Friday, May 12, 2023

12 May 2023 - no greater love




Yesterday in the Gospel we read that if we kept the commandments of Jesus we would remain in his love. Today's reading makes it more clear why that is the case.

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

The commandments are, at their most fundamental level, all about love. First, we are loved by Jesus before we do, say, or earn anything for ourselves. Then we respond by obeying him and loving him, which are perfectly synonymous since we are responding to the one who is all good, all truth, and all beauty. And what should be the priority of our loving response to Jesus according to Jesus himself? He tells us, "love one another as I love you". Because we are loving others as a response to the fact that we ourselves have first been loved by Jesus we become empowered to show genuine selfless love. When we love others for God's sake and love them unto God as their last end we can love them better than if we had to rely on our own resources or were constrained to their limited human view of their goals and desires.

No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one's life for one's friends.

Jesus loved us in a way that we didn't really want when he did it. He bore the cross of which we did not want to admit that we stood in need. He loved us with a love that transformed our own hostility and sinfulness, our tendency to be enemies of God, into friendship. He gave us more than we were able to ask for or imagine (see Ephesians 3:20). Before he did so we would not have dared to ask. But not that he has done so, now that he has made us his friends, how can we not now love him in return? How can we not be as good as possible to so good a friend as that? 

I no longer call you slaves,
because a slave does not know what his master is doing.
I have called you friends,
because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.

Jesus demonstrated the blueprint of true, genuine, agape style love by giving his life for us and making us into friends of God. Before he did so we were slaves, slaves to our passions, to ignorance, and to our fear of death. But now that we know everything that Jesus heard from the Father we have an obligation to shape our response of love to be as much as possible like the love first shown us by Jesus himself. It was not a task we chose for ourselves, but rather one which Jesus chose for us. And this should actually give us confidence where we might otherwise succumb to self-doubt. It was he who appointed us to bear fruit that will remain, and promised that his Father would provide all we would need to make the name and love of his Son known and to build his Kingdom of love in the world.

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (see Ephesians 2:10).

Transformed by the love of Jesus we too have mandate, not to upset others with disputes and disturb their peace of mind, but to spread his love. We do so in a less official capacity than Barnabas and Paul. Yet we too have a part to play in the same mission they undertook because we too have dedicated our lives to the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Like them, we now look to love enemies unto friendship not only with us, but especially with Jesus himself.

I will give thanks to you among the peoples, O LORD,
I will chant your praise among the nations.

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