Does Jesus really want you to love your neighbor as yourself? I can’t take any credit at all for the big idea that I want to share in this short post. In fact, I am shocked that I have lived with the Bible for so many years and had never really seen this as clearly as I was helped to see it (by the teaching pastor, and by the Holy Spirit) this past Sunday.
We had the joy of visiting a church this past Sunday here in Virginia Beach with some friends with whom we were once on staff at a Church in California. The teaching pastor’s sermon was entitled – “A New Commandment” – and it was from John 13:34-35. It reads:
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
I have read that text hundreds of times. No kidding! I have heard it quoted more times than I can count in almost 30 years of being a follower of Jesus, and until this past Sunday, I had never really thought about what the text is saying. That, by the way, is one of the reasons I love the Bible. No matter how many times you read it, you can always learn something new. That was so true for me with respect to this text! I always heard it as Jesus’ call to love one another. But what about all that “new commandment” language?
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The call to “love one another” is not a new commandment at all. It’s an old commandment, and it is the second commandment. In fact, in Matthew 22:36-40, Jesus says that the second commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself,” along with the first and great commandment to love God with our entire being is the center of the whole law of Moses.
But here in John’s gospel, Jesus says he is giving a new commandment about love for neighbor. And, as I learned this weekend, it is not “love your neighbor as yourself.” According to Jesus it is a “new commandment.”
