The 11th Commandment

"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. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35 ESV)

My last post titled, Redistribution of Wealth?, was meant to awaken a specific duty that we as followers of Jesus are called to undertake. This is no one else's responsibility but our own as followers of Jesus. Now, I wanted to follow that post up with how we are to execute this duty. I believe the answer is clearly given to us in this "new commandment" that Jesus gives on His last night with the disciples. Jesus raises the bar of "loving your neighbor as you love yourself" to "love everyone as I have loved you". "And this is His commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as He has commanded us." (1 John 3:23 ESV)

So how do we love like Jesus? "But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth." (1 John 3:17-18 ESV) We love like Jesus by loving in deed and truth. "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:3-8 ESV) Loving like Jesus is loving others sacrificially. What are you sacrificing? What are you giving up so that others may gain? Let me be the first to admit that most of us can do more than we are currently doing. None of us will ever sacrifice as much as Jesus did by choosing to come into earth to rescue us.

And that leads to my last point. It's a choice! Taking care of those in need out of obligation or selfish ambition is not love. Taking care of those in need because you are forced to by some outside authority is not love. Love requires the freedom to choose. Jesus did not cling to His equality status with God and chose to empty Himself. Love is not forced, it chooses. May we ask our Father to transform us into servant leaders with the love of Jesus abiding in us all.

"And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing." (1 Corinthians 13:2-3 ESV)

"So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13:13 ESV)

With peace thanks to Jesus,

Terry