Love One Another
John 13:31-35,
“31 When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. 32 If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. 33 Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’ 34 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. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
“Can I ask you something? Is, is this heaven?”
And Ray said, “No, it’s Iowa.”
That was one of my favorite parts of a book I wrote when I was a little kid. This is a true story.
When I was a kid, I had this small blank notebook and I wanted to write a book in it, so I wrote a story about man in Iowa who had a big cornfield in his backyard, but he mowed part of it down to build a baseball field, and a bunch of old-timey baseball ghosts came out there and played ball together. I titled the book “Field of Dreams” — that’s what kids did in the early 90s before all the screens! They plagiarized.
Y’all ever heard of the movie Field of Dreams? It came out in 1989, starred Kevin Costner. Great movie. And really one of my favorite parts in the movie is the scene at the end, when Ray, the main character, reunites with his dad.
His dad had died years before, but his ghost had come back to play ball. They’re standing on the baseball field, and his dad asks him: “Is this heaven?”
And of course the answer is No — everybody watching the movie knows the answer is No. But what’s great about Ray’s answer is that he doesn’t just say it’s not heaven, he says it’s Iowa. He tells him where they are.
And that’s the same thing Jesus is doing for his disciples at the end of John 13.
Jesus is telling his disciples where they are, and it’s a turning point in the Gospel of John — and really, it’s a turning point in the history of the world.
And what I’d like to do this morning is unpack one sentence for you that captures the essence of what Jesus is doing. It’s a simple sentence. Goes like this: Jesus is giving his disciples a new commandment for a new location. A new commandment for a new location.
That’s what I want to show you in this passage, which means I’m going try to answer two questions. First, What is the new location? And second, what is the new commandment? That’s the outline.
1. What is the new location?
Let’s start here with the setting.
Longest Thursday Ever
In verse 31, we are still on that same Thursday night that started in verse 1.
In fact, for most of this year in the Gospel of John — through chapter 18 — we’re gonna be in this same Thursday night. It was the longest Thursday night ever.
We saw at the start of this chapter that Jesus washed his disciples’ feet; then he explained the meaning of why he did that; then last week we saw the betrayal and exit of Judas. And that’s a big deal for this setting.
John wants us to know that who is in the room matters for what Jesus is about to say.
Think about this: from verse 1 through verse 30, it has been Jesus and his twelve disciples, but then after verse 30 the twelve become eleven because Judas leaves.
And John puts an emphasis on this. He tells us:
Verse 27: after Satan entered Judas, Jesus says to him: “What you are going to do, do quickly.”
Then verse 30, “After receiving the morsel of bread, [Judas] immediately went out.”
Then verse 31 starts, “When he had gone out.”
John wants to be clear that Judas is gone, which means now it’s only Jesus and his true disciples.
His Best Friends
And we’re gonna get to the big picture, but before we do, I think it’s good to slow down for a minute and try to be in this room, on this Thursday night. I agree with one author who has said:
“While [Jesus’s] universal motives in his passion and death are stressed by theologians, his immediate human motives are not well explored. (Podles, 79)
Those “immediate human motives” have to do with the fact that, after verse 30, the men Jesus is with are his real friends.
Now that Judas is gone, Jesus is with the men he loved to the uttermost — and they’re men who love him. Some have said that the closest analogy to the relational dynamic here is a military comradeship.
This is a band of brothers, and Jesus is their captain. And I think that’s a good perspective to have as we look at what Jesus says.
Maternal-Like Care
Jesus’s tone changes in verse 31, and what drives him is care.
Jesus cares for his disciples, for his real friends, and he shows that care by giving them advance knowledge of what’s about to happen — because Jesus knows it’s not going to be easy.
This actually reminds me of my mom (she just celebrated her birthday this past week, and I thank God for her). But one thing I appreciate about my mom (now) is that, when I was a kid and had a doctor’s appointment, she never told me I would not get a shot.
I remember that’s what I’d always ask her — we’d be on the way to the doctor’s office, and I’d be sweating bullets — Mom, am I getting a shot?
And of course, I wanted her to say No. She never said No.
I always thought if I was around a doctor I might get a shot.
It was a brilliant parenting move: because my mom would have rather me be surprised by relief than shocked by false hope — and it taught me to trust her.
And Jesus is doing something similar here. His best friends are about to step into a new location and Jesus wants to prepare them. So he says:
You are about to be in a world where I am not,
and I won’t be here for the sake of glory.
That’s the new location — it’s not a new literal place; it’s not a different geography. It’s a new location in the history of redemption: the followers of Jesus are about to live in a world where Jesus is physically absent — but he’s physically absent for the sake of glory.
Over the next four chapters — what’s called the Farewell Discourse — this is main idea that Jesus explains: he’s physically absent, yet presently glorified.
Physically Absent
He starts this in verse 31, but I want you to see the absent part first in verse 33.
And this is one I want everybody to see. So help me out, everybody find Chapter 13, verse 33. Verse 33:
“Little children”
In the original this is just the single word “children,” but it’s a term of endearment and affection. I think a better translation is to say “Dear children.” Jesus is leaning into their closeness. Verse 33:
Dear children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’
Jesus has said this twice already to the unbelieving crowds:
John 7:34,
“You will search for me but not find me. And you cannot go where I am going.”
John 8:21
“I am going away. You will search for me but will die in your sin. You cannot come where I am going.”
So Jesus has said this to the crowds, now he’s saying it to his closest friends.
And what’s he talking about? Where is he going?
Track with me here: Jesus is talking about the whole gospel event — his being lifted up! This is his cross, his resurrection, his return to the Father.
Jesus started talking about this as early as Chapter 2!
He has said he will die and be raised and ascend to the Father’s right hand — it’s just that now this is not something in the future, but it’s finally unfolding. It is in motion!
And only Jesus can do this. Only Jesus can go there.
Which means he won’t be with his disciples any longer. He’s leaving them.
And that means his disciples are about to live in a world where Jesus is physically absent.
And that could be devastating, right? It could be the end of the whole thing.
Are they on the verge of a tragedy here? Is this a total loss? Is this a defeat?
Because it sounds like it is! It will certainly look like it is tomorrow, on Friday.
But Jesus is telling them in advance because he wants to make sure they know what his leaving is truly about: It’s just the opposite of defeat. It’s about triumph.
Jesus Glorified
That’s what Jesus is saying in verses 31–32.
I’m gonna read these verses again, and just count how many times Jesus mentions “glory.”
Verse 31:
When [Judas] had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once.
Five times! (Repetition means emphasis — the emphasis is glory.) This is how we should think about Jesus leaving, according to Jesus! That is what he says it means.
That’s really why we call it Good Friday — because that’s how Jesus taught us to think about his death. …
A friend and I were talking recently about why we call the day that Jesus was crucified “Good Friday” — because that’s kinda ‘inside baseball.’ It doesn’t really make sense to people who are less familiar with the gospel.
Shouldn’t we call it Horrible Friday?
Well, yes, if we look at it through a microscope, but see, Jesus teaches us to see the whole thing altogether.
And when we do, we see that Jesus’s lowest moment was when his highest glory began to unfold … there is no death without resurrection; there is no resurrection apart from death, and his enthronement is the final word.
All of that is the Son of Man being glorified and God being glorified in him!
And that is the ultimate reason the followers of Jesus live in a world where Jesus is physically absent.
And this matters for us now! What Jesus is saying in John 13 is as relevant for us this morning as it was when these eleven disciples first heard it, because we live in that same world.
This new location for the eleven is the only location we’ve ever known: a world where Jesus is physically absent, yet presently glorified.
So then how do we live in this world? Jesus tells us where we are. It’s not heaven. But how does he want us to live in this new location?
Well, he gives us a new commandment — a new commandment for the new location.
This is the second part of the sermon.
2. What is the new commandment?
And the answer here is about as straightforward as it gets. Everybody look at verse 34, and help me fill in the blank. Verse 34:
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another …”
Isn’t that amazing? Here we are, in this new location within redemptive history, and the first thing Jesus tells us about how he wants us to live in this world is that we’re to love one another.
And this is amazing, but I’m concerned that we could be either not very impressed by this or confused by it. We either hear the word “love” and it doesn’t really move us, or we hear the word “love” and think it means something different from what Jesus means.
This is a modern problem we face because we live in a society that has so diluted the meaning of love. My dad says that “love” is the most over-used, under-used word in the English language, and he’s right. And that’s a complexity!
Jesus has left us in a world where he is physically absent, he told us to love one another, but how do we know what love is? So did Jesus prepare us for that?
Yeah, he did. Look at the whole of verse 34. Verse 34 again:
“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.”
Jesus reports himself here, tells us twice to love one another, because he knows we need help understanding what love really is!
And so he tells us, once and for all!
If you want to know what love is, he says, look at me! Love one another just as I have loved you!
This is important. Listen: We learn from Jesus how to love one another.
So how does that look?
How does Jesus-like love actually look in real life?
In closing, I want to tell you three things our love must be if it’s Jesus-like love.
If we will love one another like Jesus loves us, it means
1. Our love will be particular.
I want to remind you that the love Jesus is talking about here is love that his disciples have for one another. This is not the common benevolence that we should have for all peoples everywhere. We call that neighbor-love, and it’s commanded. We seek everybody’s ultimate good in God.
That’s what we mean when we say we seek the good of the Twin Cities. We love these cities — we’re not giving up on the cities. We want everybody in these cities to know God.
But there is a particular kind of love that we have for our fellow blood-bought brothers and sisters in the family of God. And by “particular,” I don’t mean stingy, I mean focused. This is family-love. There’s neighbor-love, but this is family-love. That’s what covenant membership intends to clarify: of all the people (and even all the Christians), in these cities, of whom do we have most assurance that they are truly in Christ?
Well, it’s those whose profession of faith we have corporately affirmed — it’s our covenant members. So when Jesus commands us to love one another, we should hear that command as starting here, first. This is love for a particular people — the household of faith, our brothers and sisters in Christ.
If we will love one another like Jesus loves us, it means
2. Our love will be sacrificial.
Jesus’s love for us meant, of course, the ultimate sacrifice — he went to the cross to bear the weight of our sin; he suffered the wrath of God in our place. That was the ultimate sacrifice, but it’s not where his sacrifice started. Jesus’s entire life was a sacrifice — the very fact that he became a man tells us that. Jesus was continually spending and being spent for us. It was constant cost.
But think with me here … just because something has a cost, it doesn’t mean it’s sacrifice. What makes a cost a sacrifice?
It’s when the pain of the cost is considered worth the good of the goal. The pain of the cost is worth the good of the goal.
This definition of sacrifice applies to a lot of things, big and small.
This is why you get up early in the morning to read your Bible. You consider the pain of losing 30 minutes of sleep is worth being shaped by the word of God. The good of the goal is worth the pain of the cost.
So what good for Jesus made his pain worth it?
Well, it was not that the people he loves feel better about themselves.
That’s how a lot of people in our society confuse the meaning of love. They think love is mainly therapeutic — it’s about making people feel better. But that’s not what Jesus was aiming for. Now of course Jesus cares about our suffering — he binds up the brokenhearted! (Psalm 147:3) — but listen: his ultimate aim is not our transient ease … it’s our everlasting joy in God!
The cost was worth it for Jesus because he wants to bring people to God — that’s the purpose of his love. That’s the good of his goal.
He wants his disciples to be happy in all that God is for them — because that is what magnifies the glory of God and satisfies the human soul.
Real love ultimately wants the beloved to know God, and sacrificial love seeks that at a cost. Because the cost is worth it.
Last point: If we will love one another like Jesus loves us, it means
3. Our love will be identifiable.
This is verse 35. Jesus says:
“By this” — by what? By loving one another the way Jesus loves us —
“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Jesus is saying that everybody — all people — will be able to recognize us as the people of Jesus because of how we love one another. People will see our love here and say, They must be Jesus-people.
Does it surprise us that Jesus says this? Because there are many marks of a Christian! The apostle Paul talks about eight other fruits of the Spirit. He tells us that faith and hope also abide! They’re important too! There’s a lot of important stuff.
And yet, the primary, public identity marker that we belong to Jesus is love.
Our love for one another is what speaks the loudest in this new location … in this world — in what seems to be an ever-darkening world — Hey, nobody is looking around here asking, “Is this heaven?”
Everybody knows this is not heaven.
But our love for one another is meant to be a glimpse of heaven.
We live in a world where Jesus is physically absent, but he is spiritually present through his church. And his glory shines through our love for one another.
And that’s what brings us to the table.
The Table
I want to be clear that the love Jesus commands is not a love that we ourselves can manufacture, it’s actually the overflow of his love for us. John writes later in 1 John 4:19, “We love because he first loved us.”
Paul says, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit he’s given to us” and this is love that God has shown us in the cross (Romans 5:5, 8).
And here at the Table we rest in his love.
If you trust in Jesus Christ, if you have known the love of God, I invite you to eat and drink with us this morning with thankful hearts.
