“This is My
commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love
has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:12–13).
Earlier in the
Upper Room Jesus says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one
another, just 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).
This is the
measure of our life in Christ Jesus, this is the essence of life.
“We have come to
know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one
who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16).
We see this
again in 1 John 3:16: “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us,
and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”
How do we think
and speak of something which is beyond our comprehension? I suppose it is like
going to the ocean, while we can’t comprehend it in its fulness, we can get in
the water and experience it. It is like the Grand Canyon, it takes our breath
away, and there are so many ways to experience it, it is never ending. The people
who most appreciate the endless nature of the Canyon are those who know it best,
those who have spent the most time in it, those whose souls are indistinguishable
from the Canyon.
We are to love
others as Jesus Christ loves us, and the central characteristic of His love is
that He laid down His life for us. He lived a life of giving up Himself for
others, and this life led to the Cross. The life of Jesus Christ was the fruit
of the Cross and the Cross was the fruit of the life and love of Jesus Christ. This
is to be the Way we live.
Paul writes, “Therefore
be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also
loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a
fragrant aroma” (Ephesians 5:1–2).
The Cross is
rooted in eternity, it appears in time and space, and it returns to eternity. Jesus
is the Lamb foreknown and slain before the foundation of the world, and He will
ever and always be the Lamb whom we worship, adore, and follow. (1 Peter 1:17 –
21; Revelation 5:1–14; 13:8; 21:22–22:5.)
The Nature of
our life in Christ is to lay down our lives for others in love. This ought to
be the nature of our marriages, our families, our congregations, our vocations,
our civic life – it ought to be the essence of all that we do – to love as
Jesus loves, to love in the pattern and shape of the Cross of Christ.
In case you
haven’t noticed, this is not a safe way to live, at least not safe in
the eyes of the world; yet in the eyes of our Father it is the safest Way to
live – for in such living we abide in the Vine. We are called to die that
others may live (John 12:24–26; 2 Cor. 4:12).
O how I recall a
morning in January 1967 when I stood before the faculty and student body of a
Bible college and shared a devotional from John 13:34–35. O how I was nervous.
I had been asked to do this only about an hour ahead of time; the student scheduled
to speak was ill and could not attend chapel, so two of the upper classmen came
to my dorm room to ask me to fill in – foolish boy of 16 that I was, I agreed. But
what passage to speak from?
As I turned the
pages of my Bible in my room, John 13:34 – 35 arrested my attention. But what
to say about it?
I had been a
Christian less than a year, for it was around late winter of 1966 that a coworker
at my after-school job, Howard Wall, shared Jesus with me. Now I was standing
before the student body and faculty of the school from which my two pastors had
graduated. I was by far the youngest student in the Bible college.
The essence of
the brief devotional was, “Jesus gave us this new commandment so that we might
obey it. Yet we cannot obey it on our own, After all, we have enough trouble
loving people of our own color, but we are to love all people; red, yellow, black,
brown, purple, green. All people. On our own we cannot do this. However, Jesus
Christ living in us and through us will fulfill this commandment, in Him we can
obey this new commandment, to love one another as He loves us.”
I was expelled
for this a few days later, along with my older friend George Will, who was
deemed a bad influence on me and others. While I did not know this before I
arrived at the school (why didn’t my two pastors who recommended the school
tell me – why did they send me to such a place?), the school was segregated. The
administration took what I said to be a challenge to their policy of
segregation.
Within a couple months
it will be the 58th anniversary of my expulsion – a merciful and
gracious blessing from our Father. However, as I think back over the years I
wonder how many places I’ve been that actually believe and teach and live out
John 13:34–35 and 15:12–13. How many of us are laying down our lives for one
another?
How many
congregations are laying down their collective lives?
How many
denominations and movements?
If such love, if
such a Way of living, is one of the two marks of a Christian, is one of the two
marks of the Church (the other being Trinitarian unity, see John 17:20–26), then
is the world able to identify us because of this love? Are we that City on a
hill? Are we, in Christ, the Light of the world?
Where is the
cruciform love of Jesus Christ in our lives?
How have we come
to substitute politics and worldviews and economics and naturalistic and humanistic
hermeneutics and communication for the Person of Jesus Christ and the life and
love that can only flow from Him? How have we come to construct entertainment
parks of so-called prophetic teachings and ignore the holy Lamb of God, who we
are called to follow wherever He goes?
If the cruciform
love of Jesus Christ is not our heartbeat, is not the essence of our life, is
not the defining characteristic of our churches, is not the unambiguous mark of
the Church in society – then what do we really have?
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