It’s undeniable that as Jesus spoke these words to His disciples He had the cross in view. Jesus’ entire earthly life was a cross-ward life. The cross was never NOT in Jesus’ view. For as long as mankind has been on God’s mind (and that’s for as long as God has been) the cross, in all its glory and agony, has been there too. Jesus not only saw a cross in His future, He saw a cross in the future of every one of His disciples—not necessarily a literal wooden cross but a cross of loving self-sacrifice for the sake of others, a cross aimed at, anchored in, and adorned by love not just for others but for God.

The great temptation with this text is not recognizing Jesus’ self-sacrificing love for His disciples and deducing that we’re to then love each other the same way; that’s a perfectly accurate conclusion—in vv. 12 & 17 Jesus begins and ends this paragraph by exhorting the disciples to love one another. But the great temptation is to see loving one another as the end game. God the Father loves God the Son; God the Son loves us and dies for us; God the Holy Spirit loves the Father, the Son, and us, so He comes from the Father at the request of the Son to regenerate us and restore us to the Father through faith in Jesus; so finally, because we receive this kind of love from the triune God, we ought to then pass that love on to one another. That’s true, but it’s not everything! God not only wants us to pass on the love we receive from Him to others, He wants us to love Him back. “Love the Lord your God” is still the first part of the great commandment, and “Love your neighbor as yourself” is still the second part. Like mirrors, God wants us to reflect the love He shows us back to Him. This pleases Him.

I’ll never forget riding the escalator at the mall when I was a kid, and for the first time seeing my reflection repeated in the mirrors lining the walls on either side of the escalators. I was mesmerized by what looked like a tunnel going on forever and ever. But then I reached over and touched the mirror and my dad introduced me to the term ‘optical illusion’—not infinite Darins but one reflection repeated over and over again. In electrical speak, the term “circuit” refers to how an electrical current has to circulate back to its original source in order to be useful. When an appliance draws more electricity than its wiring or particular circuit can supply, you hear that “snap!” in the garage—the circuit breaker has broken the flow of electricity. When lightening strikes and adds a surge of power to the grid, it throws big circuit breakers at the substation and your alarm clock shuts off and you oversleep and the kids miss the bus.

That pretty much exhausts my technical vocabulary. But I say all that because loving God is not entirely unlike those examples. Our loving God loves us and wants us to love him. But it just so happens that the mirror where the cycle of reflected love is completed and repeats to infinity, and the circuit breaker through which the current of love either passes and returns to God the source or is broken, that point is found in the realm of human relationships; it’s where our lives inter-sect with the lives of others. And Jesus stresses loving one another as Christians, because He knows that if we can’t love each other in the body of Christ—if we can’t love those who share our faith, our Lord, our Bible, our baptism, our salvation, our mission—then whatever affection we may seem to have for non-Christians isn’t real love. And He also stresses loving one another because He knows that if we can love other Christians—those who try our patience, who test our forgiveness, those whose hypocritical words and actions can wound us most deeply because of our shared faith; if we can love other Christians—we can love anybody!

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Can love really be commanded? This seems heavy-handed on the part of Jesus. Can love really be love if it’s done as an act of obedience? Shouldn’t loving one another as Christians be something we want to do rather than something we need to be commanded by Jesus to do?

These questions arise when we confuse a commandment with compulsion. Compulsion is the enforcement of a command. U.S. law commands that 18 year-old males register for the draft. When war breaks out and a young man hasn’t registered or doesn’t report when his draft number comes up, compulsion is when uniformed men come to that young man’s house or workplace and force him to report under threat of arrest. But Jesus doesn’t force us to love other Christians who’ve hurt us, or who are otherwise unlovely. He doesn’t threaten to cut us off or cast us into hell. He doesn’t have to, and I’ll explain why in a minute.

So why Jesus does say, “This is my commandment”? Because He wants the disciples to know that loving one another isn’t just a good suggestion: Guys, I suggest you love one another… Guys, it’d be great if you loved each other… You really ought to love each other… I’d prefer it if you love each other… Suggestions are never more than statements of opinion. They can be given passionately; they can come with strong supporting evidence. But suggestions always leave the final verdict as to the rightness or wrongness of a course of action up to the suggestee rather than the suggestor. A commandment by contrast states clearly what’s right, who’s in charge, and thus what’s expected. Jesus’ commandment is not compulsory upon threat of punishment, but it leaves a disciple no room to decide whether loving other Christians is right or wrong, and therefore no doubt as to Jesus’ expectation, no doubt as to how our hearts are to be inclined toward every member of the body of Christ regardless of how badly another Christian may have wounded us in a moment or season of carelessness, disagreement, or outright meanness.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Here’s the model upon which our love for other Christians is to be based. Isn’t it interesting that Jesus says to love one another ‘as I have loved you’ (past tense)? Yes, His whole existence from eternity past has been a journey to the cross, but He’s not there yet; He hasn’t died for sin yet. We’re right to hold Jesus’ death up as the pinnacle of His love. But rather than look forward to the love He’s going to demonstrate on the cross, Jesus here urges the disciples to look back on all the ways He’s loved them so far. It’s like He was saying, “Guys, I loved you…

• when having watched me turn water into wine you nonetheless doubted My ability to feed you and the rest of the crowd from a little boy’s lunch.
• when you thought I might actually let you die in a boat in a storm.
• when, Simon Peter, after being the only non-divine human to ever walk on water you took your eyes off Me and started to sink in the sea.
• when you thought I was too busy and tried to keep the little children from coming to sit on my lap so I could spend time with them and bless them.
• when you thought it imprudent of Me to sit beside Jacob’s well and talk with a Samaritan adulteress about the Kingdom of God, and…
• when you quietly agreed with Judas Iscariot that the expensive ointment with which Mary Magdalene annointed Me could’ve been put to better use.

Guys, in all the times you doubted and disbelieved Me, My love for you never wavered. I never stopped loving you and I never will.”

I’d always assumed that Jesus’ next statement (in v. 13) is a reference to His literally, physically laying down His life on the cross: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” I’d always assumed that Jesus is saying that physically dying in someone else’s place is the standard by which all human love is to be measured. But looking at it more closely, I don’t know that a literal cross or a physical death is what He’s pointing to. For one, He doesn’t break His thought from v. 12 to v. 13. He flows straight from commanding the disciples to love each other the way He’s loved them to saying that the greatest expression of human love is laying down one’s life. It sounds to me like Jesus is saying, “Ok guys, if you want to love each other in the greatest way possible then love each other the way you’ve seen Me love you over the last few years.”

Secondly, even though Jesus knows most of His remaining disciples (and many more in coming generations) will be put to death for their faith, resulting in a great demonstration of love for Him, encouragement for other believers, and gospel advancement, He also knows that the vast majority of Christians will not be called upon to literally, physically die for Him or for other believers. You may have heard the saying, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the gospel.” It’s true, millions of Christians have been martyred over the centuries fueling great gospel growth at different times and in different places, but hundreds of millions of equally faithful Christians have not. Jesus does actually intend for the gospel to reach all the nations. Some Christians will be martyred in the process, but most of us will have to live for Jesus for the Great Commission is to be fulfilled!

So “laying down one’s life for friends” has to be more broadly defined than literally, physically dying. And by the way, we’re fools if we think dying as a martyr is necessarily a more terrifying prospect than loving another Christian in some of the ways Jesus loved the disciples before His crucifixion.

To illustrate I’ll give you two sets of eight difficult words to say. Here’s the first set: “I will not deny Jesus as my Lord.” So you’re on a mission trip in a hostile part of the world. You knew the risks, but went anyway. Late one night you awaken to loud voices and banging on your hotel door. Before you can even get out of bed masked men break the door, grab you by the hair and hold you over the foot of the bed with a knife at your throat. In a foreign accent you hear: “You Christian, yes?” You answer, “Yes.” Then the voice says, “Deny Jesus and you will live.” Your next words mean everything. They will determine whether you see your family again, or whether the next face you see is that of Jesus. “I will not deny Jesus as my Lord” would be eight very tough words to say, wouldn’t they?

Okay, here’s the second set of eight words: “I was wrong; I’m sorry; please forgive me.” Husband, you’ve come home again from a hard day of work hoping to sit down to a nice quiet meal only to walk into a smoke-filled kitchen; supper’s burned and it’s leftovers again. Other times you come home and there’s no smoke, not even the smell of food cooking. Then one night you and your wife are out with another couple and the wives go to the restroom (as wives do), the other husband brags about his wife’s cooking you’re like, “Man, you’re lucky. My wife hardly ever cooks and when she does it’s not fit to eat.” The other guy winces as your wife returns a little a bit sooner than expect, just in time to hear everything you said. All the way home she cries; she’s devastated, humiliated, and mad. Now husband, you tell me which is harder: saying eight words to a Jihadi that will mean never seeing your wife again, or setting aside your pride, your frustration, your feelings of being unappreciated by her for your hard work, and looking the angry, brokenhearted mother of your children in the eyes and saying sincerely, “I was wrong. I’m sorry. Please forgive me”?

Paul tells husbands in the Ephesian church, “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” For some of us men, the first set of eight words would be easier to say than the second. And wives—anyone who’s ever been hurt by the words or actions of another Christian—you’re not off the hook! The first set of eight words might be easier for you to say than this third set of eight words: “I love you; you love me. You’re forgiven.”

              The second and third sets of words are harder for many Christians to say than the first set. For many of us it would be easier to say, “I will not deny Jesus as my Lord,” because even though we feel physically threatened, we don’t feel emotionally wounded by a knife-wielding Jihadi. He might be about to kill us, but he hasn’t let us down. We aren’t deeply disappointed in him because we know he doesn’t love us and never has. But facing a fellow Christian who’s hurt us, whom we’ve hurt, or who’s just really hard to love is difficult, because, despite the exchange of pain or the seeming unloveliness, we know that if we’re in Christ and that person is in Christ they do love us and we do love them, and the sooner we can get our love for each other out in the open and seek reconciliation, the better.

Jesus says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another,” not so that the disciples will start loving each other but so that they won’t stop! The disciples already love each other; Jesus isn’t blind to that. This is why, as I said earlier, He doesn’t have to threaten us with hell if we don’t love each other: we already do; He just doesn’t want us to stop or slacken in that love.

Pain, whether physical or emotional, arouses self-defensiveness. We defend against feeling unloved, disrespected, or unappreciated by withdrawing from the other person, or by biting back with hurtful words or deeds of our own. But not only are withdrawal and back-biting disobedient to Jesus’ command to keep loving others the way He loves us, they threaten to deceive us into believing that love isn’t there at all when the pain itself proves that it is. When you know someone doesn’t love you they can slander your name and even brutalize your body, but they can’t wound your soul. That’s not true when it comes to those we love and who love us, especially other Christians whose careless words can cut deeper than any machete.

Very few of us will be called upon to lay down our lives for the faith. But Jesus calls all of us to lay down our lives for the faithful. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.” And what has Jesus just commanded the disciples to do? “Love one another as I have loved you.”

Is there dying involved in loving others as Christ has loved us? You bet! But it’s rarely a physical form of dying. Don’t think that the greatest Christian love is something achieved only by martyrs. If you’re willing to lay down your life by laying down your desire to be seen as right (even when you are) and to win the argument (even when you can), it’s achievable! If you’re willing to lay down your life by laying down your desire to be liked by another Christian whose sin needs to be confronted, it’s achievable! If you’re willing to lay down your life by being patient with the spiritually immature, by being kind to the less kind, by laying down your desire for recognition by recognizing someone whose deeds are less noteworthy than yours, the greatest possible Christian love is within your grasp.

“No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you”—again, past tense. In His death He’s about to save the disciples, but in His life Jesus has already shown them the Father’s love and how to complete the circuit of love back to the Father: by setting oneself aside and loving others the way He’d loved them, patiently, kindly, conisistently, forgivingly, humbly, servingly. “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” Jesus says earlier (in v. 8), “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.” We glorify God when we love God; and we love God by loving others like Jesus loved us. How will you express the greatest love this week? How will you close the loop and complete the circuit of love back to God? How will you lay down your life for your friends—for those Jesus has called friends—this week?

You won’t unless you’re first the friend of Jesus; and that begins with believing in Him. In no way do I mean to minimize the cross in this message; the cross of Christ makes loving God and loving one another possible. Come to the cross in faith today. Experience for yourself and then begin to express to God through others the love greater than which no one can have!