“A new commandment I give to 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 ESV)
Last week we saw how both Jesus and Paul condemned the religiousness of the Jews of their day. Their religion consisted of a difficult regimen of observing minute regulations in order to avoid breaking any of the 613 stipulations contained in the Mosaic Law. It was thought that by doing so they could keep the covenant and ensure God’s continued benevolence. The problem was not in their pursuit of righteousness; it was that their practice had become a pattern of empty rituals. Further, as barren as their practice was, they arrogantly assumed it set them apart from their contemporaries and gained for them God’s favor. At the same time, though they painstakingly observed the stipulations of the law, their conduct in the world was no better than those who didn’t have the law. Their moral failure was heightened by hypocrisy that in their arrogance they could not even perceive.
I think it was then successfully demonstrated that many of us who profess to be Christians have fallen into the same trap as those first century Jews. We believe our religious observances set us apart from the world and guarantee our salvation. But at the same time our lives are materially indistinguishable from our non-Christian contemporaries. We fail to fulfill the mission of the holy race we are called to be, which is to “proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9) We are instead what our critics accuse us of being: hypocritical, judgmental, and effectively irrelevant.
These observations are more than just interesting. They are crucial to us who publicly claim to be followers of Jesus. What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus? Let’s consider further the plight of the Jews of Paul’s day.
There is a common misperception that the God of the Old Testament was angry and punishing, but that the God of the New Testament is characterized by love. In fact, God is a God of love from the beginning. The Old Testament narrative is a long story of God’s passionate love for his creation, the Israelites’ disobedience, and God’s forbearance and continued love and care. It is true that the Israelites were punished over and over again in the Old Testament, but it was their willful disobedience that punished them. Even though the Israelites violated the covenant over and over, God never abandoned his love for them.
What was the nature of their disobedience? The common perception imagines a God who says in effect, “Love and obey ME or I will crush you!” The truth is that God insists on being the focus of humanity’s affection because that is the only way humans can be happy, joyous, and free. Though the distractions of this world persuade otherwise, there is no contentment apart from God. The sin of man, going all the way back to Adam, was trying to achieve fulfillment through worship of created things rather than the Creator. Yet in spite of humanity’s crazy disobedience God never ceased to love his creation or his creatures. God did not allow his beloved creatures to fall without devising a plan for restoration.
Let’s look a little closer at this dynamic. God created a perfect world that reflected his nature. It was world of life, joy, and plenty. It was a world of complete happiness and absolute justice. Through disobedience, i.e., through the worship of creation rather than the Creator, mankind marred the world, introducing suffering, injustice, and death. Though humans abandoned God, he did not abandon them. He set in motion a plan to re-create the world. His covenant with the Israelites at Sinai, where the Mosaic Law was given, was the means by which the plan was to be implemented. This was the same covenant the Jews of Paul’s time believed they had inherited, that gave them their identity and sense of being “chosen.”
But look how they had screwed it up. They were supposed to be a “light for the nations,” so that God’s “salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (Is. 49:6) How were they to be that light? By demonstrating the nature of God in the world. That was the purpose of the law: to make a holy community who would bless the world. To be a people who would make God’s nature so irresistible that all would be drawn to him. But the Jews had turned God’s purpose into a list of dos and don’ts that mocked his nature and thwarted his plan of salvation. Instead of being a light for the nations they turned their covenant identity into hypocritical, judgmental religion that few who were not born into it wanted to be any part of.
Jews believed then (and many still do) that the servant referenced in Isaiah 49 is the Jewish people with whom God made the Sinai covenant. Christians believe the servant is Christ, and that through Christ a new covenant has been given that creates a new
God’s fervent love for his creation can be traced throughout the Old Testament and the New: from Genesis to Revelation, from the first page of the Bible to the last. It is best demonstrated by Jesus. On the night of his arrest, when he knew he would be tortured and later crucified, Jesus gave instructions to his disciples: “A new commandment I give to 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) This, I believe, is the essense of the new covenant, and its stipulation is both simple and terrifying. We are to love “just as I have loved you.” How did he love us? He gave up everything for the sake of those he knew would revile and spit on him. His love was not a feeling of affection; it was an act of complete self-sacrifice. And he commands his disciples to conform to this model.
Are we his disciples? If we are, then here we have the instructions for how to give God a good name.
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