A dispute started among them over which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. So Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in authority over them are called ‘benefactors.’ Not so with you; instead the one who is greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like the one who serves.
For who is greater, the one who is seated at the table, or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is seated at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. “You are the ones who have remained with me in my trials. Thus I grant to you a kingdom, just as my Father granted to me,[1] that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel."[2]
Because Jesus knew that the Father had handed all things over to him, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, he got up from the meal, removed his outer clothes, took a towel and tied it around himself. He poured water into the washbasin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to dry them with the towel he had wrapped around himself.
Then he came to Simon Peter. Peter said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”
Jesus replied, “You do not understand what I am doing now, but you will understand after these things.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet!” Jesus replied, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.”Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, wash not only my feet, but also my hands and my head!”
Jesus replied, “The one who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean. And you disciples are clean, but not every one of you.”[3](For Jesus knew the one who was going to betray him. For this reason he said, “Not every one of you is clean.”)So when Jesus had washed their feet and put his outer clothing back on, he took his place at the table again and said to them, “Do you understand what I have done for you? You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and do so correctly, for that is what I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you too ought to wash one another’s feet.
For I have given you an example—you should do just as I have done for you. I tell you the solemn truth, the slave is not greater than his master, nor is the one who is sent as a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you understand these things, you will be blessed if you do them…
I give you a new commandment—to love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. Everyone will know by this that you are my disciples—if you have love for one another.”
This is Jesus’ last real conversation with his disciples. Judas has left to betray him; time is short. These chapters give us a condensed focus: “Remember this.” So, let’s talk about love.
One of Jesus’ most famous teachings is, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31). This was a brilliant distillation of all 600+ Old Testament laws. If you do the first properly, the second should follow naturally. If you don’t do the second, it’s a pretty good indication that you aren’t doing the first well either.[4] This summary of the law raises two immediate questions.
· “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus’ response is the famous Parable of the Good Samaritan. Everybody is your neighbor, even those you most dislike for religious and cultural reasons.
· What does it mean to love your neighbor “as yourself”? Didn’t Jesus just say we have to die to ourselves? How does this work? And there may be an even more haunting question that comes with this: “What if I don’t love myself? Does this mean I can’t love other people?”
So let’s talk about what it means to love ourselves. We love ourselves when we consistently strive for our own self-interested fulfillment or goals. It is the conscious or unconscious motive of all of us. We are the primary focus in our lives. The fancy term for this is that we tend to be “ego-centric.” We are the one to whom we are most committed. Now, this ‘love of self’ is not necessarily a bad thing.
· God created us in Him image, and there is a value, worth and dignity to all of us. If we don't have some measure of appreciation or recognition of this, and we don't make choices for our own good that honor this reality, then we are not seeing ourselves biblically.
· We see this in the Old Testament. In Leviticus 19, God gives a list of actions that his people will do: don’t lie, steal or cheat; take care of the poor; don’t show favoritism; pay good wages; don’t mock the deaf and blind; and take care of immigrants. Twice God summarizes: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” (verses 18 and 34). In other words, you would want others to do this for you. Why? Because you think you are important, and that you matter, and that you deserve justice and mercy.
· Christ's command to "love your neighbor as yourself" assumes that we clearly already love ourselves, and he doesn't say to stop.
So, biblically speaking, emotional and spiritual health will include a proper understanding of our value, worth and dignity as image bearers of God; how we view ourselves is important, because how we understand our value will overlap with how we value others. The problem is the degree and the manner in which we love ourselves.
Paul warned in 2 Timothy 3:1-2 that "...in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves" (“preoccupied with their own selfish desires”[5]). He was not giving new biblical insight into human psyche. He was warning about an inordinate love of self that sacrifices everyone else.
This raises a new dilemma. Perhaps our idea of what it means to love ourselves is terribly flawed. Perhaps out of all the people who love us, we are the worst - not because we hate ourselves but because we don’t actually know how to love ourselves well.
· Have you ever pampered yourself when you should have been more disciplined, and as a result what felt good and rewarding in the moment bogged you down in the long run?
· Have you ever followed your heart when you should have followed your head (or vice versa), and what you thought was a good thing blew up and hurt you?
· Have you ever ignored good advice because it was hard and the boundaries would rob you of freedom – only to find out later that those boundaries were exactly what you needed to keep you from becoming enslaved to sinful habits?
· Have you ever surrounded yourself with friends who only told you what you wanted to hear about how to live your life, and that echo chamber was so nice - until the shame and guilt of what they encouraged caught up with you?
And in all these cases, we were convinced that we knew the best way to love ourselves and our lives, but our understanding of what it meant to love was terribly flawed. Is it any wonder we have a hard time loving others well if the standard is “as you love yourself”?
Lest you think Jesus messed something up here by giving a bad teaching, see the context. When Jesus condensed the Law into “Love God and love others as you love yourself,” he was honoring the Law as the Law : “This is how you can understand what God has revealed to you so far”.
But Jesus was constantly making statements of contrast: “You have heard the Law say this…but I say.” The Law was good but incomplete; Jesus showed the fulfillment. There was a greater, deeper way of understanding almost everything in the law – and that included love. In his final teaching to his disciples, Jesus completes His revelation by giving them what he calls a “new law” of what it means to fully love well in the Kingdom of God.
John 13:33-35. “My children, My time here is brief. You will be searching for Me; and as I told the Jews, “You cannot go where I am going.” So I give you a new command: Love each other deeply and fully. Remember the ways that I have loved you, and demonstrate your love for others in those same ways. Everyone will know you as My followers if you demonstrate your love to others…”
John 15:12-13. “ My commandment to you is this: love others as I have loved you. There is no greater way to love than to give your life for your friends.”
So the Law insisted that you can’t just love yourself; you have to love others. Jesus fulfills or completes this teaching by revealing that it is the way Jesus loved us, not the way we love ourselves, that is meant to guide us. So, what does that look like?
Christ-like love is sacrificial.
This is, I believe, the most profound aspect of the love of Jesus. After writing this gospel, John wrote several letters to the early church. We read in 1 John:
"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him." (1 John 4:7-9 NIV)
In Jesus we see the ultimate (and unique) expression of the reality that the one who loves must die either physically or metaphorically. Jesus did what no one else could in dying for our eternal salvation; if we want to live with others in genuine, loving relationship, we are going to have to lay down our lives for them in some fashion. No one truly loves if they refuse to sacrifice for the one they love. That’s hard enough, but it gets harder:
"But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.
Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' lend to 'sinners,' expecting to be repaid in full.
But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. " (Luke 6:27- 36)
Do we want to live as children of God? We must love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, pray for those who persecute us, give of ourself without an expectation of a return, and be merciful and kind to the ungrateful and wicked.
When we love as God loves us, His name is glorified; His reputation is made great. Christians have never brought about positive and lasting cultural change through anger and despair. It’s always been through hope, grace and love.[6]
Christ-like love is not conditional.
No one has to be good enough to come to Jesus. While we were dead in our sins, Christ died so that we might live (Ephesians 2). He took tax collectors who were pawns of the Romans, soldiers who were part of the oppressors, prostitutes, Samaritans who were of Jewish heritage but worshipped idols, the religiously arrogant, the humble and sincere… he offered the Kingdom of Heaven to them all.
If we are to love others like Christ loves us, we must offer the kind of love that does not require someone to be good enough before we love them. This is not a naïve love that overlooks the reality of people’s lives. We all have baggage, and wisdom requires that the love we offer is guided by boundaries for their sake and ours. This is also not a love that compromises on truth and holiness; love doesn’t enable sin.
When we offer unconditional love, we don’t merely commit to the good of other people only when they reach a condition we have set. We just offer it because it’s who we are as a reflection of whose we are. If you have ever been the recipient of this kind of love, you know how beautiful it is. There is a freedom in being able to say, “I think I might be hard to love,” and having someone say in return, “And yet, here you are, loved.” There is peace; there is safety; there is hope.
We don’t have to earn God’s love. God loves people: not because he needs us; not because we complete him; not because we are worthy, or lovable, or pure, or spiritually impressive; not because we please God or represent Him well. As one pastor noted,
God does not love us because of who we are. Or because of what we do, or can do for God. Or because of what we say, or build, or accomplish, or change, or pray, or give, or profess, or believe… God simply loves us...[7]
· When I pray regularly and when I don’t, God’s love does not fail.
· When I was chained in sin and when I was freed…
· When I ignore Him and when I am enamored with Him…
· When I am depressed or happy, anxious or at peace, self-loathing of self-loving…
· When I pastor well and when I do it terribly...
· When I am loved by others and despised by others…
God has never waited to love people until they were good enough to be loved. He loves people because He is God, and He is good. And that gives me great hope indeed.
Christ-like love is tangible.
I like this quote from Teresa of Avila that captures a biblical principle of the role of Christians as “the body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12)
“Christ has no body on earth but yours. no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion for the world is to look out. Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good; and yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now.”
Words of love are important, but they are not sufficient. Love must be shown. Jesus did not spend his time talking about how compassionate he was. Jesus embodied it. Words are powerful and they matter, but it’s what we do in the ordinary moments of everyday life that matter the most. As James reminded us.
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” (James 2:14-17)
And as we love like Christ, we begin to see the answer to the prayer Jesus told us to pray: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” There is hope that even on this side of heaven the reality of the Kingdom of God can impact the world. The more we appreciate and understand the love Jesus has for us, the more our ability to love is transformed, and the more we love other like Christ loved us. And in all this we will see how God has ordered His Kingdom for our good and His glory.
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[1] Christ’s entrance into his “glory,” and being seated upon his “throne,” seem to refer to the beginning of his reign on Pentecost (Luke 24:26; cf. Matthew 20:21; Mark 10:37; see also: Acts 2; Philippians 3:21; 1 Timothy 3:16; Hebrews 1:3; 2:7; 1 Peter 1:21).
[2] “The apostles will judge not with earthly judgment, but by the witness of their own lives. Since God's kingdom begins with the Resurrection of Christ, the authority of judgment has already been given to the apostles and their successors in the journey of the Church on earth (Mt 16:19; Jn 20:23).” Orthodox Study Bible “J.W. McGarvey observed: The reference to the apostles sitting on “thrones” judging the tribes of “Israel” would be a reference to the authority of these men, as bequeathed by Christ, and implemented by their subsequent teaching in the church (the new Israel of God — Galatians 6:16) and as manifest in the sacred writings that remain authoritative today. As Coffman pointed out: “This was not a reference to literal thrones but to spiritual thrones of eminence and authority in Christ’s kingdom, from which they should exercise influence, not over fleshly Israel but over the spiritual Israel which is the church (Rom. 9:6; Gal. 3:29)” (pp. 298-299).”
https://christiancourier.com/articles/the-regeneration-a-study-of-matthew-19-28
[3] “Those who have completely bathed, that is, have been baptized, have no need ever to be baptized again, for baptism is indelible. The sins the believer assumes during his life must still be washed through ongoing repentance, just as the feet of a person returning from the public bath must be washed before entering the house. As Christians, we are bathed by Christ in baptism and have periodic washings in the sacrament of confession.” Orthodox Study Bible
[4] “If you say you love God and hate your brother, you are a liar.” (1 John 4:20)
[5] http://biblehub.com/greek/5367.htm
[6] “Lessons for Today’s Church from the Life of the Early Church,” http://coldcasechristianity.com/2014/lessons-for-todays-church-from-the-life-of-the-early-church/
[7] http://faithpresby.org/archives/sermons/written/files_4d2a59265361b.pdf