Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: The New Commandment: Love One Another (07/23/26)
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TITLE: So What's New About This? | Previous Challenge Entry
By Doug Laird
07/25/26 -
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These words of Jesus were spoken to His closest disciples, as they gathered together with Him to celebrate the last Passover Meal (Luke 22: 8), just hours before He was to be betrayed, and later be handed over to be crucified.
The phrase “one another” encompasses all of their fellow disciples around the table. In principle, He was also speaking to all of the future Church Age disciples, and of their interaction with their fellow believers, as well.
There was nothing new about the commandment requiring them to love God with all their heart, soul, and mind; to love their neighbors; and to love their enemies.
In the course of His three-year public ministry, Jesus has made His position crystal-clear on all of these matters.
So what was this “new” commandment that Jesus was speaking of in John 13?
The answer to this question is found in the phrase, “just as I have loved you.”
There are many different definitions and types of love spoken of in Scripture.
These distinctions are made clear in the original manuscripts that were composed in the Greek language, but not so clear, in the English-translated Bibles.
But what ALL of these types of love have in common, is that love can best be measured by the extent that one will sacrifice oneself in order to please or to benefit the object of one’s love.
One can have a love for God, one-self, another person(s), place, or thing(s).
Luke 14: 26 teaches that having a love for anyone, or anything, that is greater than the love he or she has for God, disqualifies a born-again believer from discipleship.
Anyone can love those who loves them, but the kind of love that Jesus had for His disciples was unconditional, to say the least. His love, and His willingness to express it, did not change due to circumstances, or failure on the part of the ones He loved.
Hatred for the negative things that people do does not alter the John 13: 34 type of love.
Jesus loved Peter, even though He knew that Peter would deny that he even knew Him to save his own skin. Jesus loved Thomas, who He knew would doubt Him. Jesus loved Judas, who He knew would betray Him, and addressed him as “friend” right up to the moment of betrayal. Jesus loved all of them even though they would all desert Him.
Jesus loved Paul, even though (before his conversion) he had done everything he could to wipe the developing Church off the face of the planet.
Jesus loves each and every one of us, even with full knowledge of all of our sins, idolatry, independence, disinterest in His plan for our lives, shortcomings, apostasy, and spiritual adultery (unfaithfulness), BEFORE and AFTER we are born-again.
Because of the unconditional love of God the Father (John 3: 16), He sent God the Son, in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, to atone for the world’s sin debt to provide for our salvation. He provides born-again believers with the Rom. 8: 1 assurance of eternal security. He provides Church Age believers with the inexhaustible means of on-going forgiveness (1John 1: 9), even though there is not one of us who deserves to receive or to retain any one of these things.
Love desires the best for the object of its love.
Therefore, as of the Church Age, for His glory and for our own sake, God desires that ALL souls come to the saving knowledge and application of the unadulterated Gospel Message.
He then desires that the born-gain believer pursues the post salvation life of Biblical discipleship, by continuing to conform to the likeness of Jesus Christ, in thought (1Cor 2: 16), words (Eph. 4: 29), and actions (James 2: 14-18).
SAD TO SAY, but according to Matt 7: 13, 14, only a minority of each generation of the Church Age dispensation will choose to take the path that God desires.
Part of our on-going conforming to the likeness of Christ, involves the development and expression of the same type of love for our fellow believers that Jesus had and expressed for His disciples, during His time here on Earth, and beyond.
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
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