Jesus showed us a new way to love. But have we forgotten how to love in the way of Jesus?
What does it mean to be the church?
What is a church? Is a church a group of Jesus followers who gather together for worship each week? Is it people who are devoted to each other as disciples of Jesus?
Well, yes! But, to be a church means a lot of things! But what’s the ONE THING that serves as a banner over every other thing that we’re called to be and do for ONE ANOTHER?
Important moments call for important words.
This past week we celebrated Mother’s Day! Every year on Mother’s Day millions of cards are made, bought, written in, and given to our mothers, our grandmothers, because we know… important moments call for important words.
In fact, some of our deepest regrets are around the fact that we didn’t say what we should have said on an important day, or at an important moment.
We wanted to, we know what we should have said, we’ve replayed the moment a million times in our minds and if we could go back and get a redo we know what we would say… but for whatever reason when we were in the moment we missed the moment.
We know that the right words in the right moment, at the right time, they have the power to change lives.
Important Words: Living Water
Jesus knew this truth as well. He knew that important moments call for important words and He was the master at knowing how to leverage important moments to speak into the lives of his disciples the most important words. He did this throughout his ministry, teaching them along the way what they needed to know at just the right time.
This is why, when he was sitting at a well with a woman who had come at noon to draw water, a woman who came in the middle of the day so she could come alone, she wasn’t welcome to come in the morning with the other women, Jesus spoke to her.
The way she was living made her an outcast in town. But Jesus didn’t see an outcast. He saw someone who needed the love and grace of God in her life. So he spoke to her. He knew important moments call for important words. He asked her for a drink of water. But he really didn’t want something FROM her, he wanted something FOR her. So he told her in this important moment,
“If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me and I would give you living water.”
Important Words: I AM the Resurrection and the Life!
And this is why, when Jesus came to Bethany, the home of his dear friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, but he came too late as far as Mary and Martha were concerned because their brother Lazarus had died, Jesus spoke to them.
Their brother had been sick and they wanted Jesus to come sooner, they wanted him to get there before it got to this point, but now, Lazarus was dead. When Martha came to Jesus, he wanted her to know something in this important moment… he said,
“Your brother will rise again. I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never die.”
The Most Important Moment
And this is why, just hours before Jesus would face the cross, Jesus leaned in and gave his most important teaching to his disciples. This moment wasn’t just AN important moment that called for important words. It was THE MOST important moment that called for THE MOST important words.
It’s been about three years for Jesus and these disciples. They’ve been with him through literal storms on the Sea of Galilee and the kinds of storms created by people who strongly disagree with you and want you dead.
They’ve seen him heal the blind, cast out demons, and feed the hungry. They’ve got stories about Jesus that we don’t even know about Jesus. Stories of things he did, he said, that if we knew… we too would be amazed.
Since the day Jesus found them and called them and said, “Follow me…” they’ve been on the journey of a lifetime but now, it all comes down to this.
There’s only a few hours remaining between Jesus and the cross. He’s got an appointment with history that can’t be missed. And this moment, this moment with his disciples before the moment with the cross is an important moment. Maybe the most important moment. And important moments call for important words.
So what will Jesus say to his closest followers, his disciples, right before he faces the cross?
The Most Important Words
“Dear children, I will be with you only a little longer. And as I told the Jewish leaders, you will search for me, but you can’t come where I am going. So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”
Jesus talked about loving our neighbors, about loving the lost, he even talked about loving our enemies! But Jesus, in this moment, isn’t talking about any of that. He was telling his followers to love EACH OTHER!
In fact, FIVE different times in this last conversation Jesus has with his disciples before he goes to the cross Jesus says… “Love ONE OTHER!”
A New Command
And Jesus calls it a NEW command. Which is interesting, because the command to love each other isn’t anything new. In fact, if you go all the way back to the Old Testament, to the Law of Moses, the command to love each other goes back thousands of years. (Leviticus 19.18).
But Jesus doesn’t JUST say to love each other, he says… “Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.”
And how did Jesus love his disciples? We know the rest of the story. He literally sacrificed his life for them.
And this is what is NEW about this command. The instruction of Jesus isn’t just to love each other. Jesus didn’t say, love each other when you agree about everything. Love each other when people treat you well. Love each other when it’s easy and convenient. Love those who love you.
He said, love each other as I have loved you. Then he said this…. your love FOR one another will PROVE to the world that YOU ARE my disciples.
A New Way to Love
And just in case they were having any trouble connecting the dots, Jesus went on to say…
This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
And don’t miss this… This is Jesus’ instructions to his disciples about how they should love each other as disciples.
These were the ones who would in just a matter of weeks start the first “church.” After the resurrection of Jesus, the Holy Spirit would fall upon these disciples and soon after churches would begin to gather all over Jerusalem and from there would spread into Samaria and then to the ends of the earth! (Acts 1.8)
So what was it that Jesus thought was so important that he repeated five different times to these soon to be church planters before he went to the cross?
What could be of such paramount importance that Jesus wanted to make sure they got this one thing in their hearts and minds above all other things?
Jesus tells his disciples what’s most important is this… “Love each other as I have loved you.” And then Jesus demonstrated the gravity of that love at the cross.
New Love Changes Everything
He demonstrated this love at the cross so the woman at the well would know that even though she’s felt like an outcast in her community there is a community where no one is an outcast and everyone is loved!
He demonstrated this love at the cross so that Mary, and Martha, and Lazarus would know that even when Jesus seems a million miles away their job is keep believing and keep loving each other until he returns.
He demonstrated this love at the cross so that his disciples would know that after He ascended to Heaven and sent them His Holy Spirit and they started planting churches all around the world that this new command was what was most important. Love each other just as I have loved you!
What do you think it means to be the church?
This is a picture of Havva Kul. For four years, she accompanied her daughter, Berru Merve Ku, to her classes at law school every day at Sakarya University in Serdivan, Turkey.
Her daughter is blind. So Berru needed someone who could read her the lecture notes, read her the assigned texts in her law school text books, and help her every day for four years as she made her way through law school. This is a picture of Berru at her graduation.
But what happened that day is something that her mom never expected. After the college administrators presented Berru with her well deserved law degree, they went on to present her mom, Havva, with an honorary degree for reading lecture notes and text books to her daughter for four years!
What’s amazing about this story is that it really isn’t that surprising. This is just one example of the kinds of things that mother’s do.
Mother’s willingly and repeatedly lay down their lives for their children. In fact, you might say that this is one way that mother’s PROVE their love for their children, they sacrifice their lives for their kids over and over again.
And I would suggest that this kind of love, this kind of sacrificial love, is the kind of love Jesus is calling us to in the church.
Be the Aroma of Christ
We read this verse over and over again in recent weeks, but Paul wrote this in Ephesians 5.2 to the early church, “Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God.”
Whenever we love each other in the church the same way Jesus loves us, it is a sweet aroma to God.
You know like I know, there are things that smell good and things that don’t smell good. And our mom’s get to smell all the smells! But if you want to know what smells good to God, it’s the way we love each other.
The truth is, if we really want to be honest, we sometimes have a hard time loving each other well.
We let disagreements get between us. We let our egos get in the way. We are sometimes more loving to people outside the church than we are to people inside the church!
It’s easy to fall into the trap of making our love for each other conditional. It’s easy for us to make the command of Jesus to love each other the way he loved us optional.
But important moments call for important words. And at the MOST IMPORTANT moment, right before Jesus went to the cross, Jesus says what’s MOST IMPORTANT, that the way we love each other matters. In fact, the way we love each other will PROVE to the world around us that we really are followers of Jesus.
OneAnothering
After Jesus gave this command to love each other the way He loves us, the writers of the New Testament continued to think about and teach about all the ways that command, to love each other, applies to the church.
In fact, the word for “one another” is used 100 times in the NT and, depending on how you count, there are about 37 different ways we’re supposed to be OneAnothering within the church.
But it all begins with us learning to LOVE One Another the Jesus first loved us!
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