New Command: Love One Another

What is the greatest commandment?

They asked Jesus. And he says,

love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your strength, all your might.

And notice the qualifier, you're to love God, who is most loving and most lovely with all that you are. There's a defining and declaration about everything about you is to love God. And then he says there's a second one,

love your neighbor as yourself.

And we heard that read in simplicity from Leviticus 19 earlier. Well, that's the old law. And as we think about those commands, love God with everything and love your neighbor as yourself, the measure there is really important in terms of what kind of affection, what kind of commitment. We wrestle with the high calling of the Christian life is to love God, to know him, to be known by him, to come to his presence, To love someone means we know them, means he's made himself known, means we direct our affection with all that we have. It's important, we know from 1 John, why do we love God? Because he first loved us. God has come to us in love so that we can fulfill his very command to love us. We know who God is and worthy of love because of how he has first loved us. He's come down to save us from our lack of love, even our hatred. He's come down to save us from our lack of worship. He saves us from our twistedness in love. And so we love him. The second man is based on a recognition that there is a God who has created us in his image And notice it says, love your neighbor. That's the person next to you. So you could look around. Your neighbor is the one next to you. And there's an importance of nearness. Some of you looked. Everyone can look. It's OK. Love your neighbor as yourself, because God has created you equal. There's a mutual way in which you love them. The love of the Lord your God, that's loving someone who's greater than you with all of your energy, with all your strength, but the one next to you, there's a mutual kind of love because God created you the same. Now there's actually a third love here, isn't there? There's an assumed love that's not commanded. Love your neighbor as yourself. There's an assumed self-love. I think that's a healthy assumption in that we all love ourselves. The difficulty is oftentimes we don't love ourselves well. We are committed to our own well-being. We do make promises to ourselves to desire and care for our best interests, but we oftentimes do so poorly. Some people love themselves by going to the bar. That's bad self-love. That's destructive self-love. There's a way in which that kind of self-love even becomes self-abuse and danger. So we see here, Christ has given the summary of what the old law is. I believe we should assume those old laws are still helpful for us and even binding in many ways. Let's back out and I think we need to define what love is. God, the God of love, the God who has given himself in love, the God who calls us to love, he has the authority to define love. The God of love has loved us so we can love him. He's loved us and made us all equal in dignity. That's why we must treat each other with a mutual respect. But love, it's that word. The culture's just messed up so many ways. The Bible teaches there's many false loves, wrong loves. We're supposed to repent of bad love. Some wrong views of love that I think are kind of summaries of how our culture messes things up. Reducing love to mere sentiment. It's some more feeling, vibes, feeling just a connection. There's a sentiment love of maybe it's nostalgia, maybe it's just something we really like. There's an idea that love is simply based upon my feeling of warmness or attraction. Secondly, Love is a spark. Love is this excitement that happens like when you come in contact with Tom Cruise and he completes you. Or it's that moment where you kick your foot up. Now I did just watch Princess Diaries with my daughters, so I needed to completely deconstruct that false view of love because of how dangerous it can be. If you find yourself falling in love like that, please get out as soon as possible. The third is this appetite. This is what I love to consume, what I find most satisfying. And the fourth, going beyond that, is that erotic indulgence. That's what we think of love. Let me give you a definition of love from what I've wrestled with and taken from others. You can challenge it, talk about it amongst yourselves. First, love is a promise. Again, too often we think of love as what we consume, but no, love is making a promise. To say I love you is saying I'm making a promise to you. I'm committing myself in your direction. Love is the intentional commitment of yourself your attention, action, and affection that determines your direction and priorities. Love is the intentional commitment of yourself, your attention, action, and affection that determines your direction and priorities. Instead of saying I love as to what I'm consuming and enjoying, which is kind of just whatever I'm enjoying today. Love is setting a direction, a pattern, setting priorities. I say this is love because God makes his promise in love and that sets his direction towards us. God makes a promise to save a sinful people and all of the world has been directed towards that end as God himself cannot deny himself. but keeps that promise. So when we say we love someone, what we really should be thinking is I'm directing myself in a different way, I'm committing myself. Now that's the old law. Love God with all you are, that's looking above, the one who's greater than us. Love your neighbor, that's the one next to us. And we're now the new law. The new command is to love one another. Now this is still in the next two categories, but it's a small subset of the neighbors. It's a group of neighbors that have something else in common. It's those who have also received the love of Christ. It's your brothers and sisters, it's fellow disciples. The one another shows there's a mutualness. of something more specific other than just being mainly the image of God your neighbor next to you, it's someone who has been bought by the same precious blood of Christ. A fellow member of the body underneath the head of Christ. A fellow stone being built up at the temple on the chief cornerstone, the living stone. To get a picture of what this means, the God of love has come down in love to help us find him in true love. He's loved us to help reorder our loves. And the one another commandment is focused in there in that we're called to love fellow disciples of Jesus Christ. And it's again important, he just introduced the Lord's Supper. He's about to go to the cross to show you his love, finally and perfectly and completely. He's about to ascend so that we now as a church must be his body, his people, and this is the command that should really control everything else we think about ourselves. Christ loved us and now commands us to be obedient in his love. Praise God, we should be asking about, all right, This is our King, this is our Savior, this is our God. He's commanded us to love one another. Fellow believers, how can I know if I'm doing this well? This is an important commandment of Jesus, the end of his life, to give this new commandment that should define his church. How can I know? Well, Jesus doesn't just command and expect this. He models it and he gives us his own measure.

The new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.

That very focus, the way we love each other is defined based upon who we are, not just neighbors, but those brought by the blood of Christ, fellow disciples. And now the measure of that love, the measure of obedience to Christ's new commandment. It's the second half of 34.

Love one another just as I have loved you. you also are to love one another.

That qualifier is so informative. The qualifier is so important because it helps us understand the measure of what we should expect from others and from ourselves. Now, let's just pause here and make sure we understand the grounding and first step to really grasp this commandment. Jesus loves me. and you and us. Without that, this commandment is meaningless and not worthy of our meditation. This is the beginning point of the entire commandment. It's the clear assumption and clear declaration, Jesus loves us. We are the people who have been bought by the precious blood of Christ because he loved us. He's speaking to the disciples who he's made it clear this is the cup of the new covenant, my blood. He's already giving them the insight that it's going to be a sacrificial love, it's going to be a love that cleanses them and helps them and saves them. He's King Jesus who's come to save us. He loves us. We have been loved by Jesus and are therefore called to reorder our loves by Jesus and his commandment. We receive love from Jesus to love others and to share in that same love. Now, to make sure we're on the same page, there's two commandments about people who are next to us. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love one another as Christ loved me. That measure is very important. The qualifier is very important. Love your neighbor as yourself and love one another as Christ loved you. I'm going to go ahead and make it very clear, I am 100% certain Jesus loves me more and better than I love myself. There's an intensification with the qualifier because it's a more direct focused group. It's those who not only Jesus has loved, but now there's a intensification, I think, of the kind of love. I'm certain Jesus loves me more because he has a greater love capacity. I'm certain he loves me more because everything he does is good and right and perfect and constant. Now, if we really think about what it means that Jesus loved us, and then hear the command to love one another, again, look around for a second. As Jesus loved us, that is wonderfully clear and daunting. Everybody with me? It's clear and overwhelming. This is why we always begin with He loved us. He loved us in ways that we actually can't love one another. He's the creator who's greater than us and loves us as creation. That's lower than Him. We're equals. He loved us even while we were sinners. He is perfect and holy and true, never a sinner, but yet love sinners. We are equally sinners who've been bought by the same precious blood who come in the same way. He is able to make and keep every promise. He can't break a promise. Well, we tend to break promises. His love is the most important measure and clarity which we must begin with because it's the starting point of the command. If you're not a Christian today, this message is primarily for the church to understand who we are and what Christ has done for us and what we're to be doing for one another. And I want to make clear there is a really helpful on-ramp here for you. The beginning point for everyone, whoever comes to Jesus, whoever becomes a Christian is while even a sinner, Jesus loves us. Jesus coming down to us in love is the beginning point. He saw us in our helplessness. He saw us in our sin. He saw us in our neglect of worship and our hatred of all things good. And he committed himself as a promise in love to save the worst kinds of sinners, every kind of sinner. He's holy and righteous in his love to come down to us. And what we do is simply respond in belief. that Christ in love came down to us, died on the cross to forgive us of our sins so that we could be declared righteous, that we can now be washed and cleansed and He rose again to give us new life so that we can now live a life of true love as people who know God and His love, who make known the God of love. If you're not a Christian today, The key focus for you is to meditate on the cross. That is where you will see the love of Christ for you, a sinner, demonstrating that he came to save you, even when it cost him. If you're a Christian, that means you've confessed a faith in Christ. Faith is also a promise, a commitment. You've heard of the love of God, and therefore you've committed to love Him. And the beautiful truth of what Jesus does in saving us is He doesn't just forgive us, He starts reorganizing our heart. He starts putting things that were broken and twisted straight and in place. He helps us see how disordered our lives are without Him, and He puts them in order. Church, we are to love those Christ has loved. That's the command. Those Jesus loves, we love. We like to come up with loopholes. The whole Good Samaritan story is about coming up with a loophole as to why I won't love that neighbor. There's no loopholes here. This is why we really focus on meaningful membership, why we take seriously our covenant that's in front of you. We want to make sure we know who we're committed to and responsible for and love because this is the new commandment of Christ that I believe defines all other commandments. Christ saves all kinds of sinners. And some of us are real rascals. Some of us are difficult to love. That's the beauty of the gospel. All kinds of people from all different nations and all different tribes and cultures and tongues. And some are really prickly. Some still have hard edges. Some are not like us in any way. He saves them, he loves them, and calls us to love them as he loves us. When we have a difficult relationship with fellow believers. When we have a difficult time with someone who professes and knows the love of Christ, it is right to say Jesus loves them and that truth is what should inform that relationship more than your difficulty. And it should immediately humble us and help us see Jesus loved me while I was a difficult, prickly sinner. It's important, we cannot grow properly as a Christian by ourselves. We must repent of our individualism. We all come to this world as Westerners who are just individualistically focused. We grow as a church. We need these relationships in our church. We must learn how to love one another as a church. And before you is one of the most important ways in which we do that. It's the Lord's Supper. We've already come together to experience the love of Christ together. We've heard his word read together. We've prayed together. We've sung together. Here, the Lord's Supper is one of the great declarations to us that Christ loved us in a way that he promised himself towards us. He gave us his life in the most powerful and clear way. He gave himself up, and this cup, which represents the blood of the new covenant, is something we do together in our love for Christ together. It's something we do together to love him more together. We don't just come here as individuals, we're taking this together. That's why we wait to take the bread together, why we wait to take the cup together. We're partaking of Christ together. We're remembering his love together. This is supposed to be an act of love towards God and one another. And then let me encourage you, there's a meal afterwards. Jefferson Park members, you should make every effort to be at that meal together. It's not just kind of like a bonus thing we're gonna do after. That's the love feast. That's a continuation of our Lord's Supper together. All right, there's seasons where kids gotta go to bed. Please put them to bed. There's a season where we weren't able to attend because of some allergy fears. We had to figure some things out. If you have an issue that gluten doesn't love you, we love you enough there's a whole gluten-free section. But that's a continuation where we sit across the table and we share our lives and a meal together that we all contributed to. It's one of the ways we actually learn to love one another. As we consider this, the command is to promise yourself to a specific people. There's a mutual commitment, there's a mutual handshake because Christ has both loved us, we love one another. When you have to love someone who is not like you, it helps you see what God's love is like. When you have to love someone who you think is different and disagreeable, it helps you to see God loves you too. When you see a sinner who confesses and repents, you get to rejoice, we share that same forgiveness. As we wrestle with this, still feel the dauntingness of that high measure of Christ's love. Let me give some application for all of us, I pray, who are wrestling with, how can I love Christ more by loving one another? Here's the application. First, lean into Jesus's love for you. The instinct might be to get your calendar out and start thinking, I'm going to make build up all these different things to do to start loving people. No, the first thing, the first truth in this command is that Jesus loves you. Without that, you don't have the fuel to love one another. You don't have the reason to love one another. You cannot obey this commandment with just your own grit. It must first come to turning to the cross and see how he's loved you. If you've faded in your love for the church, it's most likely a fading of the love for Christ and understanding his love for you. The first thing to do is to recognize the great love Jesus had for you and that he died for you while you're still a sinner. He loved you not because you were lovely. He loved you not because you're worthy. He loved you because he loved you. That is the great promise of Jesus Christ. It was nothing about who you were and it was nothing to do about how much you loved him. He loved you merely because he set his affection upon you and gave you everything. That's the starting point. Now at the same time, you actually can't do that by yourself. We need to trust God, we need to pray to God, we need to come together and help each other love him. So second, lean into your relationships with the church. As you're going to commit to lean into the love of Jesus, you're gonna commit to lean in on the promises you hope to keep. There is something about the habits and patterns we create. They are determining and defining where our love is going. If you wanna know where your love is, what is in pen and what's in pencil in your calendar? You love the things you put in pen. You love the things you make hard and fast. I will not break that promise. Start asking how can I order my life around a love for Christ and the love commands of what scripture says. I wanna make that reflected in my pen. Here at Jefferson Park, our discipleship is really based around corporate gatherings. I'll explain why that is in a little while, but we believe this is the primary way in which Christ calls us to love one another, the corporate gatherings. We have three corporate gatherings, Sunday morning, Wednesday night, members meeting. Seek to get connected to the church first with those corporate gatherings, and I realize folks aren't able to make it Wednesday night oftentimes. There's more work to do in terms of just connecting with people in other ways. But this is my observation with an implied promise. I've never seen a member faithfully commit to Sunday morning and Wednesday night that doesn't get connected in love with the church. I've never seen someone who's committed to praying with the church, being present in that way. It's not the only way, but it's what I observe. It's difficult to not be connected in love when faithfully present in what we are corporately committed to. Third, lean into specific relationships. Here, I wanna encourage you, consider how to practice hospitality. This is one of the lost practices and disciplines of our culture and our church, not our church, but in Christianity. To invite someone into your home, into your life, into a meal, it's a way to show love. It's a way to connect. Ask them their testimony. Ask them their favorite, what they're reading. Ask them how Christ is teaching them. Invite people into your house. And this is the beauty of it. Invite them into that chaos of your life. Let them see how the gospel is even true in the middle of the chaos. And discussing this with the interns, one of them pointed out, one of the greatest problems here is the expectation for hospitality is today. Yes, I blame Magnolia and Martha Stewart. For one of the reasons, hospitality is a practice. You're supposed to have like this immaculate house and this incredible meal. Now open up a can of soup and warm it up. It doesn't have to be great. If you're both loved by Jesus, sharing a meal together, it's great. Families, invite the young folks in and see the joy of just chaos with kids and Legos everywhere and how hard it is when you step on them. Remove the expectation that it just has to look a certain way. No, it's just sharing our lives together. Let's just go one step further. All right, invite people into your life, hospitality in your home. I've given this encouragement before, and I don't think it happened. Do the pop-in. Your membership director has addresses. All right, text them on your way, and don't ring the doorbell, all right, if kids are there. But Lisa and I had two families in Louisville that I praise God, they always told us they liked to pop in. I don't know if they seemed like they did. But we'd be out, we'd say, let's go see the Peppers. And it was just a wonderful, they always welcomed us. And being able to step into a mess oftentimes, see how they loved each other, their children, Jesus, it was such a sweet blessing. But again, this is loving Christ and then opening up our hearts and our lives. A open home shows an open heart. Fourth is application. It is costly and it is sacrificial. Jesus' love for us is more intense than a mere mutual love of self because it is costly and sacrificial. This does require us to repent of our individualism. It does mean we stop loving comfort and convenience. There is a commitment that goes beyond comfort and commitment Convenience when we commit ourselves to the costly love of Christ. Finally, verse 35, Jesus gives us a purpose for this new command. By this, you'll be happy all the time. He actually does say, by obeying his commandments, your joy will be complete. That's next time I'll be preaching on this. But this one's somewhat startling, this one's a bit surprising. By your love for one another as I loved you, that's what this is, by your love for one another, all people will know that you're my disciples if you have love for one another. As amazing as a rationale, and there's something here in that just as James 2 teaches us, Your faith has to be a show-me faith. Right, James isn't saying you have to have faith plus works and somehow like working together in mutual direction towards God. No, it's a show your faith by your works. Here it's show your disciple by your love. It's demonstratable, there's evidence. The people, all people, that is all neighbors, every other human being would be able to see you're a disciple of Jesus if You love one another. It's demonstratable. Again, James is helpful. It's not just saying, well, God bless you. No, it's a faith with works. It's a love of action. So do your neighbors know you're a disciple of Jesus Christ because of your love of the church? Is there a way in which they regularly see your car leave every Sunday morning? Is there a way in which they regularly see believers coming over to your home? Is there a way in which your co-workers hear the testimony of how you're caring for others? Especially one of the ways we want to be a witness is caring for you and your co-workers and neighbors hear of that. Thankful for the meal lines and the benevolence way our church has cared for each other. To our community, the gathering, the way we actually relate to each other right here is meant to be a witness. And if you're not a Christian this morning, we're so thankful you're here. It's actually interesting to think about what this looks like and how we come together as a community. One of my neighbors, it appears they came to Christ in salvation during COVID while watching church online. Sadly, because that's the way they came to faith, they've never moved beyond that. That's what they continue to do. And I've wrestled with how to talk to him about it because I look at that and he has children. That's not a faith that can be handed over. It's not a faith that's demonstratable. You're staying in the convenience of your own home and just watching something online. There's not a real commitment to be in the presence of people and be with people and going through the difficulties with people. Think about this. What is it we're testifying to all people, especially those closest to us, our children, and how we speak about the church?

By this, all people will know that you're my disciples.

One of the amazing ways this played out in the early church was how unique the gathering of the church was. In Rome, men and women did not join in the same room to eat a meal together. Different classes of people did not join together in the same room to enjoy a meal together. The church was unique in that people that never would have associated together otherwise, shared a meal together, united together in a common purpose. Men, women, upper-class, lower-class, what we call white-collar, blue-collar, they would share in a way that was absent from society. And we can just think the interest, the confusion sometimes, but the interest, they're all coming together, elect exiles in Rome. to be one together. And it was a way the early church grew as a witness. It was one of the many reasons we were committed to a common corporate gathering. We get to all gather together and encourage each other as we share our voice in unison with the songs. We share together, next to one another, we take the Lord's Supper. One of the ways we want to just repent of individualism is thinking, I want to make sure I have created my discipleship that's going to fit all my interests. There's something here with a corporate gathering. We're all coming together under Christ together. We had a missionary come, Lindsay Knight, from Sweden, very encouraged by the Norins and their ministry in Gothenburg. And he asked us, what are five things a church needs to be healthy? And this is a pastor on the front lines of evangelism and missions in one of the most individualistic countries in our world. And he did not mention either evangelism or missions as one of the five necessary things to be healthy. But the last thing he stated was a church that's committed to the one and others. A healthy church united, committed to one another because of Christ. And the beauty of that is that is itself a mission in evangelism. Because if you're just committed to evangelism and you don't have a healthy church, what are you inviting them into? Are you known as a disciple by your love for Christ and his church? Is it clear, committed, and regular in a way that makes it observable? We're talking about community, the love of one another, and everyone's looking for community because we've really lost it. And just let me tell you the principle of how you find community. You make a promise to be part of it and to build it. You're not gonna fall into it. You don't discover it. You find, you look for people who are committed to the same principles, the same beliefs, the same practices of who you want to become, and you commit to that people. Too often we're saying, I need this church to look like that. These, I mean people that are just like me. Now the beauty of the church is you actually get to sit next to somebody who has nothing in common with you. But Christ loved you both. I was just in the study with the interns. And it was fairly discouraging. Very different folks. We had two nations represented. Somebody from India, somebody from Texas. And the age gap, and that's where a lot of our distance in our culture is, right, the age gap. I'm older enough to be their father, they didn't get any of my cultural references. Like they never even heard of some of the things I was talking about. More importantly, they didn't laugh at any of my jokes. And I'm hilarious. There's no reason the six of us would probably ever spend time in a room together if it were just based upon what kind of interests we have or what kind of cultural connections we have. But it was sweet fellowship. We all sat around Christ's word together and talked about how to love him more and love one another more from his word. A problem we all have in our love for self is we walk in a room like this And we might all look and think, wow, look at all the others. That's a natural thing we do. If you walk in a room like this and you're a believer and all you do is see all the others, there's an unhealthy self-love there. Because this is what we should do when we walk in a room like this. Look at all these people Jesus loves. Even that guy. Look at all these people Jesus loves that are just like me. Jesus loved them and died for them. And we can commit to loving Christ together. There are so many things we prioritize that are just obstacles that get us away from the primary thing. Christ's love for us and how we might grow in love together with Him. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you, Lord, for your kindness in that your love was not dependent upon us deserving of it, being worthy, but you loved us because of your own promise. Thank you that, Jesus, you gave us yourself. God, you promised your own life. You promised at your own cost We thank you that you've kept every promise. As we meditate upon Christ's love for us and that weighty good command to love one another, Lord, I pray this church would grow in love of Christ with one another, as we grow in love for one another. Lord, may we know how to put on forgiveness, and to exercise it quickly, to be overwhelmed with your love so that we're quick to show love to others. And Lord, we pray it would be a great witness to the children who don't know you among us. We pray it would be a great witness to our neighbors around us and unbelievers who join us. We pray it would be the foundation for how we continue on mission. to make disciples of Jesus Christ because of his love, in his love, proclaiming his love. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.