Turn your Bibles to John chapter 13, beginning at verse 31. John writes, ‘When he had gone out, Jesus said, now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.’ If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once.
Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me. And just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, where I am going, you cannot come. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another. And by this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we gather to come into your presence to hear you speak. We speak to you in prayer and we ask that you speak to us through your word. Help us to hear what you have to say. Help us to live by faith and in obedience to you with all that we do with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. We pray this for your glory in Jesus name. Amen.
So now Jesus’s earthly ministry has reached its turning point. I mean, up until now, his ministry had been completely public even as some of the truths he taught were obscured within parables. They were still publicly available to anyone with ears to hear. But now Jesus was left alone with just his believing disciples. Judas was gone, having just left to go betray Jesus, to hand him over to the enemies of God.
But this early Christian fellowship was not broken. It was simply being refined and purified. Yes, Judas was gone, and Jesus’s chosen few were now being made whole as he was completing their spiritual education. And so over the remainder of this Passover evening in the story, Jesus will further explain the idea that underlies his entire miraculous ministry.
A concept that is foundational to our faith and our trust in him, his deity, his godhead, and his union with the Lord God our Father. And remember, more importantly than just filling in the gaps of Jesus’s life and ministry with all of these extra and additional details, John’s purpose in recording these specific seven miraculous signs that were performed by Jesus throughout this gospel was to demonstrate that Jesus is God and that also each of the seven recorded “I am” statements was a specific claim of equality with God the Father by him.
And so then after Judas left, Jesus began his valedictory saying: ‘Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and glorify him at once.”
That may sound confusing or even superfluous to our English-speaking ears, but once again, Jesus is asserting his claim of divinity through the use of what’s really a circular argument. Jesus begins by first saying that the Son of Man, he himself, is glorified. He’s glorified, meaning that he has been given glory and he is being given glory. He’s glorified, meaning that his glorification is both complete and continuing; it’s ongoing.
But then he asserts that the Lord God is glorified by the Son of Man’s glory. God is glorified when the Son of Man is glorified. The Son’s glory is God’s glory, and God is glorified by him because the Son is glorifying God with the glory that he himself has been given.
Following the circle, and so then to close out that circle of the argument, Jesus declares that God will then glorify the Son of Man. The Son of Man glorifies God; God glorifies the Son of Man. Glorifying him in himself, the Son of Man will be glorified by God with God’s own glory. And the Son of Man is being glorified by God with God’s own glory.
The Son of Man has been in the past glorified by God with God’s own glory. Meanwhile, the Son of Man glorifies God with God’s own glory. Then to conclude the assertion, he proclaims that God will glorify him at once—immediately. Right now, the Son of Man is glorified by God with God’s own glory immediately, which means he is and has been and is being glorified eternally because the glory of God, like God himself, is eternal and everlasting and unchanging.
So altogether, Jesus is claiming that the glory of the Son of Man is God’s glory and that God’s glory is the Son of Man’s glory, again claiming equality with God. But remember, equality is not equivalency. As he claimed God’s glory, he also claimed God’s divinity and his eternality. By claiming God’s glory, Jesus claimed equality and union with God the Father, but he did not claim to be the Father.
See, they are still both one God, yet two distinct persons. So you see, the Father glorifies the Son and the Son glorifies the Father as the Father glorifies himself while glorifying the Son. Together, they are glorified, and they’re glorified together as one. This is why we believe that the Lord is God and Jesus is God, because they are together glorified, and they’re glorified eternally—two distinct divine persons but still just one substance being God.
This is where our unique Christian doctrine of the Trinity begins to be formulated and explained in scripture. The Holy Spirit gets added into this conversation a little bit later. But meanwhile, the theme of Jesus’s unity and his union with God the Father, of Jesus being God, will continue to flow through and unite the whole of Jesus’s teaching after his last supper.
So after here reintroducing his claim of divinity, Jesus turned to his 11 disciples and proclaimed a new commandment I give to you: that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. And by this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.
See, Jesus began this discourse reasserting his divinity because his equality and union with God the Father is the source and justification for his authority to say this, justifying his authority to establish, pronounce, and enforce commandments as the only sovereign Lord.
See, this is critical because Isaiah tells us that for the Lord is our judge; the Lord is our lawgiver; the Lord is our king, and he will save us. Therefore, only God is the one who may issue a new commandment to us, because God alone has the right and the ability to issue commands to his creation, to tell us what we may or may not do, and what we must do.
He alone has the wisdom to justly punish those who remain disobedient. So the divinity of Jesus, of him being God—the logos, theos, andros—this is the cornerstone of the church’s entire foundation. The claim of divinity by Jesus, of him being the Lord God, was not some later development or mythological fabrication.
The fact of Jesus being God was understood and it was plainly taught by the apostles, as we see in the gospels. The fact of Jesus being God is critical to every Christian doctrine that we believe because without it our whole faith fails and salvation becomes impossible.
So Jesus, as the Lord God, the only judge and the righteous lawgiver, issues a new commandment to his disciples, telling us that we must love one another. But really, was this commandment actually new? Later on, John, in his first letter, will describe this new commandment to love, calling it new, as also being the same old commandment that we have had from the beginning.
And the synoptic gospels affirm the understanding that God’s people have been clearly commanded to love your neighbor as yourself ever since the books of Moses, ever since Leviticus. But perhaps, maybe they didn’t understand or remember this commandment. Maybe just maybe the first-century Jews found it difficult to read through Leviticus during their annual Torah reading, finding it difficult to read—like so many of us do today.
No, I don’t really think that is the problem. Instead, what I think the actual problem is and why Jesus calls this a new commandment is that while they already knew that they were supposed to love their neighbors, they did not rightly understand how they were expected to love them. I mean, that’s the message of the good Samaritan story found in Luke 10. They just did not understand what love really is.
So now Jesus would newly explain the old command. And when Jesus gave them this new commandment, not only did he explain it, but he told them that he had already demonstrated it. He had shown it to them. Jesus told them, ‘Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.’
See, Jesus has been practicing what he’s preaching throughout his entire ministry. Now, just as a reminder, for us, the kind of love that’s being commanded here in this passage is agape. Agape, it’s a selfless and sacrificial kind of love. A love that prioritizes the well-being of others and gives them a higher regard. A love that is characterized by loyalty and covenant faithfulness rather than just emotional fondness or sexual desire.
So, to understand Jesus’s command here, we need to remember and consider all of Jesus’s many examples of agape. But while many examples of such love are not identified by name in John’s gospel, his exemplary agape for others is demonstrated plainly throughout it.
The most recent example that we’ve seen was when Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, an occurrence that could not yet have been driven from their memory. And after he had finished washing them, when he explained the meaning of what he had just done, Jesus told them, ‘For I have given you an example that you also should do just as I have done to you.’
In other words, he said, ‘Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.’ The example that Jesus set before them showed how humbly serving others can be an act of agape, and also how redeeming, purifying, or helping others to become sanctified is also a great work of agape, showing that we should not allow our personal pridefulness to prevent us from helping or loving any other person.
Then back when Lazarus was sick and near death, John explained that Jesus loved (agape) Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
Now this, I must admit, is an exceptionally difficult example of agape for us to emulate, since when Jesus heard that Lazarus was dying, because he agapeed the trio, he delayed going to them, knowing that Lazarus would die. But Jesus did not delay so that his friends would needlessly suffer, but so that they might learn and know for certain exactly who he is.
He delayed in order to show them the agape love of God by restoring the dead to physical life and to fill us with the hope, the confidence, that he will also raise us up in spiritual life. The example which Jesus set on that occasion demonstrated how experience is often a far better teacher than just mere instruction.
I mean, sometimes people do gain and retain knowledge simply by being told or by reading. But the lessons that are learned from lived experience, especially hard and difficult or unpleasant lessons, are rarely—if ever—forgotten. We may be told a hundred times that the stove is hot, but until we actually burn ourselves, we do not believe it because we’re not willing to confidently trust the truth we’ve heard.
Then there were the seven miraculous signs that the evangelist has faithfully recorded for us. When Jesus turned the water into wine in Cana, healing a Capernaum official’s son by his word alone, healing an invalid at Bethesda, feeding a crowd near Bethesda, walking across the Sea of Galilee, giving sight to a man born blind, and yes, resurrecting Lazarus from the dead.
Jesus showed agape at Cana by preserving the honor of the wedding hosts and by facilitating their continuing celebration, exemplifying hospitality as agape. Jesus showed agape to the official and to his family by restoring a sick child to wellness and good health, exemplifying how providing good medical care and supporting our general wellness may be agape.
Jesus showed agape to the invalid by showing him compassion and mercy—by, I don’t like this language, but it fits—by seeing him when he had been passed by and ignored by others for 38 years. He satisfied the man’s need for validation for having his humanity recognized and affirmed, exemplifying how charity and simple kindness can be agape.
By honoring the image of God that is found within every person and respecting the inherent value of human life, Jesus showed agape to the crowd by having compassion on them by providing for and satisfying their hunger, exemplifying how helping to provide for the physical needs of others, like their hunger, is agape.
He showed agape to the disciples when he walked out to their wave-tossed boat and calmed the storm, exemplifying how helping to provide for the physical needs of others, like in this case, providing them with shelter or protection from the elements, is agape.
Jesus showed agape to the young man who was born blind, not just by giving him sight, but also through illumination. By illuminating his entire world—receiving sight—the man’s opportunity to learn and grow in knowledge and understanding within the social context was dramatically increased.
Receiving sight, his opportunity to work, to provide for himself and even a family, to become a productive, contributing member of society, increased dramatically. So, Jesus exemplified within that story the agape power that’s found in giving illumination through providing and encouraging education and study, by facilitating the gain of wisdom and understanding, and by promoting the betterment of others.
And Jesus showed agape to Martha and Mary when he did restore their brother Lazarus to life. He exemplified how comforting those who are in mourning, especially by encouraging them with our Christian hope of the resurrection life by faith in Jesus Christ, is agape.
Lastly, or perhaps first, through all of those things and by each of those examples, Jesus was demonstrating how God loves us. How he agapees all of his human creation through his provision of common grace. I mean, God is not so great that he abandons his responsibility to take care of and provide for his creation. He wants us to know his agape.
And in the grace of agape, God provides us with the freedom of will to choose and make our own decisions, allowing us to make mistakes and suffer the natural consequences so that we might learn from our errors and failures, learning to choose what is good and to reject that which is evil.
In the grace of agape, God provides us all with hospitality. He provides for all of our earthly joys so that we might seek him out, and the true joy that he alone provides. In the grace of agape, God provides for our health and our well-being by providing us with medicines, all the various healing practices we’ve learned, as well as the knowledge and wisdom to correctly apply them in different situations and circumstances.
In the grace of agape, God provides all humanity with an inherent desire to be kind and charitable towards others, to know what is right, good, and honorable, and to recognize value in human life. In the grace of agape, God also provides us with the ability to be kind and charitable, but he leaves us the freedom to choose whether or not we’re going to do so.
And then God also gave us his Son Jesus, not just to be the only truly righteous example for us to follow, but to do all of these works of agape for us, for our good benefit, to be the living and perfect personification of agape itself. So through his works of agape, Jesus glorified God the Father, the sovereign Lord, obeying this same new commandment that he was now giving to his disciples.
And so, since agape is obedience to God, and obedience is our means of showing honor and giving glory to the Lord God, then to agape is to give glory, to glorify, which means that the glory that is given, received, and shared between the Father and the Son is a sign of the love, the agape, that they have for one another.
Now, a second reason that Jesus began this discourse by asserting his deity, his perfect union and unity with God the Father, is because now he pivots to describe the disciples’ imperfect unity with him, saying that by this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.
See, within a Christian’s union to Christ, as Jesus glorifies God the Father through his obedience of agape, as God the Father glorifies the Son through his agape of him, our works of agape, obediently following Christ’s example, prove that we belong to and are united to Christ and sharing in their glory.
So if we are proven to belong to Christ, to be united with him because we agape one another, then it’s proven that we do belong to God, that we are his chosen, his elect children of adoption. And if we believe that God agapees us, and if we respond to God’s agape by agapeing one another, then through these good works of agape, we are giving glory to Jesus and to God our Father in heaven.
Greater than this, if we believe that God agapees us and if we glorify him in response to his merciful grace, then we know that he glorifies us just as he is glorifying God the Son. So believing and knowing that because God agapees us and glorifies us, our sinful covetous desire and preference for the glory that comes from men, from other people, will ideally be reduced and eventually removed entirely.
Because when we are loved by God and when we love God in return, then God’s love is what we most desire, because human love is fickle and fleeting, but God’s love is eternal and unchanging. And when we glorify God, when we glorify Jesus Christ, and we believe that he glorifies us with his own glory, then his glory is what we desire most to see increased.
Because human glory is very temporary; it either quickly fades or is quickly taken away. The glory of men is never satisfying because there’s never enough for everyone to have as much as they want, because human glory is always measured by comparison. But God’s glory is still always greatest.
Now, since Jesus is the good shepherd who knows his own and whose own knows him, who is it that we are proving to that we are Christ’s disciples, that we belong to him? Jesus told us that if we have love for one another, then all people will know.
And this is one of those occasions when all people actually means all people—believers and non-believers alike, Christians and non-Christians, the elect, the reprobate, the righteous, and the wicked. So if we agape one another, and if we agape others, then everybody is going to know that we belong to Jesus.
So then how do we keep this new commandment and so obey Christ our Lord? First off, we must remember that this commandment, this new commandment does not negate or replace the old commandments. They’re still in force. Instead of replacing the old, this new commandment augments, it overlays and explains what has always been expected by the old commandments.
I mean, this one new commandment actually makes all of the older ones easier to keep by simplifying and consolidating them into just this one single command. I mean, since this new commandment is to love one another as Jesus has first loved us, that consolidates and reframes the whole second table of the law into this one positive command to agape.
Again, the new command to love does not replace the old one because obviously, dishonoring your father and mother—that’s unloving. Committing murder is unloving. Committing adultery is unloving. Stealing and lying is unloving. And coveting other people’s stuff is unloving. Each of those things are most obviously and definitely not agape.
But since our agape is glorifying the Lord God who agapees and glorifies us, this new commandment consolidates and reframes the first table as well into the same singular positive command. Because having other gods besides the one true God is unloving towards God. Making and worshiping images or idols of the one true invisible God when he does not want us to is gross disobedience and unloving towards God.
Taking the Lord’s name in vain by using it falsely or fraudulently is unloving towards God. Failing to sanctify his chosen holy day, choosing to not obediently rest when even God himself chose to rest, is gross disobedience and unloving towards God. All of those are definitely not agape.
So since all of the prohibition commandments here are consolidated and reframed into this one single positive command to love, we know that it’s not good enough for us to just not do those things in order to be obediently righteous. We do not keep the commandments of God by simply not breaking them.
Instead, we are commanded to act positively through this agape by Christ. We must worship the Lord God alone, him only. We must worship the Lord God the way he desires, just as he’s prescribed for us to worship him according to his word in scripture. We must use his name rightly. Rather than avoiding all mention of it, we may invoke his name in lawful oaths, confirming our true good intention to keep our promises just like he does.
We must honor the Sabbath command. We must rest because God himself rested. We must use that time for worship and study to grow in our faith to strengthen our relationship with and our love for him. We must help our families to rest and worship and grow as well, but not in a legalistic or restrictive way because the Lord did give us the Sabbath as a blessing, not a curse.
We must honor, respect, and obey our parents and all other superiors as a way for us to be honoring the Lord. We must work to defend and preserve human life by all lawful and reasonable means, especially innocent life. However, matters of justice and enacting the punishment of the wicked by means of the sword is the duty of governing authorities, and so it is a necessary exception for us because they are acting as the Lord’s representative.
We must each work to preserve the chastity of our own heart and mind as we defend or protect the chastity and purity of others. We must repent of our past immoralities and flee from their temptation into the future. We must preserve and defend the property rights of others as well as our own. And while Christians, we are called by the Lord to be charitable, kind, and generous, it is our responsibility to willingly and gladly do so.
But we cannot be compelled to unjustly surrender our property for the benefit of others to our own detriment. I mean, forced or compulsory redistribution of wealth is not the same as Christian charity. Government welfare programs funded by taxpayers are not the same as Christian charity. I mean, they may have benefits, but it’s not Christian charity.
We must be truthful in everything that we say and imply because honesty is always the best policy. And we are called to contentment. We must choose to be satisfied with what we have and with whatever more the Lord graciously provides us. That’s not to say we should forego our ambitions or that we should not desire to improve our social status or economic circumstances.
Instead, we’re not to make the accumulation of wealth and property our life’s goal or purpose. Even while our tangible blessings increase, we are not to increase them at the expense of others. And second, we need to intentionally love one another, even and especially when it feels hard to do. We need to agape each other within the church, within our congregation.
And we need to agape those who are outside of the church, even outside of the faith. We all need to agape others, however, we are able, each according to their own individual gifts, according to our own ability and capacity. I mean, some of us might comfort others when they’re grieving. We might visit or help those who are sick and injured.
We might teach or disciple our fellow believers, cook meals for shut-ins, or open our homes and invite guests, mow our neighbor’s lawn for them, or a person can come and help pack food boxes at the Salvation Army, or volunteer to tutor kids at their learning zone. See, there are countless options and opportunities for us to agape others to obediently follow Jesus’s example.
But third, and most importantly, we must always remember that such good works are not good in and of themselves. They become good only because they are being done to God’s glory, in our love for Jesus Christ. That is what separates our acts of Christian service from just merely being worldly and godless charity. That’s what makes them agape.
Our goals, our motivations, our intentions for acting must always be grounded in the love we share for one another and our love for Jesus Christ. So to best keep this positive new commandment given by Jesus, everything that we do, we must do all to the glory of God and do all for the love of God. Amen.
Please stand and join me.