To Know Him
Commentary
The old idiom claims of certain people, “To know them is to love them.” A variation on the saying might be appropriate when talking about the Lord. Specifically, we might say that to know him is not merely to love him, but to know that he is love.
This may seem like an unspectacular statement to church folks. I fear that we are perhaps so accustomed to the affirmation that God is love that we no longer recognize the profundity of it. Or the scandal of it.
I say scandal because if this claim about the nature of God were not founded on scripture, it would be a preposterous sort of assumption to make about a holy and omnipotent deity. After all, one would think of so many other attributes or qualities that should seem to have preeminence. Speak of his wisdom or his power. Speak of his size, his radiance, and his eternality. Declare his glory and his holiness. But to say that this one who is so entirely ‘other’ actually deigns to love us is beyond extraordinary. Not only are we so small and so fleeting — “but a breath,” the psalmist would say — we are also so corrupted and rebellious. If the one who is all-wise and all-powerful does love, it seems that we would be unlikely objects for his love.
But therein lies the beauty of his truth. It’s not just that he does love; he is love. So says the Apostle John (1 John 4:8, 16). And if he is love, then it is inevitable that he does love. By way of analogy, we might say that we are not warmed by the sun because we are proper objects of its warmth, but rather we are warmed by the sun because the sun is warm. We simply experience the benefits of what it is.
Love is God’s quintessential attribute, and so to know him is to know — to discover more and more — that he is love. And once we know that, then everything else he says and does is understood in light of that truth. We might adjust the idiom, then, to say that to know he is love is to know why he does what he does.
Our marvelous collection of passages for this week is best explained in terms of love. What we hear him saying during the Last Supper in John, what we see him doing in the episode from Acts, and what he plans and promises for the culmination of all things in Revelation — these are all functions of who and what he is. For a person’s actions are a manifestation of that person’s will. And a person’s will is a reflection of their heart. And their heart is a matter of their character, their nature. God’s nature is love, which is demonstrated in the largeness of his heart, the goodness of his will, and the beauty of his actions.
Acts 11:1-18
I was twleve years old the first time that I read the Book of Acts. I loved it! It painted a picture of the early church that was exciting and beautiful. And I felt myself longing for the modern church to resemble more closely the early church.
Now it is fifty years later, and forty of those intervening years have been spent working in and serving local churches. My vision has remained the same inasmuch as I still want and strive to make the church today more like what it ought to be, which for me is still embodied by the church of Acts. And yet, with time and maturity, I perhaps read the Book of Acts somewhat more clearly. I see that it is not an airbrushed portrait of the church, for it features conflicts and controversies, just as the church does in every age.
The underlying conflict for our selected passage from Acts 11 involves the conversion of Gentiles. This is a difficult controversy for us to wrap our minds around, for the church is, for most of us, an entirely Gentile enterprise. For us, the greater challenge would come if suddenly there was a great influx of Jewish converts. Indeed, for some American churchgoers, the very concept of a Jewish Christian would seem like an oxymoron, whereas in the earliest church that’s the only kind of Christian there was.
Christian faith grew out of Jewish faith and covenants just as the New Testament is built upon the Old Testament. Jesus was Jewish, as were all of his first followers. He said he had been sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and the texts for the first Christian preachers were all necessarily Old Testament texts. And while Jesus’ final instructions to his disciples clearly featured a mission to the whole world — all peoples, both Jews and Gentiles — the church began with an all-Jewish membership.
What gave rise to the controversy of Acts 11, then, was the experience that Jewish Peter had with Gentile Cornelius in Acts 10. Deliberate separation from the Gentiles was deeply inculcated in the devout Jews of that time. Furthermore, inasmuch as those first Jewish Christians understood Jesus to be the fulfillment of their law and prophets, it was natural for many of them to assume that any Gentile convert would need first to become Jewish. In other words, how could there be a direct flight from paganism to Christianity? Didn't a person need to make a connecting stop in Judaism?
When Peter recounted for his fellow Jewish believers, however, the events that had transpired in Joppa and Caesarea, they came to the same inevitable conclusion that Peter himself had come to a chapter earlier: namely, God was offering salvation in Christ to the Gentiles and just as he was to the Jews. And while there were questions and perhaps even friction at the start, the passage ends in the unity of praise.
Central to the resolution of the controversy, it seems to me, was the method by which the dramatic change occurred. The inclusion of Gentile converts was not some new policy that was the result of a focus group or polls, caucusing or campaigning or compromising. Rather, it was manifestly the work and will of God. We observe in the account that Peter was not trying to persuade others of what he personally thought. Instead, from beginning to end, he was simply relating what God had done. The plot featured an angel, a vision, and the outpouring of the Spirit. This was God at work, you see, and the church was merely following his lead and taking their cue from his initiative.
Therein lies my craving still. The church then and now is comprised of imperfect human beings who come equipped with their own opinions, prejudices, and idiosyncratic personalities. But let us not get bogged down in personal agendas. Let us, instead, be unified in praise as we live in response to God’s work and God’s will.
Revelation 21:1-6
Revelation and 2 Corinthians were written by different authors — at the human level, at least — yet I wonder if each might help us understand the other when it comes to things old and new.
In our selected passage from near the end of the Book of Revelation, we read of new things. Specifically, John bears witness to a new heaven, a new earth, and a new Jerusalem. These were not additions, mind you. It’s not like the person who gets a new article of clothing to be added into the closet already full of clothes. No, these are not additions but replacements, “for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.”
It’s interesting to me that the newness God promises in the eschaton is not new in the sense of being something entirely different. For example, when the cook in the house says, “I’m going to make something new tonight,” it doesn’t mean that the family is merely having fresh hamburgers instead of leftover hamburgers from the night before. No, when the person preparing the family meal says that they’re making something new, the implication is that they’re going to make something they haven’t made before, and the family will be served something that they haven’t had before.
Yet that does not seem to be the nature of the newness in Revelation 21. The Lord is not promising something entirely different. On the contrary, what he promises seems conspicuously familiar: heaven, earth, and Jerusalem. These are all things we have seen and known before.
It is at this point, then, that I am reminded of an affirmation that the Apostle Paul makes to the Corinthians: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV). Here, too, there is a promise of newness. Yet, again, we see that it is neither new in the sense of “additional” nor new in the sense of entirely “different.” No, there is an underlying sameness, a continuity, yet still somehow new.
Whether the new heaven, the new earth, or the new you and me, something “old” has got to go, and God’s will is for “new.” Yet the new of 2 Corinthians is still you. And the new of Revelation 21 is still heaven, still earth, and still Jerusalem.
I take this paradox to be an endorsement of God’s original creation. He does not need to come up with something entirely different, for what he made in the first place was originally good. But the things he originally made good must be made good again. Such is the nature of redemption. And such, too, may be the nature of resurrection.
Meanwhile, it is noteworthy that not everything old gets replaced. In other words, the Lord does not promise new mourning, new pain, and new death. No, for these it seems were not part of his original good creation, and so they are not to be redeemed so much as conquered, eliminated. These are among the old things that need to pass away in order for the original goodness of heaven, of earth, of Jerusalem, and of you and me to be restored.
A profound and lovely part of the gospel message is that our God makes all things new. It is the glorious promise and prospect for the end. And it is also the redemptive truth for all who are in Christ in the meantime.
John 13:31-35
Our selected gospel lection begins with an indefinite antecedent. The verse reads, “When he had gone out, Jesus said…” Reading the verse out of context might lead one to think that it was Jesus who had gone out. In fact, however, these verses are excerpted from John’s lengthy account of the Last Supper, and at this juncture, Judas had just gone out into the night.
It is clear across all four gospels that Jesus knows what Judas is going to do. Jesus is not caught by surprise by the events that transpired that night or the following day. Yet even when the background music seems to turn ominous and foreboding with Judas’ diabolical exit, Jesus’ response is to exclaim, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.”
When one of my children was young, she asked me, “If Good Friday was the day that Jesus died, why do we call it ‘good’?” Perhaps this word from Jesus in John is the beginning of the answer to that question. And we may add to it the foreshadowing word that Jesus spoke earlier in the same gospel. Jesus acknowledged, “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? But for this purpose I have come to this hour” (John 12:27 ESV). Then he prayed, “Father, glorify your name," and a voice from heaven responded, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again” (verse 28). And then, a few verses later, Jesus affirmed, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (verse 32).
Here at the Last Supper, even in the wake of Judas’ departure to betray, Jesus is confident that God will be glorified. And he understands, too, that he is going away, and says as much to the disciples. But this is not about merely going to the grave, for in the following chapter he will promise them, “In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” (John 14:2 ESV).
Finally, Jesus chooses this moment, this occasion, to give his disciples “a new commandment.” At first blush, the commandment doesn’t seem all that new, for the divine imperative to love others is at least as old as the Leviticus 19 instruction to love one’s neighbor as oneself. But the newness is not found in the “love” but in the “as.” For the Old Testament standard was “as you love yourself.” Now, having spent so much time with his disciples, and on the verge of willingly going to the cross to lay down his life, Jesus changes the standard for love to “as I have loved you.” Loving others as I love myself is a pretty high bar for love. Yet it is nothing compared to loving as he has loved me.
Interestingly, Jesus says that that very love will be the telltale sign that those persons are his disciples. He does not say that the world will recognize them as his followers because of the things they believe or the lives that they live or the miracles they perform. Those are all significant matters, to be sure, but they are not ‘the family trait,’ as it were. No, the ultimate proof that we are his is when we love like he loves. And because his love is so different than what passes for love in this world, that is how we will stand out as different in this world. And, no doubt, when we love like that, the Father and the Son will be both be glorified in us.
Application
We noted above that there is a direct correlation between a person’s character and a person’s will, as well as an undeniable link between a person’s will and a person’s actions. Except for some sort of internal disorder or external compulsion, what a person does is a demonstration of their will. And what a person wills is an extension of his or her character.
In our three assigned texts for this week, therefore, let us sleuth out the actions and the will of God in order to rejoice in his character.
Any time that the Lord gives a commandment, we know that we are hearing an articulation of his will. That is the very nature of a commandment, after all. And so, when we hear one of his commandments, we may feel certain that we are also getting a peek into his character.
In our gospel lection, Jesus gives his disciples “a new commandment.” That’s a cue for us that we are about to hear his will. And his will is that they should love one another. Specifically, that they should love one another as he has loved them. The command is to love, which means his will is love, which means that his nature is love.
We might observe also at this point the elegant symmetry of what Jesus envisions for his disciples. For them to love one another, you see, is their action. And that means that there is meant to be a straight line from the character of God to the actions of God’s people. That will preach!
Meanwhile, in the episode from Acts 11, we have recalled for us the story involving Peter and Cornelius. This was a watershed moment, for it marks the beginning of the apostolic awareness that “to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.” After generations of understanding that God’s covenant people were from a very specific family line, now the whole thing is being dramatically reinterpreted. For inasmuch as the very term “Gentile” was a shorthand way of referring to everyone outside of that designated family line, the realization that comes at the end of this episode represents the sudden, dramatic awareness that the gospel of Christ really is for everyone.
This does not represent a change in God’s will, of course. When he established his covenant with Abraham, after all, he signaled way back then his global vision that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3 ESV). Numerous times, the Old Testament prophets anticipate a day when all nations will come to know and to worship the God of Israel. When Jesus was born, the Christmas angel was explicit that this was “good tidings of great joy which will be to all people” (Luke 2:10 NKJV). And Jesus himself said that “God so loved the world” (John 3:16), not merely that God loved the descendants of Abraham.
See, then, how this all-inclusive salvation is the will of God and therefore reveals the heart of God. Jesus instructed his disciples to “go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15 ESV). Peter declares that God does not wish “that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9 ESV). And Charles Wesley sang, “The arms of love that compass me would all the world embrace.”1 His will is an extension of his love, you see.
Finally, we come to the Book of Revelation, and the Lord uses John to pull back the curtain on what he will do in the end (or, we might rather say, in the new beginning). People often find much of the earlier parts of the book disturbing because of the grim scenes of plagues and death and destruction. Yet we come to the end and recognize that the judgment is a means to an end — a magnificent defeat and eradication of all that is evil so that the perfect picture of Revelation 21 might prevail. And we observe that it is a picture of redemption, of restoration, and of the Lord God himself choosing to dwell with his people. Surely what the Lord plans to do at the end is a glimpse of his will, and his will is an extension of his character. So when we see that, central to his will is the redemption of his creation and his deep desire to live among his people, we know that he is love.
Alternative Application(s)
John 13:1-17, 31b-35 — “As I”
When Jesus told his disciples that he had a new commandment for them, it didn’t sound all that new at first. Love one another? The commandment to love goes all the way back to Leviticus, at least. So what’s new?
“As I have loved you,” Jesus added, “you also are to love one another.” That’s the new part: “as I have loved you.” The standard of the Old Testament law was “as you love yourself.” But Jesus has taken that admittedly high bar and raised it still higher. Now the standard and guideline for love is not merely how we love ourselves but how he loves us.
This is a matter for personal meditation, of course, for this is a matter of personal experience. We’re not talking about something that is theoretical and detached. This is not even just the stuff of doctrine. No, when we talk about love, we talk of something intensely personal. And Jesus’ new commandment invites us to reflect on our own personal experience of how he has loved us. Think on that. Itemize that. Describe that. And then, he says, love like that!
The new commandment is entirely to be expected. For when Genesis reports the creation of humankind, it reveals the stated purpose of God right from the beginning: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26 ESV). You see the divine intent expressed there. God’s will was that we should be like him.
This is a theme we see percolating throughout the text of Scripture. He tells the people of Israel, “You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:45 ESV). And this is a principle that Peter reiterates to the people of his congregation: “As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct” (1 Peter 1:15 ESV). Jesus, similarly, taught his followers, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48 ESV). He also wanted his followers to experience and embody the same sort of unity that exists in the Trinity (see John 17:20-23). And it is clear in his parable of the unforgiving servant that our forgiveness is meant to be an extension and imitation of God’s forgiveness (see Matthew 18:21-35). The expressed will of God, you see, is that we should be like him.
It stands to reason, then, that we should love like him. Love, after all, is his quintessential attribute (see 1 John 4:8). If there is any single action or attribute, therefore, that the one who is love would want those created in his image to exemplify, it would surely be love.
And that, finally, leads us to the logic of Jesus’ other statement about this love. “By this,” he says, “all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Of course. We were made in his image from the start because we are meant to be like him. And then, even in our fallenness, he keeps instructing and exhorting that we should be like him. And in Jesus’ new commandment, we are urged to be like him in the most “him” way there is. And when we are in his likeness in that way, the world will know that we are his.
1 Charles Wesley, “Jesus! the Name High Over All,” UMH #193
This may seem like an unspectacular statement to church folks. I fear that we are perhaps so accustomed to the affirmation that God is love that we no longer recognize the profundity of it. Or the scandal of it.
I say scandal because if this claim about the nature of God were not founded on scripture, it would be a preposterous sort of assumption to make about a holy and omnipotent deity. After all, one would think of so many other attributes or qualities that should seem to have preeminence. Speak of his wisdom or his power. Speak of his size, his radiance, and his eternality. Declare his glory and his holiness. But to say that this one who is so entirely ‘other’ actually deigns to love us is beyond extraordinary. Not only are we so small and so fleeting — “but a breath,” the psalmist would say — we are also so corrupted and rebellious. If the one who is all-wise and all-powerful does love, it seems that we would be unlikely objects for his love.
But therein lies the beauty of his truth. It’s not just that he does love; he is love. So says the Apostle John (1 John 4:8, 16). And if he is love, then it is inevitable that he does love. By way of analogy, we might say that we are not warmed by the sun because we are proper objects of its warmth, but rather we are warmed by the sun because the sun is warm. We simply experience the benefits of what it is.
Love is God’s quintessential attribute, and so to know him is to know — to discover more and more — that he is love. And once we know that, then everything else he says and does is understood in light of that truth. We might adjust the idiom, then, to say that to know he is love is to know why he does what he does.
Our marvelous collection of passages for this week is best explained in terms of love. What we hear him saying during the Last Supper in John, what we see him doing in the episode from Acts, and what he plans and promises for the culmination of all things in Revelation — these are all functions of who and what he is. For a person’s actions are a manifestation of that person’s will. And a person’s will is a reflection of their heart. And their heart is a matter of their character, their nature. God’s nature is love, which is demonstrated in the largeness of his heart, the goodness of his will, and the beauty of his actions.
Acts 11:1-18
I was twleve years old the first time that I read the Book of Acts. I loved it! It painted a picture of the early church that was exciting and beautiful. And I felt myself longing for the modern church to resemble more closely the early church.
Now it is fifty years later, and forty of those intervening years have been spent working in and serving local churches. My vision has remained the same inasmuch as I still want and strive to make the church today more like what it ought to be, which for me is still embodied by the church of Acts. And yet, with time and maturity, I perhaps read the Book of Acts somewhat more clearly. I see that it is not an airbrushed portrait of the church, for it features conflicts and controversies, just as the church does in every age.
The underlying conflict for our selected passage from Acts 11 involves the conversion of Gentiles. This is a difficult controversy for us to wrap our minds around, for the church is, for most of us, an entirely Gentile enterprise. For us, the greater challenge would come if suddenly there was a great influx of Jewish converts. Indeed, for some American churchgoers, the very concept of a Jewish Christian would seem like an oxymoron, whereas in the earliest church that’s the only kind of Christian there was.
Christian faith grew out of Jewish faith and covenants just as the New Testament is built upon the Old Testament. Jesus was Jewish, as were all of his first followers. He said he had been sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and the texts for the first Christian preachers were all necessarily Old Testament texts. And while Jesus’ final instructions to his disciples clearly featured a mission to the whole world — all peoples, both Jews and Gentiles — the church began with an all-Jewish membership.
What gave rise to the controversy of Acts 11, then, was the experience that Jewish Peter had with Gentile Cornelius in Acts 10. Deliberate separation from the Gentiles was deeply inculcated in the devout Jews of that time. Furthermore, inasmuch as those first Jewish Christians understood Jesus to be the fulfillment of their law and prophets, it was natural for many of them to assume that any Gentile convert would need first to become Jewish. In other words, how could there be a direct flight from paganism to Christianity? Didn't a person need to make a connecting stop in Judaism?
When Peter recounted for his fellow Jewish believers, however, the events that had transpired in Joppa and Caesarea, they came to the same inevitable conclusion that Peter himself had come to a chapter earlier: namely, God was offering salvation in Christ to the Gentiles and just as he was to the Jews. And while there were questions and perhaps even friction at the start, the passage ends in the unity of praise.
Central to the resolution of the controversy, it seems to me, was the method by which the dramatic change occurred. The inclusion of Gentile converts was not some new policy that was the result of a focus group or polls, caucusing or campaigning or compromising. Rather, it was manifestly the work and will of God. We observe in the account that Peter was not trying to persuade others of what he personally thought. Instead, from beginning to end, he was simply relating what God had done. The plot featured an angel, a vision, and the outpouring of the Spirit. This was God at work, you see, and the church was merely following his lead and taking their cue from his initiative.
Therein lies my craving still. The church then and now is comprised of imperfect human beings who come equipped with their own opinions, prejudices, and idiosyncratic personalities. But let us not get bogged down in personal agendas. Let us, instead, be unified in praise as we live in response to God’s work and God’s will.
Revelation 21:1-6
Revelation and 2 Corinthians were written by different authors — at the human level, at least — yet I wonder if each might help us understand the other when it comes to things old and new.
In our selected passage from near the end of the Book of Revelation, we read of new things. Specifically, John bears witness to a new heaven, a new earth, and a new Jerusalem. These were not additions, mind you. It’s not like the person who gets a new article of clothing to be added into the closet already full of clothes. No, these are not additions but replacements, “for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.”
It’s interesting to me that the newness God promises in the eschaton is not new in the sense of being something entirely different. For example, when the cook in the house says, “I’m going to make something new tonight,” it doesn’t mean that the family is merely having fresh hamburgers instead of leftover hamburgers from the night before. No, when the person preparing the family meal says that they’re making something new, the implication is that they’re going to make something they haven’t made before, and the family will be served something that they haven’t had before.
Yet that does not seem to be the nature of the newness in Revelation 21. The Lord is not promising something entirely different. On the contrary, what he promises seems conspicuously familiar: heaven, earth, and Jerusalem. These are all things we have seen and known before.
It is at this point, then, that I am reminded of an affirmation that the Apostle Paul makes to the Corinthians: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV). Here, too, there is a promise of newness. Yet, again, we see that it is neither new in the sense of “additional” nor new in the sense of entirely “different.” No, there is an underlying sameness, a continuity, yet still somehow new.
Whether the new heaven, the new earth, or the new you and me, something “old” has got to go, and God’s will is for “new.” Yet the new of 2 Corinthians is still you. And the new of Revelation 21 is still heaven, still earth, and still Jerusalem.
I take this paradox to be an endorsement of God’s original creation. He does not need to come up with something entirely different, for what he made in the first place was originally good. But the things he originally made good must be made good again. Such is the nature of redemption. And such, too, may be the nature of resurrection.
Meanwhile, it is noteworthy that not everything old gets replaced. In other words, the Lord does not promise new mourning, new pain, and new death. No, for these it seems were not part of his original good creation, and so they are not to be redeemed so much as conquered, eliminated. These are among the old things that need to pass away in order for the original goodness of heaven, of earth, of Jerusalem, and of you and me to be restored.
A profound and lovely part of the gospel message is that our God makes all things new. It is the glorious promise and prospect for the end. And it is also the redemptive truth for all who are in Christ in the meantime.
John 13:31-35
Our selected gospel lection begins with an indefinite antecedent. The verse reads, “When he had gone out, Jesus said…” Reading the verse out of context might lead one to think that it was Jesus who had gone out. In fact, however, these verses are excerpted from John’s lengthy account of the Last Supper, and at this juncture, Judas had just gone out into the night.
It is clear across all four gospels that Jesus knows what Judas is going to do. Jesus is not caught by surprise by the events that transpired that night or the following day. Yet even when the background music seems to turn ominous and foreboding with Judas’ diabolical exit, Jesus’ response is to exclaim, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.”
When one of my children was young, she asked me, “If Good Friday was the day that Jesus died, why do we call it ‘good’?” Perhaps this word from Jesus in John is the beginning of the answer to that question. And we may add to it the foreshadowing word that Jesus spoke earlier in the same gospel. Jesus acknowledged, “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? But for this purpose I have come to this hour” (John 12:27 ESV). Then he prayed, “Father, glorify your name," and a voice from heaven responded, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again” (verse 28). And then, a few verses later, Jesus affirmed, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (verse 32).
Here at the Last Supper, even in the wake of Judas’ departure to betray, Jesus is confident that God will be glorified. And he understands, too, that he is going away, and says as much to the disciples. But this is not about merely going to the grave, for in the following chapter he will promise them, “In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” (John 14:2 ESV).
Finally, Jesus chooses this moment, this occasion, to give his disciples “a new commandment.” At first blush, the commandment doesn’t seem all that new, for the divine imperative to love others is at least as old as the Leviticus 19 instruction to love one’s neighbor as oneself. But the newness is not found in the “love” but in the “as.” For the Old Testament standard was “as you love yourself.” Now, having spent so much time with his disciples, and on the verge of willingly going to the cross to lay down his life, Jesus changes the standard for love to “as I have loved you.” Loving others as I love myself is a pretty high bar for love. Yet it is nothing compared to loving as he has loved me.
Interestingly, Jesus says that that very love will be the telltale sign that those persons are his disciples. He does not say that the world will recognize them as his followers because of the things they believe or the lives that they live or the miracles they perform. Those are all significant matters, to be sure, but they are not ‘the family trait,’ as it were. No, the ultimate proof that we are his is when we love like he loves. And because his love is so different than what passes for love in this world, that is how we will stand out as different in this world. And, no doubt, when we love like that, the Father and the Son will be both be glorified in us.
Application
We noted above that there is a direct correlation between a person’s character and a person’s will, as well as an undeniable link between a person’s will and a person’s actions. Except for some sort of internal disorder or external compulsion, what a person does is a demonstration of their will. And what a person wills is an extension of his or her character.
In our three assigned texts for this week, therefore, let us sleuth out the actions and the will of God in order to rejoice in his character.
Any time that the Lord gives a commandment, we know that we are hearing an articulation of his will. That is the very nature of a commandment, after all. And so, when we hear one of his commandments, we may feel certain that we are also getting a peek into his character.
In our gospel lection, Jesus gives his disciples “a new commandment.” That’s a cue for us that we are about to hear his will. And his will is that they should love one another. Specifically, that they should love one another as he has loved them. The command is to love, which means his will is love, which means that his nature is love.
We might observe also at this point the elegant symmetry of what Jesus envisions for his disciples. For them to love one another, you see, is their action. And that means that there is meant to be a straight line from the character of God to the actions of God’s people. That will preach!
Meanwhile, in the episode from Acts 11, we have recalled for us the story involving Peter and Cornelius. This was a watershed moment, for it marks the beginning of the apostolic awareness that “to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.” After generations of understanding that God’s covenant people were from a very specific family line, now the whole thing is being dramatically reinterpreted. For inasmuch as the very term “Gentile” was a shorthand way of referring to everyone outside of that designated family line, the realization that comes at the end of this episode represents the sudden, dramatic awareness that the gospel of Christ really is for everyone.
This does not represent a change in God’s will, of course. When he established his covenant with Abraham, after all, he signaled way back then his global vision that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3 ESV). Numerous times, the Old Testament prophets anticipate a day when all nations will come to know and to worship the God of Israel. When Jesus was born, the Christmas angel was explicit that this was “good tidings of great joy which will be to all people” (Luke 2:10 NKJV). And Jesus himself said that “God so loved the world” (John 3:16), not merely that God loved the descendants of Abraham.
See, then, how this all-inclusive salvation is the will of God and therefore reveals the heart of God. Jesus instructed his disciples to “go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15 ESV). Peter declares that God does not wish “that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9 ESV). And Charles Wesley sang, “The arms of love that compass me would all the world embrace.”1 His will is an extension of his love, you see.
Finally, we come to the Book of Revelation, and the Lord uses John to pull back the curtain on what he will do in the end (or, we might rather say, in the new beginning). People often find much of the earlier parts of the book disturbing because of the grim scenes of plagues and death and destruction. Yet we come to the end and recognize that the judgment is a means to an end — a magnificent defeat and eradication of all that is evil so that the perfect picture of Revelation 21 might prevail. And we observe that it is a picture of redemption, of restoration, and of the Lord God himself choosing to dwell with his people. Surely what the Lord plans to do at the end is a glimpse of his will, and his will is an extension of his character. So when we see that, central to his will is the redemption of his creation and his deep desire to live among his people, we know that he is love.
Alternative Application(s)
John 13:1-17, 31b-35 — “As I”
When Jesus told his disciples that he had a new commandment for them, it didn’t sound all that new at first. Love one another? The commandment to love goes all the way back to Leviticus, at least. So what’s new?
“As I have loved you,” Jesus added, “you also are to love one another.” That’s the new part: “as I have loved you.” The standard of the Old Testament law was “as you love yourself.” But Jesus has taken that admittedly high bar and raised it still higher. Now the standard and guideline for love is not merely how we love ourselves but how he loves us.
This is a matter for personal meditation, of course, for this is a matter of personal experience. We’re not talking about something that is theoretical and detached. This is not even just the stuff of doctrine. No, when we talk about love, we talk of something intensely personal. And Jesus’ new commandment invites us to reflect on our own personal experience of how he has loved us. Think on that. Itemize that. Describe that. And then, he says, love like that!
The new commandment is entirely to be expected. For when Genesis reports the creation of humankind, it reveals the stated purpose of God right from the beginning: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26 ESV). You see the divine intent expressed there. God’s will was that we should be like him.
This is a theme we see percolating throughout the text of Scripture. He tells the people of Israel, “You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:45 ESV). And this is a principle that Peter reiterates to the people of his congregation: “As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct” (1 Peter 1:15 ESV). Jesus, similarly, taught his followers, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48 ESV). He also wanted his followers to experience and embody the same sort of unity that exists in the Trinity (see John 17:20-23). And it is clear in his parable of the unforgiving servant that our forgiveness is meant to be an extension and imitation of God’s forgiveness (see Matthew 18:21-35). The expressed will of God, you see, is that we should be like him.
It stands to reason, then, that we should love like him. Love, after all, is his quintessential attribute (see 1 John 4:8). If there is any single action or attribute, therefore, that the one who is love would want those created in his image to exemplify, it would surely be love.
And that, finally, leads us to the logic of Jesus’ other statement about this love. “By this,” he says, “all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Of course. We were made in his image from the start because we are meant to be like him. And then, even in our fallenness, he keeps instructing and exhorting that we should be like him. And in Jesus’ new commandment, we are urged to be like him in the most “him” way there is. And when we are in his likeness in that way, the world will know that we are his.
1 Charles Wesley, “Jesus! the Name High Over All,” UMH #193