New Thoughts (01/13/12-01/18/12)
It is a rare thing for me that the process of organizing my observations for comment in this New Thoughts section is so immediately evident, so easily accomplished. In this case, the outline of my expectations for comment fall under three heads: glory sought, love commanded, and discipleship known. Each of these three heads hinges heavily upon the definition of the subject term. To summarize from the outset what I intend to explore, I find that in this passage Jesus drives home both His own purpose and our purpose. In some wise, they are identical, but in much they are distinct. In His first statement here, Jesus expresses His purpose: to glorify God, to make His full worth known. In His final statement, He tells us that this is our purpose, as well, to make God’s worth fully known. The distinction lies in the Person of the Triune Godhead most directly the object of that effort.
For Jesus, the effort lay in glorifying the Father. After all, the Son was manifestly and physically present already. He could be seen as the Father could not, and to see Him was to see the Father, for He fully expressed the Father. If faith is the evidence of things not seen, one could almost accept that Jesus is Faith, for He is, at least for the duration of His earthly sojourn, the physical evidence of the unseen God.
For our part, we are tasked with providing that same sort of physical evidence of the now unseen Son. He, too, has taken to His heavenly abode from whence He now (yes, now) rules and reigns over His creation. In what we are hereby commanded, we are given to be the evidence to our own generation that He, the Unseen King of all kings, is truly real, and truly as it is written about Him. It may be trite to speak of ourselves as being the hands and feet of our Lord Jesus, but that strikes pretty near the reality of the situation. Don’t be fooled! He still moves sovereignly amongst men, and He does so in ways invisible except by the results. At one and the same time, it is His express sovereign will that we upon whom He has thus moved, should move as He moves, purpose as He purposes, express Him as He expresses the Father. It ought to be our goal that just as He could say that those who had seen Him had seen the Father, we could say that those who see us have seen the Son.
I could stop there and have made my point. But, I am not here to make my point, but rather to absorb as best I can the full impact of what Jesus is relaying here to His disciples, and by so doing, relaying the same to us here in the twenty first century. I am here not only to absorb and understand what is said here, but to truly internalize it, make it an integral part of me that I might thereby, with every fiber depending with absolute desperation to my Lord and King to aid me and empower me, come nearer each day to truly fulfilling the commandment here given.
Glory Sought
If I may become a trifle technical for just a brief paragraph or two, one thing that caught my eye in reading through various translations on this passage was that Young’s Literal Translation has Jesus’ first remark in the past tense: “Now was the Son of Man glorified.” Whatever else might be said about this, the combination of “now was” sounds wrong on the face of it. This did prompt the question, however, of how the translator arrived at the conclusion that this was supposed to be represented to us in the past tense. To be fair, the Aorist Tense which is used here in the Greek text does typically speak of an accomplished act. However, there is another variant usage of the Aorist Tense, the Effective Aorist. Such a usage is intended to indicate that the action in view is the ‘climactic accomplishment’ of a longer preceding effort, and that effort may well be conceived of as having met great resistance or overcome great difficulties in order to arrive at this climactic moment.
It seems that the great majority of translations have sensed this other significance in the Aorist. On the other hand, other than bringing things into the Present Perfect in English. This still retains the hint of past activity – note that glorified is still a Past Tense form. However, the ‘is’ keeps the present in view. What is missing, though, if this is indeed supposed to be an Effective Aorist, is that sense of the history leading up to the moment. There is a power we might find in that “now” which is not plainly in view.
Now it’s happening. The moment we’ve all been waiting for is now. It’s not just an interjection. It’s not just a segue from the previous point He was making to this one. It’s more of a summation. Now that Judas is on his way to betray Jesus in deed, now that the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees, and all who like them have rejected Jesus are goaded finally into action, now that all of that purpose for which Jesus came has been fulfilled, apart from that final act, now He is glorified. It has become inevitable at this point. Everything is set in motion, God’s will is to be done. How could it be otherwise? The Son will reach His goal unsullied and unhindered by friend or foe. All proceeds as it must, and the payoff towards which Father and Son have worked throughout eternity is within reach.
With all that linguistic confusion, it really remains to recognize that the now Jesus speaks of, in which all this glorifying is to happen is really yet to come. It’s still future. It’s not far future, to be sure. A matter of hours and days really. But, now is not right this moment. It is, as I say, a remark as to the inevitability of the conclusion given what just transpired. It must happen, and it must happen swiftly. It cannot help but unfold as God planned it, and the last catalyst has just been sent off to take his task in hand.
The Son of Man is to be betrayed, and note well: It is this act that ushers in the ‘now’. Indeed, Jesus has faced stiff opposition in coming to this hour. Were His disciples more aware of the situation, He would doubtless be facing opposition from them, as well, though the motives would be far different in their case. But, this betrayal is necessary just as His coming death is necessary. It must happen this way, as He has noted, because all of Scripture must be fulfilled (Lk 22:22).
So we arrive at this discussion of The Son being glorified, God being glorified, the Son glorifying the Father, the Father glorifying the Son, but what does that actually mean? The term itself has many potential meanings, but clearly they can’t all apply here, at least not to all instances. Consider some of the possibilities.
To glorify may mean to praise and extol and celebrate the object of that activity. Is that what Jesus means in verse 31, that now (and only now after so much effort) they will finally praise and extol Him? Clearly not, given what we know about events just ahead. Perhaps, as seems to be hinted at in the next verse, He means that the Father will thus praise and celebrate Him now. But, can we suppose that there was ever a time the Father did not find cause for praise of Son? Not really. There could never have been a doubt as to the success of Jesus’ mission. It was never in question in the mind of God, not since Adam’s creation. It has been determined, and nothing was ever going to stop it, although from our perspective the path seems ever so full of detours and setbacks.
Let’s try another possibility. To glorify may mean to make excellent and illustrious, to make one’s fame renowned. That comes a little closer to making sense here. I’m still not certain I accept it, though, at least for all cases. How about this? To glorify is to cause the object’s dignity and worth to be clearly recognized and acknowledged. Thayer suggests that this is the meaning intended in this passage. Well, in the long view that might be held to be true. Now, the act which will establish Jesus as our Savior and our Lord, that will put the seal on His obedience and provide God with the opportunity to express His acceptance of Jesus’ work by His resurrection is set in motion. The outcome is a foregone conclusion. Jesus will succeed and He will be set apart as accepted by the Father. He will remain known forever because of this. Otherwise, He might never have been known as much more than an apt teacher of this minority faith, or maybe a somewhat famous prophet. But, outside the immediate circle of Israel, He would have been little heard of and cared about less.
There’s still another meaning for this business of glorifying, though, and that is the matter of being raised to ‘glorious rank or condition’. This meaning, should it apply at all, clearly cannot be applied to all. The Son of Man may be raised to this glorious condition by the Father, but the Father can hardly have His rank increased by the Son. He is at the apex of all Authority. Where would He be raised to from that peak? There’s nothing higher! While I must admit that this is supposition, I am yet inclined to think that this is what Jesus is thinking of when it comes to that glorifying that is coming His way. Look at that portion of His coming prayer which returns to this theme. “Now, glorify Me together with Yourself, Father! Glorify me with that glory I shared with You before ever the world was” (Jn 17:5). That’s a restoration to His proper rank. He Who had emptied Himself of His godly prerogatives in becoming Man was about to see that situation ended, His full rank as the Son of Heaven reestablished, full equality once more with the Father. Now is the Son of Man glorified. The ticket home has been purchased and stamped. It only waits the brief journey.
As I say, though, God glorified in Him cannot bespeak that same idea of raising Father’s rank. It could, as Thayer advises, suggest that in His person, in His Manhood, Jesus had made the full worth and dignity of the Father both clearly recognized and necessarily acknowledged. That has certainly been true amongst many, if not all. I suppose it could be argued that even the Sadducees and Pharisees were forced to recognize the full magnitude of God’s majesty better by their encounters with His Christ. But, it would be a limited recognition. I wonder if we would not do better to suggest that Jesus honored and worshiped the Father in Himself, that this is the sense in which He uses the term where we have that appended ‘in’.
Look at it from that perspective, and we see that Jesus worships and honors God in Himself, which is clearly true. It is the basis of His obedience and thereby the basis of our salvation. Likewise, we can accept the same understanding when it comes to God the Father glorifying the Son in Himself. The adoration they share for one another, these Persons of the Trinity, is quite necessarily mutual. They are One. He is One. Choose your pronoun. If, then, I am reasonably accurate in my assessments here, what we are told is that it has now become inevitable and immediate that the Son shall be exalted to High Office, and that the proof is in that He truly has worshiped and exalted God in His personal example, His hear and soul. This confirmation of His steadfast character is a basis for God the Father to likewise esteem and honor Himself, and gives rise to that which He will do as a result in raising Jesus to High Office, and that immediately.
It makes sense to me to understand it thus, particularly given what follows. Jesus is preparing to issue a new commandment, a commandment intended to bear the full weight of heaven’s authority in the minds of His disciples. John’s constant return to this commandment in his own letters confirms that Jesus succeeded quite thoroughly in this effort. Jesus is also about to pronounce a covenant, a covenant between God and man, of which He is the officiating officer, the Mediator of the covenant, and the terms by which that covenant is sealed and validated. As such, it is important to establish more firmly than ever that He has the authority to act. He has all authority in heaven and on earth. He is Authority! This is, then, prelude to the command and to the covenant in which that command is recorded. To suppose that all Jesus is doing is speaking of a mutual admiration society with the Persons of the Trinity is to miss the point. It would be true, that they do so admire and honor and extol one another. But, it would have little to do with what Jesus is relaying to His disciples here. No. I think we must see this in covenant terms, recognize that He is declaring His position as the dominant power in this covenant, and that those with Him, though His friends, are also His subjects. They are not in position to dictate terms to God. They are in position to heed His commands and abide by His terms.
Love Commanded
Now, and only now, I think we might be properly prepared to contemplate the command itself. That command, as I said, is given as part of the covenant terms. Those terms they either had signed on for or would do so momentarily, depending how one merges the timelines of the four Gospels. Regardless of order, obedience was soon to become non-optional. Indeed, it’s pretty easy to discern that this particular commandment was and is what we might call the prime directive for those who would be disciples of the Christ. The command is straightforward enough: Love each other as I have loved you.
I am struck by the setting into which Jesus delivers this notice. Recall what Luke tells us was going on around this time. They had been trying to figure out which of them could possibly contemplate betraying Jesus, and then had shifted over to bickering over who was the best amongst their number. All was bickering competition, here in the midst of what was supposed to commemorate God’s intervention on behalf of His own, with the One Who was that very Intervention. And what does that One say? “Love each other as I have loved you.” Amazing! And, this isn’t given as suggestion, as a guideline which one might or might not choose to heed. It is given the weight of commandment, and then further solemnized by that covenantal ceremony that Jesus attaches to the event.
Now, by making Himself the model for what He is commanding, Jesus eliminates certain erroneous conceptions that His disciples might otherwise develop. Truth be told, these are misconceptions that we are terribly prone to in our own right. Most fundamentally, we cannot satisfy this commandment by putting a good face on things. Feigned comradery doesn’t meet the demand made upon us. Love that is only as deep as the skin of our faces, a mask over our true contempt or dislike of the person in view, love that is a matter of convenience or manipulation, or a seeking of political advantage as it were; these are not going to cut it. If this is the extent of our love, we are yet in our sin.
We must also recognize that what Jesus is driving at exceeds that which we have been trained to think of as the expression of love. Mutual affection and regard may be a necessary outgrowth of this love Jesus seeks amongst His followers, but it does not define that love. It is not the fundamental nature of that love. It should say something to us that a new term needed to be coined to properly get at what Jesus wanted here. For all the technical power of the Greek language, and for all the varied terms they had to express various aspects of the concept, they had none that really fit the bill. For all that Hebrew could be so expressive of the feelings and sensations behind a concept, even there, Jesus could not find the word that described this demand.
I am assuming something in giving Jesus credit for the term we have come to know for this particularly Christian expression of love. But, who else should we credit? The reason it needed a new term coined was because until He came expressing, teaching and requiring love of this sort, there was no such conception in the mind of men. How could He teach it, give expression to this commandment, except He first arrive at a term that captured His point, and also to have explained that term to His disciples such that they would know what He meant by it?
I note, at this point, that Strong suggests two different possibilities as to where this agapao comes from. It might be from the Greek agan, meaning much. Or, he suggests, it might be from the Hebrew `agab, meaning to breathe after – a fine word picture for the hunger of sensual love. We are more familiar with noun agape than with the verb agapao, but the two are sufficiently the same, only one is the act and the other the action. It makes sense to me that Jesus would turn to Hebrew more than Greek to arrive at His new word, transliterating to suit the more common Greek. Or, perhaps He had actually stuck with the Hebrew, and His disciples had arrived at the transliteration – they or their amanuenses.
What did this new term mean? It surely did not mean that His disciples were to have a deep sensual hunger for one another. Unthinkable! But, that deep hunger was expressive of the power of this new form of love, the extent of it that was to be not just the public face of their fellowship, but the reality of it. Note that He sets Himself as the example. Note that He has also given them a visible lesson as to the nature of what He’s getting at in that act of washing the disciples’ feet. Note that this was hardly the first time, nor would it be the last, that He addressed issues of pride of place amongst His disciples. You would be great? Then serve. Give yourself to the support of others. Think your brother to be of greater esteem than yourself. Then, return to Jesus as the model of what lengths this new love willingly goes to in its pursuit of supporting others. You cannot help but see the Cross. There, bleeding but unbroken, Jesus willingly paid out His very life to meet our needs. There was the final example of just what it was Jesus commands of us.
This is love, that Christ died for us while we were yet His enemies. This is love, that the sinless Son of God would willingly undergo the humiliation, the horror, the agony of such mistreatment at the hands of those He could easily have squashed like bugs instead, for no other reason than that we might be freed from the tyranny of sin. This is love, that the eternal Son, Who had never known so much as the briefest moment in all eternity during which His fellowship with Father and with Holy Spirit had been interrupted, underwent such an interruption, such a thoroughgoing wrenching of His soul. Truly, this must have been the most terrible of those evils He suffered on our behalf, to feel – even knowing the Truth – that sense of being forsaken by God, by Himself if we can even fathom such a thing. And, what He did He commanded we take not as the exceptional, but as the model.
Love like this. Have this great a concern for the welfare of the least of your brethren. Have this great a concern for the welfare of the most unlikable of your brethren, that one who just rubs you the wrong way, that one whose views ever seem antithetical to your own, that one who you would swear was laboring to undermine you. Love him. Don’t fake it. Don’t you dare! I recollect that thing my old pastor would say, that we must love one another, but that doesn’t mean we have to like one another. It’s amusing. It offers us the possibility of excusing our own shortcomings. But, I fail to find it accurate. How, John would ask his own charges later, can you claim to love the God you never see if you can’t even manage to love the brother you do? If you are claiming to love God and this is your situation, you are a liar (1Jn 4:20).
This, I might remind you, is from the Apostle of love, the beloved guy, John, almost as gentle, meek and mild as Jesus in our misty, sentimental vision. John may indeed be the Apostle of love, but we are horridly misinformed as to what that love is. We color our sense of John with our culture-infiltrated conceptions of what love is. We are in need of corrective lenses before we can properly perceive either John or the love he so constantly reminds us of.
Listen! The love which Jesus commands is not something so easy or so cheap as the emotion most commonly in view in our culture. This love is going to require a wholesale effort of our will. It won’t come easy. It won’t become easier with time and practice. It’s always going to be hard, even impossible, to love as we are commanded to do. This love isn’t feeling. It’s action. Or, if you must, it’s active feeling. It ties closely to that compassion Jesus so often expresses, with the full force of that underlying Greek description of having one’s guts tied in knots by the depth of concern. We see what has beset our fellow believer, and we don’t just sympathize with him. We don’t just feel saddened for his trouble. No, and we don’t simply claim that we shall pray for them and then push it from our mind. I mean, we probably do, but this isn’t love. This doesn’t satisfy the demand of our covenant. Not at all! If we would love as we are commanded, we will, upon seeing this brother, do everything within our power to correct his situation, to address his wounds, to restore him to faith if that is the need. Love that does not take action is no love at all.
It gets harder. You see, what particularly characterizes this agape sort of love to which we are insistently pointed is that the love is so deep that it will willingly take upon itself the approbations of love’s object in order to do what is truly best for that loved one, even when that loved one wants nothing to do with it. If you’ve raised children, you’ve some idea of this. The love we must express towards our progeny often gets expressed in forms the won’t appreciate. “No” is an expression of love. Punishment for ignoring that no is also an expression of love. Training up a child in the way it should go is almost never going to be a case of allowing that child to pursue things in the way it wants to pursue them. Boundaries must be set. Bad habits must be broken off and good habits established, working against the will of that one we love until he is able to see the benefit to himself in what we are doing, and will it for himself. All through that process, we can expect nothing but rejection and resentment. But, if our love is real, our love will move us to continue on undaunted. We shall not reel under the rejection, nor revile in response to being reviled. We shall simply proceed to love as we have been loved, knowing that we too rejected our Lover for long years before we began to see His love as love instead of as restraining bonds.
Jesus does not even give us the escape of making this a one time effort. It’s not as though we might manage one day a week, or one day a year, where we are able to love in this fashion, and then let it slide for the remainder. No, it has the force of continuous action, uninterrupted effort. “Keep on loving each other,” the CJB has it. Don’t stop. Don’t let up. Remember the hunger that is expressed in the roots of this agape love we are to have for one another. It’s not even enough to accept the responsibility to act on this love when opportunity arises. Seek out the opportunity to act! Hunger after the chance to love, actively love the brethren.
If this seems to hard for you, be mindful of the real extent of this love Jesus commands of His followers. It’s not just for family, and it’s not even just for church. We cannot even stop at Church writ large. This love that Jesus insists upon is a love we are even required to have towards our enemies, not seeking vengeance upon them, but rather praying for them. Every once in awhile, we’ll come across some article covering such a case. Here is the murderer on death row, facing his execution, and with him is the mother of his victim, not watching with vengeful eyes, but offering forgiveness, seeking to provide a bit of comfort in that final moment. Yes, justice is served as it must be. But, this is not of interest to that parent. Vengeance will restore nothing. Forgiveness, though, is powerful even to the overcoming of vengeance.
It is so powerful that it is the very thing that makes the event newsworthy. A criminal facing the death penalty may not be so common as it once was, but it’s common enough to deserve little comment, perhaps a simple note on the back page. But, when the power of forgiveness enters the scene, this is news. This is something out of the ordinary. Regular folks don’t find it in themselves to forgive like this. Even the most jaded observer recognizes something noble in that act. Oh, they’ll cynically write it off as being foolish rather than noble, but that’s only because they are ashamed to recognize such an act as beyond their own capacity. Nobility often gets written off as foolishness by those with no such character in themselves.
The cross is foolishness to the self-wise, yes? Why? Is it because they cannot believe such a thing? Or is it simply written off as foolishness because they know it is believable, just beyond their own ability?
For us, there is just this command: To make such love our continuous, repeated activity, the focus of our will. Oh, and note this, lest we think maybe we can avoid liking those we love: This act of will, this love that Jesus not just that gut-wrenching compassion that demands we take action. It’s also a finding of one’s joy in the object of our love. Find your joy in one another? Find your joy in that one who rubs you the wrong way? Find your joy in your enemies? My God, how can this be? But, then, how can it be that He has loved me?
Already, in mentioning John’s later letters to the Church, I can see the way this commandment took hold of the Apostles. But, that verse already quoted is hardly the sole testimony to this fact, even for John. Consider another point he makes in that letter. “We know that we have left death for life because we love the brethren” (1Jn 3:14). Where this commanded love does not exist, neither does life. That’s strong stuff! Choose you this day: real and earnest love for your brothers or death. That’s what I call an incentive plan.
In 2 John, which I have been revisiting of late with my Sunday School class, John gives us what might be viewed as an explanation or a reason for our love. In opening this letter, John notes his true love for the one to whom he is writing, and then notes that all who know the truth likewise love her. Why? For the sake of the truth which abides in us (2Jn 1-2). We tend to hear that phrased as loving the image of God that is in the person. But, then, we tend to hear that as a workaround for not actually loving the person himself. Wrong!
It cannot be that John is offering us truth as the rightful object of our love. That would make us no more than philosophers. Neither would it suffice to conclude that truth is the motivation for our love. Again, that becomes just an excuse for our love to be a sham, a means of skirting the person before us and considering only God. But, you see, that truth that we love is indeed the Truth. It is God. The truth that abides with us is Truth, God Himself. He is not the embodiment of Truth, He is Truth. He defines it. He establishes it. It cannot be apart from Him, nor could He continue to be God were He untrue. Truth and God, in this instance become synonymous. The Arabs have that aphorism that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. We might well turn that around for our genteel ears and say that the friend of my friend is my friend. Indeed, there is a strong societal urge to view things in this light. We make welcome the friend of our friend.
Why do we do that? Well, amongst other things, we think highly of our opinions. We think highly of our capacity as judges of character. If we saw fit to count this one our friend, we presumably account of him as being of good character and judgment himself. Ergo, whom he assesses as worthy of his friendship, we can trust is worthy of our own. Now, I rather doubt we consciously run through such calculations on each occasion, but the wiring of our minds is such that the calculations get run none the less.
Turn that to the matter of love, then, this love God commands of us. We might even go so far as to say the lover of my Love is my beloved. We shall have to bear firmly in mind the nature of the love we are contemplating, else this becomes a formula for something quite sinful. But, it is not. It is the formula of the Church. Turn your eyes on something Paul writes to the Church. It is addressed to that particular church in Colossi, but it is for all and sundry. “Beyond everything else I’ve said: Put on love, the perfect bond of unity” (Col 3:14). Can you sense the power of that point? Love is the glue of the church!
There’s a rather obscure artist I used to listen to rather religiously, wrote a song called, “Glue”. A rather somber affair, as most of his material was. But, there was this at the close of the song.
Oh, but what do you do,
And where do you start
When people are the glue,
When it all falls apart?
That comes back to me as I think of this issue of love as the glue of the church. Church, what shall we do when love is the glue that holds us together and it’s all falling apart around us? Indeed, what does that falling apart necessarily indicate? Glue holds things together. If they’re falling apart, then the glue is either absent or counteracted by some solvent. If love is the glue, what is the solvent? One turns rather immediately to hatred as being love’s opposite. But, recall that the love we’re speaking about lies nearer the sense of compassion, active compassion. Then, love’s opposite might be construed as dispassion or complacency. We cease to care, to be concerned for what is happening with others. They’ve been absent for a few weeks? Oh well. There’s been a family emergency? I’m sure they’ll be fine. God will take care of them. Pious sounds, perhaps, continue to emanate from our lips, but really we’ve just tried to set aside our responsibility with platitudes. God’s not having any of that.
If we feel any concern for the unity of the church, and let us for the moment concern ourselves only with our own little house, we must make this issue of love paramount. We surely have sufficient cause to do so. Jesus puts this matter of love for our brethren second only to our love for God directly. And, in reality, we should recognize that the two are inseparable. They are really the same commandment given in parallel forms. Thus, we had John telling us that it was impossible to say truthfully that we love God if we don’t love our brother. It’s not God in him that we love. It’s him. Else, it’s not love. We have got to get this. We have got to stop making any sort of excuses for a disingenuous love for our brothers. They don’t wash with God, and they ought not to wash with us.
Honestly, we have here thus far our claim to being possessed of Life, and our claim to loving God at stake, as well as the unity, the continuance, of the Church we likewise claim to love so much. Now, let’s add Peter’s charge. “Since you have purified your souls so as to sincerely love the brethren in obedience to the Truth, do so with fervency. Do so from the heart” (1Pe 1:22). Interestingly enough, I had cause to drive some distance to a meeting last week, which gave me opportunity to listen to a few of R.C. Sproul’s Message of the Month offerings from last year, which I’d not taken time to listen to yet. One of the messages (February 2011) hinged entirely on 1Peter 3:15, making the case for Christian apologetics as an activity suited to every believer.
Along the way, R.C. was speaking on this matter of the heart and the mind. The heart has primacy after its fashion, as being the nearer to soul. That which we believe and perform from the heart is that which we do with full commitment, with earnestness and sincerity. It’s not out of obligation any more. The mind may convince us of obligation, and we may comply. But, if the heart’s not in it, we know that to be the case, and so does everybody else. See? It pervades our own language and thinking. If your mind’s not on what you’re doing, you know you’re distracted, or just going through the motions, trying to get through a task you’d just as soon not be doing. But, even where your mind is on task, your heart may not be in it.
Simple example: I’ve had a task at work, to put together a paper and presentation for some upcoming conference. This is not a favorite activity of mine. Indeed, I could go so far as to say I loathe the very idea of it. I don’t even wish to attend these conferences as a rule, let alone stand before a group of colleagues and betters to bloviate about some topic I have little interest in myself. But, there’s a sense of compulsion on the matter, whether real or imagined. There’s a feeling of necessity. I have to do this thing, like it or not. So, I’ve been writing, and making slides, and so on and so forth, but every step of the way is like wading through chilled molasses. Why? Because my heart’s not only not in it, but far removed from it! I don’t want to be doing this thing, but I have to, and it makes every step, every bit of effort, that much harder to manage. It’s all obligation and nothing of self at all.
Well, let me tell you! This isn’t just an issue for work. It’s an issue for faith. We know we are to love our brother. But, maybe there’s that one brother out there that we really don’t find particularly simpatico. In plain point of fact, we find him rather abrasive. In our more high-handed moments, we’re inclined to doubt his status as a fellow believer, truth be told. And, to be brought up short and told that here, then, is the one you need to apply all these verses to: Love that one! Really, Lord? OK, I can grasp the obligatory nature of that command, but it’s going to be a work, a dead work. I can try and be nice to him, I suppose, maybe be more certain to give greeting. But, like him? God, You ask too much. Do you see the issue? Have you ever been there, or am I alone in this experience? No, I thought not.
Yet, here it is, laid out in undeniable fashion. Not only must you love such a one as that, you must do so from the heart. Let me stress that a bit. I know a tendency in myself to want to insert an ‘as’ there. I did it in paraphrasing Peter’s words. “Do so with fervency, as from the heart.” Peter, however does no such thing. He is far more direct, as we might expect from him. “Do so from the heart.” ‘With fervency’ and ‘from the heart’ are two statements of the same command. That love, that agape which Jesus commands can be no less. Direct the will. Make that one, yes that one, the object of such a love as ties your gut in knots with concern for him. When you’ve mastered that, then perhaps you can claim your soul is purified and your love sincere. Until then, we’ve got work to do.
I shall give us one more verse to consider on this matter, that we might consider the full urgency and impact of this commandment that is to define us. Jesus, in what we construe as His High Priestly Prayer, offers these words to the Father. “I glorified You on the earth by doing the work You sent Me to do” (Jn 17:4). Recalling to mind the first question in the Westminster Catechism, I must accept that the chief end and purpose of man, of myself, is to glorify God. Yes, there is appended the clause, “and to enjoy him forever.” However, I can’t get to point B without having arrived at point A. I cannot enjoy Him except I have glorified Him, and done so continuously, as my normal habit.
Now, then, I take note of just how it is that Jesus says He glorified God: By doing what He said to do. If we would glorify God, we can do no differently. Jesus makes the point. “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (Jn 14:15). Same love we’re talking about here, it’s still agape. Love and obedience are inseparable in this regard. Love insists we obey His command, and His command is to love not only Him but those who likewise love Him. We cannot glorify Him except we obey Him. We cannot make His true Excellence known if we don’t deem His Excellence worthy of our obedience. If we who claim to love Him so don’t see fit to live by His tenets, what cause have we to suppose we are bringing Him glory, making His worth known, and His praises to be sung by those we meet?
Discipleship Known
Is it any wonder, then, that Jesus stresses the fact that it is this mutual love that shall prove to be the convincing and convicting witness to the truth of these men being His disciples? It is the singular mark of genuine discipleship.
Before I really get into verse 35, I want to think about the setting once more. Here we are at the Passover Seder. What is that all about? It is a memorial to what God did on behalf of His children. It is a reminder of how He sovereignly chose to interpose Himself between those children and His wrath. God did not skip over Israel in His vengeance. He passed Himself over them, covering them in the thick blanket of His presence. There is every reason for David to have referred to God so often as his Shield, his Strong Tower. It was there to see in the very seeding of the nation that would be Israel.
So, here we are commemorating what God has done, and what are these disciples doing? They’re talking about themselves, bragging on their achievements. Oh, it’s focused on things done for the kingdom, to be sure, but it’s not, “Look what God did here!”, it’s “See how I acted for Him?” In all that jockeying for first place after Jesus, it’s all a matter of each man seeing himself as more indispensable to God than any other. Look forward only a few verses and we’ll find Peter still captivated by his own awesomeness. John is polite about it, noting only that he claimed he would lay his life down for Jesus (Jn 13:37). Matthew is more blunt, noting the way he knocked down all the others on way to this claim. “All these others may run away, but not me” (Mt 26:33)! No, I would never do such a thing. Except, of course, he would, as Jesus immediately pronounces.
How inappropriate is this? Here we are, with the commanded purpose of recalling to mind what God has done, and we’re busy making sure everybody knows what we have done! What a sad comment on our condition. And, let’s be honest. What is shocking in the acts of the apostles on this occasion is shockingly common in our own gatherings. Why, after all, do we gather of a Sunday? Do we really go to church to be reminded once more of just how much God has done for us? Or, do we go to be seen? Do we go to impress those others who have come with how spiritually advanced we are? Put it plainly: Are we there to show off about how great we are, or how great God is? Now, I am certain anybody reading this, even an unbeliever were he so inclined, would recognize the correct answer, the one that ought to be given. I am equally certain that this same readership would recognize what the honest answer would be. Sadly, they are unlikely to be the same answer.
This is the reminder for myself: This is time to brag on God not on self. It is time to be contemplating and celebrating what He has done, not what I have done. This may well be what it really means to take up our cross daily. We have not yet died to self, and it may be that such dying to self is simply beyond our fleshly capacity. But, to the degree we are able, we must strain and train our thoughts to turn away from these vain considerations towards a true consideration of Him through Whom and by Whom and for Whom any good in us has been possible.
“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments”, Jesus says (Jn 14:15). If you ask Me, I will do it. That’s the context in which He says this. Somehow these two thoughts must remain connected for us, because they were clearly connected for Him. If you ask it of Me, I will do it. Well, I should surely note the qualifying “in My name”, that much misunderstood phrase. Anything, then, is not just any little whim that passes through our fevered brains. Hardly that! Life would be a chaos of conflicting responses from Him were this the case. No, ‘in My name’ is no phrase that forces His hand. It is a limiting condition upon that ‘anything’. Anything we ask which is reflective of what He has authorized, that is in keeping with His character and His excellence, that we may ask with full expectation of being answered.
And it is with that in mind that we receive this comment: “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” Is His love then conditional? By no means! Ours tends to be, but even that is a different matter. No, what Jesus is offering is the test by which we might know the honesty of our love for Him. What is most intriguing then, is that the obedience that is proof of our love requires the love that is proof of our obedience! If we would prove that we love Him, we have no option but to love those others whom He loves, whom He has commanded us to love.
By this all men will know that we are His disciples. See, the situation has never changed, as God has never changed. This is the proof. This is the proof undeniable. “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity” (Ps 133:1)! It’s not immediately obvious to us, but the images with which David follows this remark are images of something rare, surprising and seemingly out of place. The dew of Hermon is a thing common enough on Mt Hermon, but in the region of Jerusalem, in the mountains of Zion? That’s another thing altogether. So it is with this love of the brethren, this unity of the Church. How unlikely! How improbable! Why, here are families from completely different strata of society. Here are (can it really be?) Democrats and Republicans gathered together, and not the first hint of animosity. Here are the poor and the rich seated side by side, and sharing in earnest conversation one with another. Here are young and old, singing one song in one voice, celebrating the wonder of one God.
We like to think there was a time when this was common in society, and maybe, just maybe it was. But, I suspect our memories are foggy. No, it’s a wonder and a marvel when such harmony, such unity is the norm and not the fleeting moment of experience. Such unity, being so great a rarity, is indeed a thing that by its very existence brags on God through Whom unity has come. Such unity, such clear and obvious love for one another amongst people that really have no reason otherwise to even be aware of each other, let alone committed to and caring about each other, stands out.
It is a comparison of far less worth than what is contemplated here, but I happened to be at a jazz show this last weekend. Five men on the stage, each unique in background. There’s the old, slightly tubby professor of a piano player (and mind, I’m just tossing out these first impressions one has as they take the stage). There’s the much younger, urbane sax player. There’s the even younger European on the bass, and the average American collegiate hipster on drums. Then, there’s the Caribbean? African? elder statesman off to the side with his collection of percussive objects. One looks at this motley collection of men, and is struck by the thought that it is very hard to imagine them being part of the same enterprise. And yet, here they are, and as the music progresses it is very clear that there is something that unites them. It’s not so much the music itself, at least not the specific songs they play. It’s the enjoyment they have in one another, each appreciating the little nuances the other has added. There’s that joking interplay between drummer and piano. There’s the smile of enjoyment as the sax man listens to what is building behind him, not yet playing, just swaying into the fabric of sound. Then, there’s those nods of encouragement and appreciation as the percussionist tosses in some accent at just the right moment. These guys are thoroughly enjoying one another. Who knows what happens when they leave the stage, but for these moments, they are one unit, one harmony, one mutual admiration society.
Sitting in the audience watching this, it would have been impossible to miss this fact. Indeed, this was probably more noteworthy than most of the songs and solos. There was no ego demanding the spotlight. There was just this joyful team effort at bringing forth whatever song was being played. And we knew. We rejoiced with them for their pleasure in their work, for it was clear they weren’t going to be raking in the cash on this show. Yet, what did it matter? They could play. They could revel in each other. One sensed they would do it for free just so’s they had the chance to do it.
As I said, this is a poor stand in for the unity that is to be the proof of the Church. Or, it certainly ought to be. But, as things stand, it might not be a bad model upon which we could at least get a start on things. The bigger point, though, is just how obvious that unity, that mutual love is to every observer. You don’t have to understand jazz to understand what’s going on between these players. You don’t need to be a theologian to understand the love between believers. It may increase your appreciation of what you’re observing, but you know what you’re seeing however knowledgeable you may be.
Thus, we arrive at the reason Jesus pronounces for this love. “All men will know”. Now, on this occasion, Jesus speaks of that form of knowing that is, in the Greek, ginosko. However much significance one may care to vest in this choice, it is a word used far less frequently in the Gospels. A quick check shows that eido in its various forms shows up almost three times as often. At any rate, if one finds a specific significance to the choice it tends to be that this ginosko knowledge is something known absolutely. Bearing in mind that eido is primarily a matter of seeing, and the knowing that comes of it is basically an observation of life around us, an assessing of evidence if you will, there is always room for that sort of knowing to be modified.
Going back to that jazz show, the impressions received by observation might very well change, and change drastically were we witness to the dressing room. Or, maybe we find interviews years from now revealing that these guys really couldn’t stand one another, that there was infighting beyond all imagining. Further data must modify what we thought we knew. One thinks of those interviews we see of the murderer’s neighbors. “He was such a nice boy.” We thought we knew him, could trust him. Boy were we wrong. Now we know different.
But, ginosko is not like that. Ginosko is absolute. It is certain. It is carved in stone and it’s not going to change. It is, dare I say it, Truth. Think about that. This love we are to not just show towards one another but actually possess towards one another is the proof that will cause all men, anybody who encounters us, to know beyond any possible doubt that we are truly disciples of the Christ. I cannot think of any other thing that Jesus ever says provides so powerful a witness. Nothing. Think back to that parable about the rich man and the poor beggar, Lazarus. “Even were I to send somebody back from the dead, they would not be persuaded” (Mt 16:31). And so it of course proved to be. Even Jesus risen from His grave and walking about the earth did not persuade them, just as Lazarus of Bethany had done nothing to persuade them when he was brought forth from his grave previously. But, this love between the brethren! That’s a whole different story.
Listen! There is no other evidence that will serve. We can proclaim ourselves disciples of this Christ ‘til we’re blue in the face, but if the love He commands from us, the love we have demonstrably and consistently towards ALL the brethren, is not in us, then we are not in Him. We are not following Him. We do not give Him a moment’s thought. If we give Him aught, it is but lip-service, and we are fooling nobody with the possible exception of ourselves.
We either love one another as He has said, or we prove ourselves not His disciples at all. That’s hard to bear. It’s hard to bear because it’s a measure by which we are all but assured to fall short. We know it. We’ve fallen short already so many times. Oh, we can love the vast majority of our brothers, but there’s always that one or two that just … No! Can’t do it. But, by God’s abundant, ever-present and unchanging grace, yes, we can! Indeed, yes, we must.
Lord, I know well my own failures in this regard. I am so thankful to be reminded of Your grace and mercy when I consider those one or two that I just cannot bring myself to love. So, bring me, Lord. It is Your love that ought to be seen, after all; Your love in me, overflowing from me. Pour it out, then, my King, that I may pour it out in turn. Make this life that much more a reflection of Your own. Though I know my record as a disciple is shaky at best, I know this, and I know this absolutely: You are able. Let it be, then, in me as You require it to be. And let me be found willing clay in Your hands, seeking to do as I ought even when the ability seems and is beyond me.
