Love One Another

LOVE ONE ANOTHER

"This is my commandment; love one another, as I have loved you"

If there is one word which sums up the whole of the life and teaching of Jesus, it is the word love.

Love was the motive force behind all he said and did. When he healed, it was out of love. When he fed the hungry, it was out of love. When he offered forgiveness, it was out of love. When he allowed Judas to leave the upper room in order to betray him, it was out of love. When he listened silently to the trumped up charges of Caiaphas, it was out of

love. When he endured the whipping, scourging, and jesting of the soldiers, it was out of love and, when he died on the Cross on that Good Friday it was out of love.

So, he who was love in action, at the Last Supper, turns to his disciples and says:

"This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you".

WHAT IS LOVE?

But you may ask, what is love? In short, love is Jesus. Love is being Jesus. St Paul spells this out for us in his first letter to the Church in Corinth in Chapter 13:

"This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience - it looks for ways of being constructive. It is not possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance.

Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it shares the joy of those who live by the truth.

Love knows no limits to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hopes: it can outlast anything. Love never fails".

That then is the sort of person Christians are to be if they claim to be friends of Jesus.

Being that sort of person is not an optional extra, like a compact disc player in a new car. It is of the very essence of Christianity. Love is the foundation stone - the spring from which all else flows. That is why St Augustine of Hippo was able to say "Love God and do what you like".

Loving one another is not something we do when we feel like it. It is not something we do to people we like. Hence Jesus does not invite a disciple to love - he commands. He commands us to love one another. And a COMMAND is an order. Anyone who has been in the forces knows that orders are there to be obeyed - not argued over or negotiated.

COSTLY LOVE.

Orders are there to be obeyed whether we like to or not. The reason why we prefer not to obey is because it can be costly.

In loving a person you may be cheated and taken for a ride; you may be laughed at particularly by your colleagues at work; you may be betrayed as indeed Jesus was; you may be taken advantage of; you may be tormented: you may be killed - or worse still you may be just simply ignored and never even noticed.

This is the risk many are not prepared to take. Yet this is the risk anyone who claims to be a friend of Jesus must be willing to take.

UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

We love, not because of what we expect in return from the person loved. We love because he first loved us and therefore we can do no other. We who are parents do this regularly with our children. We love them automatically and spontaneously not for what we may or may not get in return from them in later life. Our love is and can only be,

unconditional love. It is in essence, sacrificial love.

Is it asking too much that that quality of sacrificial love should be the character of the love we show towards one another? If we are prepared to show it towards our children, why are we not prepared to show it towards one

another?

What is it that Jesus says? "A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends". That is the limit to which sacrificial love must be prepared to go. That is the limit to the risks of loving. That is perfectly displayed in Jesus on the Cross.

Whilst the love of Jesus on the Cross may win many; others are puzzled by it; others ignore it; and others just laugh at it. But that is the risk of unconditional love.

CONCLUSION

So, to you who wish to be friends of Jesus, he gives you this command, "love one another as I have loved you". I suggest more has been achieved of lasting value in the life of mankind in the name of unconditional love, than in the name of war, education, principles, science or even basic humanism.