This would be a Passover like no other. For centuries the Passover had been celebrated, ever since its inauguration at the time of the exodus from Egypt. It was required by God as a feast to be observed in remembrance of His deliverance of His people from bondage.
Central to that first Passover was the slaughter of a lamb. Its blood would be spread of the doorframe of the house and all within would be spared from the wrath of the destroying angel upon the firstborn. That blood would be a sign to the angel that a life had already been given.
That lamb and that annual remembrance would be a type and a portent of the day when the Lamb of God would arrive on the stage of human history. Now that day had come. John the baptizer, in the role as witness of the entire Old Testament, would announce His arrival with these words: “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is He of whom I said, ‘After me comes a Man who is preferred before me, for He was before me’” (John 1:29–30).
Now after over three years of public ministry and with the sacrificial altar of the cross at hand, Jesus gathers with His disciples in an upper room for the celebration of the Passover meal. John introduces the event as culmination. “Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end” (John 13:1).
Throughout His time teaching, healing, obeying, minstering, Jesus had insisted that His hour had not yet come. But now it had. The shadow of death into which Jesus entered at His birth had reached the cross that cast it. And in the upper room Jesus makes it clear that what is in view is not just His suffering but their salvation. It’s not about Him; it’s about them.
John frames the occasion in terms of love. He loved His own. He loved them to the end. In the first twelve chapters of his Gospel account John speaks of love six times. In the record of this discourse, he mentions love thirty-one times. And where love is not explicitly mentioned, it permeates the whole.
When Jesus speaks of His own, He is referring to those He came to save, Jew and Gentile, those given Him by the Father from all eternity. He loved His own who were in the world by rescuing them from bondage to sin and destruction. He loved them by giving His life for them.
Loving them to the end carries the sense of mission. The word John uses is telos, speaking of a goal, a purpose. Jesus would accomplish the mission on which He was sent and that mission secures the salvation of all who believe upon Him.
How does love relate to the mission and message of Jesus?
