98 - Jesus, the New Commandment, and Loyal Love

Jesus

The context of John 20 is that doubting Thomas has not trusted the witness of the disciples who saw the resurrected Jesus, and so he has exercised scepticism until he sees Jesus physically. He then says, "My Lord and my God," recognising the full deity of Christ in that sentence. Then Jesus says to him, "Because you have seen me, have you believed? (The implication is that he has) Blessed {are} they who did not see, and {yet} believed." That is, believe on the testimony of Scripture. Remember, we walk by faith, not by sight. Thomas has believed only because he sees.  

John 20:30 ^NASB "Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; [31] but these [signs] have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name." This is the purpose statement for the sign section of the Gospel of John. The purpose of the sign section is to communicate the gospel to unbelievers. There are eight signs, starting with the first at the wedding where Jesus turned the water into wine and culminating in the eighth and final sign which is the resurrection. All of that relates to the message to the unbeliever and how to have eternal life. But there is a large section in the middle of this Gospel that doesn't relate to saving faith, it is instruction to the believer, and that is what we are in the middle of. From John chapter thirteen through the end of chapter twenty the focus is not on the signs, other than the sign of the resurrection in chapter twenty, it is on something else. It is instruction to believers. There is a second purpose clause in John and it is John 10:10 ^NASB "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have {it} abundantly." So there are two categories of life in this verse: eternal life, life without end, going to heaven when you die, and then there is abundant life which is a quality and capacity of life which is ours as believers when we live according to the principles God has given us for the spiritual life. The signs section relates to gaining eternal life so that we have life without end, life in heaven. But John 13-20 is really designed to address the issue of spiritual life.

In the upper room discourse we saw the Passover meal that Jesus celebrated with the disciples, the exclusion of Judas, because he is an unbeliever he has to be removed from the midst, so Jesus is left with only believers to address them in terms of the spiritual life. He begins by telling them that He is going to leave them soon, John 13:33, and then in 13:34 he says: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another." This is a foundational concept, the rest of the epistle really focuses on this whole concept of love. If we look at the breakdown of the word "love" in the Gospel as a whole, the verb agapao [a)gapaw] is used 37 times. It is used 7 times between John 1 and the end of John 12. Starting in John 13 we find 30 uses between then and the end of the Gospel. The noun agape [a)gaph] is used seven times in the Gospel but only once before chapter thirteen. The verb phileo [filew], the other word for a more intense form of love, is used 13 times in the Gospel, only 4 times before chapter thirteen. philos [filoj], the noun, is used 6 times in the Gospel and only two times before chapter thirteen. So with all the words for love we see that about eighty per cent of their usage in the Gospel of John are in the upper room discourse and the final conversation between Jesus and Peter in John 21.

What is the significance of that? What is this really telling us? What we should be aware of in our study of John is that John not only gives us information in the details but he is also trying to communicate to us through the broad structure of what he is telling us. What John is saying here is that Jesus says the core issue in the spiritual life is this kind of love that he is talking about here. He tells us something about this love, that it is exemplified in what He is doing. If we go back and take a look at John 13-21, the last part of John, and do another statistical analysis on these love words, what we will discover is that they are isolated in two groups. The first group is in the upper room discourse itself, John 13-16. Love is not mentioned in the high-priestly prayer. There is no "love in chapters 17 -20. There next time we see love mentioned Jesus is confronting Peter on the beach when He says: "Peter, do you love me?" Why is it that there is no mention of love in chapters 17-20? Jesus says: "Love one another as I have loved you." In chapters 13-17 He is going to give them the basis for love which is the coming of the Holy Spirit, it is the fruit of the Spirit, and abiding in Christ which is fellowship. If they don't do that they can't love one another. He says that in chapter 15. He says, "If you keep my commandments you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love." That is talking about fellowship. Then in verses 12, 13: "This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends." What is He doing in chapters 17-20? He is laying down His life for His friends. He is demonstrating the "as I have loved you." So He gives them the command, He describes its attributes and characteristics in 13-16, and in 17 He begins to demonstrate what this love involves. It involves intercession for the church, and that is His present role at the right hand of the Father, and we will see in the prayer in chapter 17 the priorities that He has there and why He prays for us the way he does—and this is His love for us, and is going to tell us something about what love is—and then in 18-20 we see the passion, the suffering, the arrest, the suffering on the cross, the resurrection, and there is the demonstration of what love is all about.

If we want to get to the very core idea of what love is then we need to perhaps go back into the Old Testament to pick up some concepts. Psalm 89:14 ^NASB "Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; Lovingkindness and truth go before You." Here we see four attributes of God extolled. First we have His absolute righteousness, which is the standard of His character. Then we have His justice, which is the application of His standards towards man. Then His love, "lovingkindness," and His truth, His veracity. Righteousness and justice, usually called holiness, is foundational. Love and truth are linked together as having to do with that which goes forth from God. The Hebrew word for love is chesed. The root meaning is the idea of covenant loyalty. God enters into a contract. He does this initially in Genesis 1:26, 27 where all that terminology relates to a contract. He gives man responsibility, He outlines His role, outlines man's role, gives him prohibitions, says how he will bless man, how he will curse man if man fails, and everything is set up legally on the basis of a contract. What happened? Man violated the contract, disobeyed God and fell into sin. What does God do? He is faithful to His contract. He does not leave man hanging in sin, wash His hands of the whole scene and walk away. God continues faithful to His contract, so there are going to be some modifications now on man's part because of the consequences of sin, but He is going to keep going forward. He comes to Noah and says He is going to establish His contract with him. It is the same contract as Genesis 1:26, 27. Then He further stipulates this to Abraham and there are some modifications with Abraham, but God is faithful to His contract. So chesed, love, faithfulness, loyalty has to do with loyalty to a contract, to a contractual position that outlines role and responsibility.

So when Jesus comes and He says: "Father, I love you and because I love you I am going to do your will." That is why Jesus said: "If you love me you will do my will." Why? Because you are fulfilling a contractual relationship. We enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ at salvation and become partners of the new covenant which is the new contract, the new testament. We enter into a new contractual relationship with God and we are to be faithful to it. God is faithful to it; that is His love. There is more to love than that, it is not just simply that but it is the core concept of love—faithfulness, loyalty. And we can add to that, to an absolute standard.

In John 13 we have seen that Jesus said: "A new commandment I give to you that you love one another, even as I have loved you." That is the new part because the idea that you love your neighbour as yourself goes all the way back to Leviticus 18:19, but now He gives a new model which is, "you love one another as I have loved you" and "By this all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another." So this love for one another is exemplified by fulfilling the mandates of the new covenant. We deal with one another and relate to one another because of how Christ dealt with us. How He deals with us is based on who he is in the Trinity and because He loves the Father he does what is right and what is best for the creature. So when we love one another it is faithfulness to God to do what is right and what is best for other people.

How is this applied? In a more specific way or broad way is you love one another as Christ loved the church. But let's see how Paul applies this in Ephesians 5. It is always important to note that this follows the command in verse 18 to be filled by means of God the Holy Spirit, so that means that the ability to fulfil the mandates following v. 18 is dependent upon learning and assimilating doctrine and applying it so that there is character renovation. Then Paul applies this to the family. Ephesians 5:22 ^NASB "Wives, {be subject} to your own husbands, as to the Lord." He picks up the Greek from the previous verse. The general command is "be subject to one another in the fear of Christ." The idea of "fear of Christ" is respect. Where does this come from? It comes from John 13. This is application of the overall love command to love one another "as I have loved you." So it starts with authority orientation to Christ. There is no capacity to love in a marriage if there is no authority orientation to God. If there is not authority orientation to God then there are going to be serious problems in a marriage. A couple may be able to work things out and have a good time and a pleasant time but there is going to be a tremendous compromise at the spiritual level in order to do that because if one member of a marriage is not subordinate to God and the other one is then there is going to be conflict because they are serving different masters.

Now Paul addresses this whole concept of authority orientation and love to the framework of marriage. "Wives, {be subject} to your own husbands, as to the Lord." What happens in a marriage is a reflection of the wife's relationship to the Lord. Her subordination to the authority of the husband is a direct correlation to her authority orientation to the Lord. She is not obeying the husband because the husband is right, she is obeying her husband because she is subordinate to her Lord and she is glorifying the Lord. Ephesians 5:23 ^NASB "For [Because] the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself {being} the Savior of the body." Notice how this comes right down to the same principle as John 13. If we don't understand the Trinity and we don't understand what happens at the cross in terms of Christ's substitutionary atonement as it relates to love we cannot function in a Christian marriage. We must understand these things and think about them and meditate on them and let them transform our thinking if we are ever going to achieve the kind of Christian marriage that God describes for us in this passage. [24] "But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives {ought to be} to their husbands in everything." This is not a justification for either staying in an abusive relationship or for men to be abusive. There is no place for that in Christian marriage. This is not talking about some kind of distorted, unhealthy, abusive type of relationship; this is talking about a positive relationship between a husband and a wife, and the wife is to be subordinate to the husband.

Ephesians 5:25 ^NASB "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her." There is no qualification for the submission of the wife; there is no qualification for the loving leadership of the husband. The model isn't the wife or the husband, we don't love, we don't follow the leadership, on the basis of who they are or what they do but on the basis of who God is and what Christ did on the cross. That is the absolute standard: the integrity of God.

Ephesians 5:28 ^NASB "So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself…. [33] Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must {see to it} that she respects her husband." She is to submit to the husband in v. 22 and she is to respect the husband in v.33, but it never says that the wife is to love the husband. Why? We have to go back to Genesis 3 to find the solution, which is that the major problem as a result of the curse of sin is that women are going to have the problem of authority orientation. So they have to resolve that under the filling of the Spirit and spiritual advance.

All of that is to set the stage for what we are going to learn in the coming passage on Christ's love for the church in His high-priestly prayer. We will see the priorities of love in chapter 17 and then the action of love in chapters 18 and 19.