To look at Christ dying for our sins is to look into the face of perfect love. Nails do not hold Him to that wood. He can come down. He can call heaven’s armies. Instead He drinks every bitter drop of suffering. Only the deepest love for you and me holds Him on that cross. Listen to the kindness uttered from the depths of His agony. We might expect Him to care for His mother (John 19:26-27). But what about His enemies? Even as nails are tearing, bleeding His life away, He says,
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth (1John 3:16-17).
A NEW KIND OF LOVE
That phrase, “just as Christ loved us” (Ephesians 5:2), reveals the key to what Jesus meant by His “new command.”
“A new commandment I give you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).
“Love” itself is not new, for the Old Testament emphasized it. But John 13 records “a new command” in its greater measure, in its deeper level of sacrifice, in its sheer intensity! Love as Jesus loves! Imitate the sacrificed Son so closely that the world can recognize your family likeness.