This is My commandment, that ye love one another
The great commandment of Christ
I. THE LOVE OF CHRIST. Remember
1. How free it was. We did not merit it, ask for it, nor even desire it. And here is the wonder of it. It is love which found nothing to draw it forth. It was entirely self-moved. Disinterestedness then must be one main ingredient in the love we are to bear our fellow men. It is not to stop and ask, “Why should I love that man? What has he done for me?” That is a love like Christ’s, which rises up spontaneously. It does not wait to be bought or won.
2. How costly. “Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ; though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor.” Moved by His grace, He paid for our redemption the price that His law demanded. And what a price! Oh to find a man who will break through any thing but the law of God for his fellow man! That is the man, who embodies this precept of our Lord; a self-denying man, one who even in his love is willing to take up his cross and follow Christ.
3. How compassionate and tender! In looking at its greatness, we often lose sight of this. But the softness of a mother’s love never equalled our Lord’s. Read His life. It is not here and there that His compassion comes out, it is everywhere. And this is the point in which the love of many real Christians is most deficient. Our neighbours want our hearts as well as our hands. There is ten-fold more sorrow in men’s minds, than pain in men’s bodies, or sickness and poverty in men’s houses. Would you show it mercy? Then carry a feeling heart through it. This will do more for the world’s comfort than the richest purse.
4. How bountiful! “No good thing will He withhold from us.” “Freely ye have received, freely give.” The measure of what our love is to do for others and give to others, is simply this, the measure of our ability to give and do. That is Christ’s standard in His love; it must be our standard in ours.
5. How extensive! It is discriminating. It took almost as many forms as love could take. The love of country was strong in Him, and the love of kindred and the love of friends. But then look, at the same time, at its extent. Who was excluded from it? His enemies? No, with His last breath He prayed for the very men who murdered Him. Or the world? There is not a guilty being on the wide earth whom He does not pity, and load daily with benefits. His love is like the sun in the heavens--they who are the nearest to it are warmed, and gladdened by it the most, but they who are the farthest off from it behold its light. And this is the unfailing character of all true Christian love. Worldly love is narrow, and generally becomes more so as we grow older. This is expansive. No one object can absorb it; no one house or family can hold it; no sect or party can confine it.
II. THE CHARGE OUR LORD GIVES US TO IMITATE HIM IN HIS LOVE.
1. There is a commandment in the case. It is remarkable that our Lord, who seldom uses this word on other occasions, uses it again and again in reference to this love. Here, you observe, is authority pressing down on us. We are to be without this love at our peril. We little think what we are doing when we keep back the helping hand or the pitying heart from a suffering brother. We are setting up once more for our own masters.
2. It is Christ’s commandment. He stamps it with His own authority. Viewed in this light, there is an appeal in this charge to our gratitude and affection. When our Lord calls it a commandment, He says, “Dread to dispise it;” and when He calls it His commandment, He urges us by His mercies towards us to obey it. And there may be a reference here to a custom of the times. Each of the different sects among the Jews had some particular tenet or practice to distinguish it. “Now I,” says our Lord, “fix on this as the mark and badge of My followers--mutual love. You shall be as well known by this love, as the priests of the Temple are by their garments, or the Roman soldiers by their standards.”
3. It is His last and great commandment. Herein He shows us
(1) The amazing tenderness of His own love. His love for them triumphs over every other feeling and desire.
(2) The importance in itself of this mutual love. Our all-wise Lord would not have spoken thus emphatically of a trifle. St. Paul says that this love is “the fulfilling of the law,” and “the end of the commandment.” Just so our Lord speaks of it (John 15:17). (C. Bradley, M. A.)
Brotherly love
I. HAS THE HIGHEST MODEL. “As I have loved you.” How did Christ love?
1. Disinterestedly. There was not a taint of selfishness in His love. He looked for no compensation, no advantage.
2. Earnestly. It was an all-pervading, all-commanding passion. It was a zeal consuming Him.
3. Practically. It was not a love that slept as an emotion in the heart, that expended itself in words and professions; it was a love that worked all the faculties to the utmost, and led Him to the sacrifice of Himself. This is the kind of love we should have one toward another. This is the brotherly love that
(1) Unites Christ’s disciples together.
(2) Honours Christ.
(3) Blesses the world with the most beneficient influences.
II. FORMS THE HIGHEST FRIENDSHIP. “Ye are My friends,” etc.
1. It not only establishes a friendship, but a friendship between them and Christ. A true friendship between man and man is the greatest blessing on earth.
2. A friendship between man and Christ is the consummation of man’s well being. If Christ is my friend what want I more?
III. HAS THE HIGHEST SOURCE. “Ye have not chosen Me,” etc. We did not choose to love Christ first, but He chose to love us. His love to us generates our love to Him. He chose His first disciples from their worldly avocations and called them into His circle; this inspired them with His love. Men will never love one another properly until Christ sheds abroad His love in their hearts. He is to all His disciples what the sun is to the planets; around Him they revolve and from Him derive their life and unity. They are united one to another by the bonds that unite them to Christ.
IV. REALISES THE HIGHEST GOOD.
1. Spiritual fruitfulness. “Ordained you,” appointed you, “that ye bring forth fruit.” The fruit involves two things
(1) The highest excellence of character.
(2) The highest usefulness of life. Rendering others the highest service.
2. Successful prayer. “Whatsoever ye shall ask,” etc. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
Christians bound to love one another
I. THE DUTY.
1. Mutual love. There is a love which all men owe to all men. “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: but the love which is the subject of our Lord’s precept, is obviously much more comprehensive in its elements, and much less extensive in its range, than this. It is the love of which none but a disciple can be either the object or the subject. Its component elements are esteem, complacency, benevolence, and its appropriate manifestations,--highly valuing each others’ Christian gifts and graces,--delighting in such association with each other as naturally calls forth into exercise all that is peculiarly Christian in the character,--defending each other’s Christian reputation when attacked,--sympathising with each other’s Christian joys and sorrows,--promoting each other’s personal Christian holiness and comfort.
and cordially cooperating with each other in enterprises calculated to promote the common Christian cause, the cause of God’s glory, and man’s improve ment and happiness.
2. Love like that of our Lord. “As I have loved you.”
(1) Discriminative.
(2) Sincere.
(3) Spontaneous.
(4) Fervent and copious.
(5) Disinterested.
(6) Active.
(7) Self-sacrificing.
(8) Considerate and wise.
(9) Generously confiding and kindly forbearing.
(10) Constant.
(11) Enduring.
(12) Holy and spiritual.
(13) Universal.
II. THE MOTIVES.
1. The commandment of Christ. There is no duty which the apostles, more frequently, or more authoritively, enjoin. To enable us to form some estimate of the force of this motive we have only to propose and answer the question, Who is this who speaketh? This is a commandment which Christ claims as His own, in a peculiar sense; and it is addressed to a class who stand in a peculiar relation to Him.
2. The example of Christ. How did Christ love
(1) He was just about to give them the greatest proof of friendship which can be given. “Greater love hath no man than this,” etc.
(2) He had made them the objects of His peculiar complacent regard, as persons who were really desirous of doing whatever He commanded them. “Ye are My friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.”
(3) He had treated them as “friends,” by unfolding to them, so far as they were capable of apprehending it, the whole truth respecting the wonderful communication He had come from heaven to earth to make, and the wonderful work He had come from heaven to earth to perform--the economy of salvation. “Henceforth I call you not servants,” etc.
(4) He had selected them, and appointed them to a great, important, salutary work, their success in which was assured by all necessary assistance in it being secured in answer to believing prayer. “Ye have not chosen Me,” etc. (J. Brown, D. D.)
The Cross the means of perpetuating Christian love
The fire of charity is never extinguished, but will always be rekindled by the wood of the cross. (St. Ignatius.)
The oneness of the branches
The union between Christ and His disciples has been set forth in the parable of the vine. We now turn to the union between the disciples, which is the consequences of their common union to the Lord. There are four things suggested.
I. THE OBLIGATION.
1. The two ideas of commandment and love do not go well together. You cannot pump up love to order, and if you try you generally produce sentimental hypocrisy, hollow and unreal. Still we can do a great deal for the cultivation and strengthening of any emotion. We can cast ourselves into the attitude which is favourable or unfavourable to it. We can look at the subjects which will create it or at those which will cheek it.
2. This is an obligation
(1) Because He commands it. He puts Himself here in the position.
(2) Because such an attitude is the only fitting expression of the mutual relation of Christian men, through their common relation to the vine. However unlike any two Christian people are in character, culture, circumstances, the bond that knits those who have the same relations to Jesus Christ is far deeper, more real, and ought to be far closer, than the bond that knits them to the men or women to whom they are likest in all these other respects, and to whom they are unlike in this one central one. Let all secondary grounds of union and of separation be relegated to their proper subordinate place; and let us recognize this, that the children of one father are brethren. And do not let it be said, that “brethren” in the Church means a great deal less than brothers in the world.
II. THE SUFFICIENCY OF LOVE.
1. Our Lord has been speaking in a former verse about the keeping of His commandments. Now He gathers them all up into one: the all comprehensive simplification of duty--love.
2. If the heart be right all else will be right; and if there be a deficiency of love nothing will be right. You cannot help anybody except on condition of having an honest and benevolent regard towards him. You may pitch him benefits, and you will neither get nor deserve thanks for them; you may try to teach him, and your words will be hopeless and profitless. As we read Corinthians 13--the lyric praise of charity--all kinds of blessing and sweetness and gladness come out of this.
3. And Jesus Christ, leaving the little flock of His followers in the world, gave them no other instruction for their mutual relationship? He did not talk to them about institutions and organizations, about orders of the ministry and sacraments, or Church polity. His one commandment was “Love one another,” and that will make you wise. Love one another and you will shape yourselves into the right forms.
III. THE PATTERN OF LOVE. “As I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this,” etc.
1. Christ sets Himself forward here, as He does in all aspects of human conduct and character, as being the realized ideal of them all. Reflect upon the strangeness of a man thus calmly saying to the whole world, “I am the embodiment of all that love ought to be.” The pattern that He proposes is more august than appears at first sight. A verse or two before our Lord had said, “As the Father hath loved Me so I have loved you.” Now He says, “Love one another as I have loved you.”
2. But then our Lord here sets forth the very central point of His work, even His death upon the cross for us, as being the pattern to which our poor affection ought to aspire, and after which it must tend to be conformed. That is to say, the heart of the love that He commands is self-sacrifice, reaching to death if death be needful. And no man loves as Christ would have Him love who does not bear in his heart affection which has so conquered selfishness that, if need be, he is ready to die. It is a solemn obligation, which many well make us tremble, that is laid on us in these words, “As I have loved you.” Calvary was less than twenty-four hours off, and He says to us, “That is your pattern!”
3. Remember, too, that the restriction which here seems to be cast around the flow of His love is not a restriction in reality, but rather a deepening of it. The “friends” for whom He dies are the same persons as the Apostle, in his sweet variation upon these words, has called by the opposite name when he says that He died for His “enemies.” There is an old wild ballad that tells of how a knight found, coiling round a tree in a dismal forest, a loathly dragon breathing out poison; and how, undeterred by its hideousness and foulness, he cast his arms round it and kissed it on the mouth. Three times he did it undisgusted, and at the third the shape changed into a fair lady, and he won his bride. Christ “kisses with the kisses of His mouth” His enemies, and makes them His friends because He loves them. “If He had never died for His enemies,” says one of the old fathers, “He would never have possessed His friends.” And so He teaches us, that the way by which we are to meet even alienation and hostility is by pouring upon it the treasures of an unselfish, self-sacrificing affection which will conquer at the last.
IV. THE MOTIVE. “As I have loved you.” The novelty of Christian morality lies here, that in its law there is a self-fulfilling force. We have not to look to one place for the knowledge of our duty, and somewhere else for the strength to do it, but both are given to us in the one thing, the gift of the dying Christ and His immortal love. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Love the means of unity
In the early spring, when the wheat is green and young, and scarcely appears above the ground, it springs in the lines in which it was sown, parted from one another and distinctly showing their separation, and the furrows. But, when the full corn in the ear waves on the autumn plain, all the lines and separations have disappeared, and there is one unbroken tract of sunny fruitfulness. And so when the life in Christ is low and feeble, His servants may be separated and drawn up in rigid lines of denominations, and churches, and sects; but as they grow the lines disappear. If to the churches of England today there came a sudden accession of knowledge of Christ, and of union with Him, the first thing that would go would be the wretched barriers that separate us from one another. For if we have the life of Christ in any mature measure in ourselves, we shall certainly bare grown up above the fences behind which we began to grow, and shall be able to reach out to all that love the Lord Jesus Christ, and feel with thankfulness that we are one in Him. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)