The Christian Trademark

Reflection on John 13:31-35

It is often said that Jesus gave a new commandment to his disciples. As a matter of fact, that is what Jesus himself says in our Gospel passage of today. That new commandment is the commandment of love. But how can it be new? Were people not required to love before the time of Jesus? Certainly! The Jews had two commandments of love enunciated in Deuteronomy 6:5 (love of God) and Leviticus 19:18 (love of neighbour). Even Jesus described them as the first and second greatest commandments of the Law (Mt. 22:37-39; Mk. 12:29-31). So how was the commandment given by Jesus new?

The newness of Jesus' commandment lay in its range and application. For instance, whereas the neighbour that a Jew was required to love was another Jew, for a disciple of Christ, the neighbour is every man and woman, friend and foe alike. A Jew had no business loving a Roman or a Samaritan. Not only was he not required to love his enemy, he was even entitled to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Not so for a Christian. For a Christian, even a Samaritan is neighbour to a Jew, as we learn in the parable of the "Good Samaritan" (Luke 10: 29-37). In our own context today, we might say that even a Muslim is neighbour to a Christian.

Also, the Jewish commandment of love was "You must love your neighbour as yourself" (Lev. 19: 18). Jesus' new commandment is rather "Love one another as I have loved you" (John 15: 12) When you hear what comes next, you will know that it goes far beyond loving your neighbour as yourself. In the next verse Jesus says, "No one can have greater love than to lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). And Jesus went ahead to show it by actually dying on the cross for us, his friends. That is how he has loved us.

If Jesus then commands us to love one another as he has loved us, it means that we must be prepared to lay down our life for our neighbour. There have been cases recorded in history when someone actually did that physically, someone actually died in place of another. What is more likely to happen, though, in our case is that we shall be required to lay down our life for our neighbour morally, symbolically. What that means is that we shall be required to make sacrifices, to deny ourselves certain things that we want, but someone else needs; or indeed something that we need, but someone else needs it more than we do. The thing that we may be called upon to sacrifice or deny ourselves may be material, like money, food, clothes, accommodation; or non-material, like our time, comfort, or simply a listening ear. We must be prepared to love one another as Jesus has loved us with all these things. According to Jesus in today's Gospel passage, that is how everyone will know that we are his disciples. It is the Christian Trade Mark!