The Gospel of John: John 13.27-38

Read and meditate on John 13.34, 35.
Jesus was troubled, deeply and visibly troubled. He should have been, and so should we.

                                                                       ³⁴“But from
Me now receive this new commandment: Love
each other. Just as I have loved you, love
each other just the same. ³⁵By this will all
men know that you are My disciples, called
to follow Me, if you have love for one
another.”
 
- John 13.34, 35

Reflect
1.  Jesus pointed to Himself as the example or standard for the love His disciples should have for one another. How would you characterize Jesus’ love for them? How do you experience this love? Complete this prayer: I want to love as You love me, Lord, and today I…

2.  Jesus said this was a new commandment. What was new about it, as compared with Matthew 22.34-30? Does this new commandment supersede or qualify the old commandments? Explain. I know that only as I grow in love for You, Lord, will I be able to…

3.  How did Jesus say we would be identifiable as His disciples? In a local community, where there are many different churches, how should we expect such a mark of discipleship to be visible? Is it? Lord, why are all Your churches so separate from one another, having so little to do with one another, or together for our community? What can I do, Lord, to…

4.  What is it about loving one another like Jesus loves us that makes it so clear we are His disciples? In other words, why isn’t faithful preaching enough? Or regular church attendance? Or living moral lives? Why is love the defining standard of discipleship? Lord, everything else in the life of faith is unto love, not instead of it, so help me to…

5.  What might it look like in your community if all the believers from all churches, and all churches together, took Jesus new commandment seriously? What’s keeping this from happening? Bring together into one your prayers from questions 1-4.

Summary
“The Lord Jesus declares that he is giving his disciples a new commandment, that they should love one another.… But was not this already commanded in the ancient law of God, where it is written, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’? Why, then, is it called a new one by the Lord, when it is proven to be so old? Is it a new commandment because he has divested us of the old and clothed us with the new person? For it is not indeed every kind of love that renews him that listens to it, or rather yields it obedience, but that love regarding which the Lord, in order to distinguish it from all carnal affection, added, ‘as I have loved you.’ … For this they hear and observe, ‘A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another,’ not as those who are corrupt love one another or as human beings who love one another only in a human way. Instead, they are to love one another as those who are God’s. All of them are to love as children of the Highest, who are siblings, therefore, of his only Son. They are to love with that mutual love by which he loved them when about to lead them on to the goal where all sufficiency should be theirs and where their every desire should be satisfied with good things.” Augustine (354-430 AD)

Faith is good. Hope is good. Moral decency is good. Sound preaching is good. Ministries of various sorts are good. But none of it is good where love like the love of Jesus is absent. How can we bring more focus on the new commandment into all our lives and ministries?

Closing Prayer
I am troubled, I am bowed down greatly;
I go mourning all the day long.
For my loins are full of inflammation,
And there is no soundness in my flesh.
I am feeble and severely broken;
I groan because of the turmoil of my heart.
Lord, all my desire is before You;
And my sighing is not hidden from You.
My heart pants, my strength fails me;
As for the light of my eyes, it also has gone from me.
My loved ones and my friends stand aloof from my plague,
And my relatives stand afar off.
Those also who seek my life lay snares for me;
Those who seek my hurt speak of destruction,
And plan deception all the day long.
But I, like a deaf man, do not hear;
And I am like a mute who does not open his mouth.
Thus I am like a man who does not hear,
And in whose mouth is no response.
For in You, O LORD, I hope;
You will hear, O Lord my God.
For I said, “Hear me, lest they rejoice over me,
Lest, when my foot slips, they exalt themselves against me.”
For I am ready to fall,
And my sorrow is continually before me.
For I will declare my iniquity;
I will be in anguish over my sin.

Psalm 38.6-18

Psalm 38.5-16(Leoni: The God of Abraham Praise)
My sinful wounds grow foul, and fester painfully;
I bend and groan within my soul most mournfully!
Sin fills my every part;
Conviction stings my breast.
Lord, ease my numbed and burning heart and grant me rest!

You know all my desire, my sighs You know full well.
My strength fails and light’s holy fire my eyes dispel.
My friends and loved ones fail;
The wicked do me wrong.
My life they seek, my soul assail the whole day long.

Their threats I will not heed, nor speak to their  reproof;
To hear or speak I have no need – I claim Your truth!
Lord, hear my fervent prayer!
Let not my foes rejoice;
Redeem me from their traps and snares – Lord, hear my voice!          

T. M. Moore

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. All psalms for singing adapted from The Ailbe Psalter. All quotations from Church Fathers from Ancient Christian Commentary Series IV a and b: John, edited by Joel C. Elowsky, General Editor Thomas C. Oden (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006. Verse translation of John by T. M. Moore.