Angus Harley

Jesus was the embodiment of love- true, cross-bearing, love. He was the Lord washing the feet of his servants, the Passover sacrifice for the sins of his disciples, the Elder Brother who would go ahead of them to prepare a place for them with the Father.

His love is breathtaking to behold, like seeing a majestic mountain range and one’s breath is literally taken away. For, he loved his own right to the end- as far as this world is concerned- and then beyond, into the Father’s presence. The Alpha and Omega of love.

But there are unpleasant scenes, too, dark places, and the souring presence of evil. The love of the Lord extended even to one not his true disciples, to an impostor! Heavenly love goes out to many, and they taste of it outwardly, in their flesh, but they do not absorb it into their hearts. They rebuff this love, choosing evil over sacrifice, betrayal over loving one’s own brother.

There is yet another dark part of the sky, for even those who are his servants will deny him…if only for a short moment. The Lord of love knew this, too.

Many think that when Jesus says he is giving a new commandment, this is but an extension of what Moses say to Israel, placed into a different, Messianic setting. The setting is new and its application, but the commandment is the same, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev.19:18). After all, Jesus came to do Moses’ Law and to uphold its commandments, we are told. He was merely applying the Mosaic commandment more deeply, richly, in a Messianic manner.

Yet, Jesus is perfectly capable in John’s Gospel of referring directly to the Law of Moses (e.g., Jh.8:17). Here in John 13, he says there is a “new” (kainos) commandment, just as there is a “new” (kainos) tomb in the garden (Jh.19:41), “new” (kainos) wineskins (Mt.9:17), and a “new” (kainos) covenant (Lk.22:20). His commandment was brand-new, never before given to Israel, to Jews, to anyone. Not only because he utters it, but because his commandment of love was purely Messianic and sacrificial in nature. It was a commandment belonging to an entirely new set of commandments, to a new law, and to a new covenant.

Leviticus 19:18 gives us the principle of love, true enough, and this principle is taken on by Jesus elsewhere. However, in the context of Leviticus 19, the Law of Moses inherently delimited this love to Israelites of the flesh, and to any Gentile of the flesh who chose to associate with Israel of the flesh. Moreover, this Old Covenant love was prescribed by a million dos and don’ts (actually, 613, to be precise). All were external, controlling the flesh. None had power over the soul, none were Messianic in nature, none were given to propel the Christ-follower into sacrificial love for one’s enemy, or had the ability to empower the Messianic believer to bear the cross. The Mosaic Law, like the Ten Commandment, belonged to the same external, fleshly world of obedience that Judas’ operated in. And it therefore came with the same fault: it could not prevent evil from doing its thing (Heb.8:7). Look at Judas! Yes, Jesus had many followers, but the vast majority operated on the Old Covenant basis of fleshly discipleship that is stimulated by fleshly acts and signs in this world. For that reason, Jesus did not commit himself to these external-natured disciples, for his measurement was not the external but the internal, the heart (Jh.2:23-25).

The New Covenant and its law and commandments bring with them the internal life that generates life and obedience. Nobody puts it better than supposedly ‘Jewish James’. He captures the New Covenant law in these few words:

 21 Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls. 22 But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; 24 for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. 25 But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does. (Jam.1:21-25)

The word of eternal life that gives rise to an internal birth (Jm.1:18) is lodged in the heart of the believer. The external form of the word is received in the internal parts, the heart, creating life. It is, to be more specific, a ‘person’ form of life. For now as a believer, in hearing the external word, the Christian sees himself in that word as in a mirror. This is the man he was made to be, a man of an internal, New Covenant, nature. The external word tells who and what we are, and what we are meant to be. The internal word creates that man, those things. Paul calls this inner phenomenon, “the inner man”. The perfect law of liberty of the New Covenant does not merely present a set of commandments, an external form of the New Covenant ‘man’, to the ears; for, the true New Covenant man has that same word internalized, because new birth and inner man are already ‘living and breathing’.

What does all this mean for Jesus’ new commandment? It means this: that the true believer is one who is internally, first, a follower of Christ, and who is therefore empowered from within by that same sacrificial commandment given to the external ear of his disciples. In other words, his new, Messianic commandment is externally ‘calling to’, as it were, its internal form within the heart of the believer. One commandment, one ‘law’, with two dimensions: external to the ear and eyes, but true essence is the internal in the heart. The believer is able to keep the commandments of the ear because they are already indelibly imprinted onto his New Covenant soul, for the life in the believer is the life of Christ himself. How will one mark out a true believer from a false one, in that light? The true believer will inevitably love his fellow brothers, and will not hate Christ and his people. will not hand Jesus over for a few coins. Instead, like his Savior, or like the Good Samaritan, the Christian will love his enemy, and be prepared to sacrifice himself for this brothers and sisters in the Lord.