It Starts Small

Jesus says, I command you. The Greek word for command is entolē and means an order, command, charge, precept, injunction. Notice it does not mean a suggestion. Jesus is not hinting at or making a suggestion, He is commanding us to love one another. Lets keep reading and bring in what else Jesus had to say.

³⁴ “I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

John 13:34-35

Jesus is giving us a profound commandment that encapsulates Christian love. This passage highlights the essential nature of Christian love and its significance in our relationships with one another and as a testimony to the world.

Jesus could speak on this topic because this command is rooted in the sacrificial love of Himself. Scripture calls us to love with selflessness, humility, and to forgive. Scripture calls us to be an imitator of Christ by setting the same example He set for us. These scriptures define and aspect of faith.

This love He speaks about has the power to transform lives, foster unity, and bear witness to others the reality of Christ, but it requires constant cultivation and overcoming obstacles such as pride, unforgiveness, and prejudice. By abiding in Christ’s love, practicing forgiveness, embracing humility and extending love to all including our enemies, we become vessels of God’s love and a source of light and hope in a world desperate for genuine love. 

The Commandment of Love

Jesus says, I give you a new command… (V34).

I think it is important to see where He gave this command. He was about to leave them. It is called new, not because there was no command (see Leviticus 19:18) but because it had never been made that by which any class or body of men had been know by or distinguished by it. 

Everyone would know they were a “Christ follower” by the way they loved. We are known by our external titles. 

Ponder: can we be tried and found guilty of being a “Christ follower” based on the evidence of love?

As Christians we are not to have worldly distinctions, rather we are to be identified by our tender and constant love for others. Everyone else separates people into categories of gender, wealth, religion, age, skin color, etc. But Jesus says, my distinction in you is the way you love others and they will identify me in you. 

¹³ No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.

John 15:13

¹⁶ This is how we have come to know love: He laid down his life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

1 John 3:16

Jesus does not say men will conjure or guess that you belong to me, but they will certainly know. 

Jesus does not say that by this you will know yourselves.

Jesus does not say men will know what you look like

Jesus says the best proof and evidence we can have of our relation to Christ, as his sincere disciples, is a hearty love and good will one towards another. Your love for each other shall be so decisive evident that you are like the Savior and all men shall see and know it.

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