flow of life throughout our entire being and in koinonia with the Trinity and with one another.

 

The life of the Trinity lives in us, through our redemption in Christ, and this life finds expression in community, in koinonia – leading us together in Life in which God is all in all.

 

And yet we gloss over the New Commandment as if it were some sort of high and lofty unattainable ideal – when it is to be the bedrock of our life and witness in Jesus Christ. We make excuses when our Father will have no excuses.

 

Let us make no mistake, living in the New Commandment will cost us our lives – for it leads to the Cross and it is empowered by the Cross – the Cross working in us as individuals, in marriages, in families, in congregations, and (if we must have them) in our traditions and denominations.

 

Jesus is saying, “I’m going away, but here is how you can follow Me. Here is how I will reveal Myself again and again and again. I will go away and come again, then I will go away again and come again. You will see Me as you follow Me in my love, as you love as I love, as you die as I die, as you rise as I rise, as you give as I give, as you forgive as I forgive…as you live in Me and as I live in you.”

 

O the glory our Father has given to us in Jesus Christ! The joy of being His daughters and sons!

 

Galatians 2:20.

His Going, His Coming, Our Following

 

“‘Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, now I also say to you, Where I am going, you cannot come.’” Jn. 13:33

 

“Simon Peter said to Him, ‘Lord, where are you going?’ Jesus answered, ‘Where I go, you cannot follow Me now; but you will follow later.’” Jn 13:36

 

“’…for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.’” Jn. 14:2c - 4.

 

“After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also.” Jn. 14:19.

 

“You heard that I said to you, ‘I go away, and I will come to you.’” (Jn. 14:28a).

 

“’A little while, and you will no longer see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me.’” Jn. 16:16

 

The Upper Room theme of His going, His coming, our seeing Him, and our following Him flows through Jesus’ words, His unveiling of Himself to His followers. Here is an example of why living in the Word and meditation on the Word is critical, for there is no sermon, no book, no commentary, and certainly no footnote in a Bible that can explain these words. We are called to live in the Upper Room with Jesus, to know its furniture the way we know the furniture in our homes so that we don’t need to turn the lights on at night to walk through our rooms.

 

It is not enough to preach through the Bible verse by verse (the way most of us think of this today), the Bible was not written that way and we are not meant to “see” it that way, we are called to see Jesus and to see the glorious images and narratives and interconnectedness of the Bible. When the Fathers, such as Augustine, preached the Bible verse by verse, they did so by unfolding the interconnectedness of the Scriptures – they roamed the entire book in Christ as they were centered on Christ – much as the Apostles did when writing the New Testament letters – including Revelation.

 

We have a microcosm of this challenge in the Upper Room, for what is introduced in John 13:1 – 3 and continued in 13:33, expands throughout chapters 14 – 17. The only way to see and experience what Jesus is saying about going away and coming again, about not being seen and being seen, is to live in these chapters with Him (and others). Therefore, in our preaching and teaching and reading we must keep coming back and coming back, and reading and reading again in order to hold the entire image and Word of Jesus before us, allowing the Holy Spirit to open our eyes and plant Him in our hearts – taking us farther up and farther in, deeper into Jesus Christ – the inside is larger than the outside. I suppose we might say that the Upper Room holds all that is outside it…and beyond.

 

And may I say, that we are called to be in the Upper Room as we read this passage, we are called to see Jesus – we are not called to read about what Jesus said, we are called to hear what Jesus is saying – for He is the Living Word. The Upper Room is birthed in the eternals before creation, it comes forth into time and space and history, and it continues onward and upward in Christ and in His People – it flows from the Father and returns to the Father – John 13:1 – 3; 16:28; 17:24. I may be in my office or in living room when I read John chapters 13 – 17, but I must also be in the Upper Room with our Lord.

 

Here, in the Upper Room, we have the vision of the “mystery of His will” (Eph. 1:9) in the “the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on earth. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.” (Eph. 1:10b – 12).

 

As you read what Jesus is saying above, what do you see? What do you wonder about? What themes? What patterns? As someone in the Upper Room, what do you hear? If you imagine yourself as being one of the Eleven, for Iscariot has now gone out into darkness, what are you hearing and thinking and feeling? What is Jesus saying to you about His going and coming and your not seeing and then seeing and following Him?

 

Do you know this experience? Have there been times when it seems that He has left you? Do you know what it is to look for Him but not find Him…if only for a season, if only for a moment? Do you know what it is to see torches in the night sky and for a mob to come and take Him away? Have your hopes and dreams and expectations been shattered?

 

Have you seen Jesus on trial before religious leaders? Have you heard the crowds crying, “Crucify Him!”? Have you denied Him three times?

 

Well, whatever our experience, whatever season of life we may be in, Jesus says to us, “Do not let your heart be troubled…Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.” (Jn. 14:1a, 27).

 

 

 

Glorification - A Mystery

 

“Therefore when he had gone out, Jesus said, ‘Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him; if God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and will glorify Him immediately.’” John 13:31 – 32.

 

Now that Judas Iscariot has “gone out” we are called to go further in with Jesus. It may take a while to get a sense of what I mean, to experience what I mean – for most of our religious experience is linear, we move through the Scriptures as if we are checking off boxes, as if we are watching a car’s odometer, verse by verse, chapter after chapter, frame after frame of a movie, scene after scene of a play. We are captives of a naturalistic and humanistic approach to Scripture, one that is the antithesis of Biblical “epistemology” and “hermeneutics” – technical words that speak to the questions of how do we “know”? or how “should we know”? and how are we to interpret, receive, and understand what we read? We will encounter these questions of knowing and understanding as we experience the Upper Room; I raise these questions now to prepare us, so that we won’t be surprised (too much) at what we find.

 

(I hope we’ve seen in previous reflections that there is more to feet washing than the natural eye can see).

 

What do we see in John 13:31 – 32? Ponder what Jesus is saying. What do you see regarding His relationship with the Father? What do we see regarding glory and glorification? Allow the play of words, the point and counterpoint, to speak to you – for here the veil is pulled back and we glimpse a Divine mystery, a holy interchange. What do you see? What do you hear?

 

Let’s recall John 12:27 – 28: “Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. ‘Father, glorify Your name.’ Then a voice came out of heaven: ‘I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.’”

 

Let us also anticipate John 17:22: “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one…”

 

As well as John 17:24: “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.”

 

Between John 13:31 – 32 and John 17:24 we will encounter more of the mystery of glory – a mystery that incorporates the sons and daughters of the Living God, that is, a mystery that incorporates us – you and me. How do we respond to John 17:22?

 

“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them…”?

 

O dear friends, it was once true that “All have sinned and fell short of the glory of God,” (Rom. 3:23), but such is no longer true of the saints of God in Christ – for the Son has given us His glory and we cry out, “Abba Father!” (Rom. 8:15).

 

Consider that His glory empowers us to be one as the Trinity is one (John 17:22). His glory is to be our biosphere, our breath, our joy – our ever-present experience. And in His glory we glory in Him and in one another in Him.

 

Paul prays that “the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 1:12). Paul sets forth the vision of God coming to be glorified “in His saints (2 Thess. 1:10). Do we see the similarity between 2 Thessalonians 1:10 – 12 and John 13:31 – 32? The Father is glorified in the Son and the Son is glorified in the Father; God and Christ are glorified in the saints, and the saints are glorified in Christ and God.

 

In Romans 8:17 – 30 Paul writes of the glory of the children of God, of us being glorified with Christ, and of the Father glorifying us.

 

Then in Hebrews 2:10 we see that the Father is “bringing many sons to glory.”

 

How sad that there are many who – intentionally or not – seek to rob the saints of their present inheritance in our Lord Jesus Christ. How sad that the Gospel is truncated and that we are forbidden to claim and live in the glory of our Father and Lord Jesus Christ. What a tragedy that the veil is sown up week after week on Sunday mornings, in books, on the radio, on podcasts – and that the Bride of Christ is thrown rags to wear rather than the glorious glory of her Husband – Jesus Christ.

 

How ironic that many who use the term “grace” do not desire us to live in grace – but in bondage to self-flagellation and a perpetual consciousness of sin – rather than in the fulness of justification, sanctification, adoption, and life in the Holy Spirit.

 

The account of Jesus Christ in the Upper Room is our story too, for we are in Him – and we are explicitly called into the koinonia of the Trinity by the Father and the Son, through the Holy Spirit. We are the sons and daughters of the Living God, we are saints in Christ and no longer sinners – and we are called to be broken Bread and poured out Wine to our generation.

 

And dear dear brother or sister, who protests and ignores this Gospel teaching, insisting that God will not give His glory to another. Can you not see that we are bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh? We are one in Trinity. We are the Body of Christ. We are not another.

 

Is this not a mystery?