Love One Another John 13:34-35 CLICK TITLE FOR AUDIO
In this text Jesus proclaims “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” This is very similar to the commandment given to Moses, “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” but there is a slight variation (Lev. 19:18, Matt. 22:35-37). Now the Lord wants us to love as He has loved and not as we love ourselves (Eph. 5:29, Luke 10:25-37). This new commandment exceeds our love for one another and it exceeds the Law because it calls on us to have a greater love than we can have without Christ (John 15:12,15:17).
How did Jesus Christ love His disciples? (John 15:13) Jesus laid down His life for the disciples even though He knew that when He was captured by the Pharisees they would deny Him and scatter. We are to prove that we are disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ by keeping this commandment and loving one another in spite of the fact that at times it is going to cost us a great deal emotionally to continue to love someone who doesn’t love us in return. Hopefully, we will by some means be able to influence them that the love of the Lord Jesus Christ is worthy of their acceptation. We cannot control how the other person receives this commandment, but we can control how we receive it. When we have the love of Christ that shines greater than the love of man some people are going to notice that and come around.
We have to do the following things to follow this commandment:
The first one is to love God (1 Jn 4:19). We do not have the capacity to love apart from God. We love him because He first loved us. We have no capacity to understand Christian love apart from the love of Jesus Christ for us. We are to be Heavenly minded (Col. 3:2) so that earthly matters will not trouble our minds so much.
The second one is to love Jesus (Eph.6:24, 1 Cor. 16:22). Too often we let the pleasures of this world and bitterness and anger over certain experiences in life interfere with our love of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you will love God and love the Lord Jesus Christ in great fellowship and not let anything get in between you and them then you will be able to fulfill this new commandment.
“If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? “ – 1 John 4:20. If another Christian hates you don’t take it personally because they don’t really hate you. In light of John 4:20 we can see that the real problem is not so much you and the things you may have done, but rather that they are having trouble with their own love for the Lord God. Because, honestly, if they love the Lord God as much as they think they do then they would not have any trouble loving you.
If you take another person’s hatred for you personally, then you will have a tendency to retaliate and therefore their hatred becomes manipulative. They will use it to try to affect you and mess you up. Do not go there! Their problem is with God Almighty more than it is with you, as 1 John 4:20 so clearly states. You have to be able to love them while they hate you.
The last thing is that we must keep God’s words (John 14:23, 1 John 2-5). That’s why you have to spend time in His book. Don’t kid yourself that you love God’s words if you’re not spending time in the book.