A New Commandment

John 13:34-35

A woman once told of her experience as a Church secretary. When she answered the phone she’d say, “Jesus loves you, Sharon speaking. How may I help you?” But one day she got distracted because she was talking to others in the office. When the phone rang she answered: “Sharon loves you, Jesus speaking. How may I help you?” There was a pause on the line... and then the caller said, “Somehow I thought your voice would sound different.”
SHARON LOVES YOU... JESUS SPEAKING! She slipped up. She didn’t mean to say what she said but she did, and because she said it, we chuckle... it’s kinda funny. But there SHOULD BE truth behind her statement. There should be a truth that - in everything we say - people should sense what we’re saying is: “I LOVE YOU... Jesus speaking.”

In our text today - Jesus declared: “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.” John 13:34
This idea – that we should love each other – permeates the New Testament. Just a few examples:
Romans 12:10 Love one another with brotherly affection. Out do one another in showing honor.
Romans 13:8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
1 Peter 4:8 Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.
James 2:8 If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," you are doing well.
And I could go on and on and on with such Scriptures. In fact, there are 62 verses that talk about “One Anothering” (by my count) of how we ought to treat one another.

But one of the questions we should ask ourselves is this: WHY? Why would God repeatedly challenge us to love each another? Well, the most obvious answer is this: We’re not very good at it. It doesn’t come naturally to us to love others. You see, when we came to Jesus, we were fairly selfish people. Before becoming Christians... we lived lives centered on ourselves.

ILLUS: One scholar reported that although there are approximately 450,000 words in the English language, about 80% of our conversations use only about 400 words. The most common words in the English language are: “I,” “Me,” “My,” and “Mine.”
We LIKE ourselves.

One source I read noted that building managers install mirrors in their lobbies because people complain less about waiting for slow elevators when they’re occupied looking at themselves.
WE LIKE OURSELVES... a lot.

Just a test – try looking at a group picture you’re in and ask yourself who you look for 1st? Odds are, you looked for yourself first. It’s hard not to be a little self-centered... it comes so naturally. Even THEOLOGICALLY, it’s hard (for believers) not to think of ourselves first.
Jesus says we need to focus LESS on ourselves and more on others:

Philippians 2:3 “...in humility consider others better than yourselves.”
So, that’s what Jesus teaches, but EVEN religious folks struggle with that. Just as an example:
Jesus said we should love one another as we love ourselves. In other words – the way we KNOW that we’ve loved others is if we’ve love them as much as we love ourselves. Now, I have heard experts (experts, mind you) try to say that this (we should love others as we love ourselves) proves that we should love OURSELVES FIRST! Because if you don’t love yourself ... you can’t love others.

That almost sounds reasonable, but that’s not what Jesus was saying. Jesus was saying: IT’S A GIVEN that you love yourself. And THAT (loving yourself) is the yardstick of how you should love others.

Paul explains it this way: “husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it” Ephesians 5:28-29
WE LOVE OURSELVES - and thus we struggle to love others. And that’s why the Bible repeatedly says we ought to love one another. And it repeats that truth over & over again.

Now, here’s the deal - God knew we were going to tend to be selfish even after we’re baptized. So ...He’s not telling us we’re going to get this “LOVE” thing right... right out of the box.  He’s telling us loving others is our objective/ our goal. That may be why Jesus referred to this as a “NEW COMMANDMENT.” It’s “new” because it runs counter to our natural human tendencies. But now that we’re Christians - this is the NEW COMMANDMENT for us. And this new commandment is how we’ll know we’ve become mature. When we’re mature, we will have learned to think of others first. We’ll learn to love others who sometimes even annoy us.

I found something interesting in Galatians 5:22. It says “But the fruit of the Spirit is LOVE, joy, peace...” etc. When we’re baptized into Christ, God promised to give us His Holy Spirit. The Spirit took up residence inside of our hearts and He began to tinker with how we think, and how we live. And the more seriously we take that reality (that the Spirit is an active force in our lives) the more we strive to “walk in the Spirit.” THUS... the more we’re going to change.

The fact that the Spirit HAS TO TEACH US how to love properly just reinforces the fact that loving others doesn’t come naturally to us. Thus... we have to work at it.  We should get to the point where people hear: “SHARON loves you... Jesus speaking.” Every time we speak, the world should hear Jesus speaking through us. And the way they’ll hear Jesus speaking thru us is if they hear us saying “I LOVE YOU” I care for you. You matter to me.  MARK LOVES YOU... JESUS SPEAKING. So, that’s our goal – to love one another. But how do we get there? Well one way is to get your holiness in order

ILLUS: I tried to find songs that talked about “Loving one another” - and I struggled to find ANY. There were absolutely no hymns I could find that mentioned loving others. It seemed that every hymn I found either talked about how much Jesus loves me or how much I love Him. Now, that’s all good stuff, but it was obvious there wasn’t anything about loving others that I could think of anyhow.

There’s 1000s of hymns and praise songs, but just a handful talked about loving others! I got so frustrated with that, I wrote a new verse for a couple of the old hymns to make up for that. Sing them with me if you will:
IN MY HEART THERE RINGS A MELODY (New Verse) “Our Jesus calls on us to love Him, and to love those He has saved. We give Him praise that He wants from us - when we show the love He gave. (Chorus) In my heart there rings a melody, there rings a melody with heaven’s harmony. In my heart there rings a melody, there rings a melody of love.”

LOVE LIFTED ME (Chorus) “Love lifted me, love lifted me, when nothing else could help, love lifted me. Love lifted me, love lifted me, when nothing else could help, love lifted me. (New Verse) A new commandment now I sing, loving as Jesus loves. Loving others is my plea, showing His love above. His great love has lifted me, my love should do the same. Lifting others up to Him, should be my aim.”

Now hymns and praise songs are our way of praising God, so you’d expect there to be songs about His love for us and our love for Him. But here’s the deal – You cannot love and praise Jesus - if you don’t love others. So you’d think there’d be songs about this, because what we sing influences our religion.

ILLUS: One of my friends told about a conversation he had with his daughter. The girl said, “Treat other people as they treat you.” He replied, “No, the Bible says to treat others as you want to be treated.” And she’d respond, “Exactly. So, if they are mean to me, that means they want me to be mean back to them.” Now, that daughter was joking (pulling his leg) but that’s the belief that too many church goers have. Do unto others because they deserve it.... Something we need to be careful about.

So how do you fight this dangerous way of thinking? First – you define what love is.
Ephesians 2:1, 3-5 “you were dead in the trespasses and sins... and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved.”
What’s that telling us about love? It’s telling us that God loved us when we didn’t deserve it. We were dead in our sins and trespasses ... we were children of wrath. We didn’t deserve his love, and yet, He loved us anyway.

Now compare that... with this verse from 1 Peter 4:8 “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” Our love for others should cover the sins of others... just like God’s love covered our sins! In other words, IF we love each other as we ought to, our love (just like God’s for us) will cover a multitude of sins.

ILLUS: There was a story told of an congregation that wanted to put a new roof on their church building. So, they hired a man in their congregation to do the job. He told them it would cost about $12,000 to do the work... and so they gave him the money. If I remember the story correctly, he had a gambling problem, and he gambled it all that roof money away. Now, a lot of churches would have been furious about that. They’d have sued him into oblivion for his sin. But not that church. That church forgave him. That church restored him to fellowship in church.
HOW COULD THEY DO THAT? How could they forgive a man who had gambled away their offerings to God? Well, they could do it because they loved him more than the money, and their love for him covered a multitude of his sins.

So, first, you define what love is... then you WORK at showing love. Romans 12:10 says “Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.” OUTDO each other in showing honor! COMPETE (if you will) with each other to show love to one another!

One man described it this way – If Christ were to come in here today and ask us to give him a pair of shoes or a winter coat, we’d have a stampede of people trying to give stuff to Christ. And if Christ were to ask, "Is there anyone here willing to come down out of your tree and (like Zacchaeus) let me come to your house for dinner today?" we’d have people complaining they didn’t get a chance to get there first.
Soooo, people would compete and try to outdo one another in meeting the request of Jesus.

In Matthew 25:35,38,40 it says “to the extent you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.” If you gave a pair shoes or a winter coat to someone in need... you gave it to Jesus; If you invited someone who was hungry to your house to eat... you invited Jesus; If you showed kindness to anyone who needed encouragement or attention.  Compete - outdo one another - to show love, because what you do for others, you do for Jesus.

Someone once put together some of the verses that tell us about Christian love. Christians who love one another: They don’t hurt each another (Galatians 5:15);
They don’t provoke one another (Galatians 5:26);
They refrain from judging one another (Romans 14:13);
They build each other UP (Romans 15:14);
They serve one another (Galatians 5:13).
They carry each other’s burdens (Galatians 6:2).
They are patient with each other (Ephesians 4:2).
They stimulate one another to love and good works (Hebrews 10:24).

CLOSE: But one of the greatest passages about love was written to a church who was hateful and divisive and self-centered. They were so divided that Paul warned them of God passing judgment on them. And yet, in the midst of his first letter to them, Paul told them what love looked like.

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” I Corinthians 13:4-8
Someone once said that Paul’s description of love in 1 Corinthians 13 is a portrait for which Christ Himself has sat.”
INV

sermon contributor Jeff Strite