“Little children, I am with you for a little while longer. You will look for me, and as I said to the Jews, so now I say to you, where I am going you cannot come. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. In the same way that I have loved you, that you love one another. By this will all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love the one for the other”.
Now in the light of the great events that lay ahead Jesus looked with fondness on His disciples, and called them ‘little children'. He saw them as they will be, facing a terrible new world when He has gone. Soon He will not be there to sustain them. Therefore they must sustain each other by the love that they have for each other. He is going where they cannot at present come, and when they look for Him they will not find Him, for He will not be on this earth. His time on earth is over. So their love for each other, the kind of love that He has had for them, will be very important. It will be the mark that they are His. It is indeed something that replaces all the commandments. It is the new commandment. Do we stand the test?
Jesus had previously stressed the two great commandments, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and soul, and mind and strength', and ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself' (Mark 12:30-31). Now is added this third, ‘you shall love one another, as I have loved you'. Love is at the heart of all true ‘religion' and this special kind of love was to be a distinguishing mark of the true Christian.
Note the emphasis on the fact that Christ loved the disciples, a repetition of the idea in John 13:1. These were ‘the disciples whom Jesus loved'. Any one of them could have spoken of themselves as ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved' in the consciousness of their own unworthiness.