Scripture: John 13:31-35; Acts 11:1-9; Matthew 7:24-27 Series: Easter
Jesus’ new commandment to love one another is not a feeling but Christ-shaped action—lived out through the means of grace—given by a God who loved us first so our souls are built on rock rather than sand.
Illustrations: no-candles-in-the-pool, no-confetti-karaoke-rule, i-love-cake-spinach-tamales, carver-what-we-talk-about-love, conservation-of-energy, augustine-loved-first, preschool-wise-mans-house
May 18, 2025
A New Commandment
Acts 11:1-9
John 13:31-35
Now the apostles and the brothers and sisters who were in Judea heard that the gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners, and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord, for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ - Acts 11:1-9
When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” - John 13:31-35
Something I’m often amused by is when you go to an establishment, a restaurant, a hotel or something, and they have very specific rules. There are general rules that seem reasonable for most places. Let’s think of a pool, for instance: don’t run by the pool, no diapers in the pool, this is understandable. And then there are the unique rules: no candles in the pool.
Hmm. That is very specific. It makes you think about what situation caused the No Candles rule.
Another rule like this was at a karaoke place we used to live by when Alina and I were first married. There were only three rules: no drugs, no assault, and no confetti. One of these things is not like the other ones. At that point, before I ever had to clean up confetti, I thought, what’s the big deal against confetti? But some situation must have forced the establishment to be explicit in their rules in this particular way.
You have a really bad confetti night and you’re like, I’m done with confetti. Or there’s a wedding and they put like 6,000 candles in the pool. The pool loses functionality for a few weeks and the owners think, you know what? We don’t really don’t need candles in the pool anymore.
Usually, when new rules are instituted, it is based on specific negative behaviors. A commandment is a rule. Of course there are layers of nuance that I could go into , but at its basic level, how we understand the language of rules in contemporary English is how the word commandment would be understood in Greek. and in Hebrew.
You can imagine a situation where Jesus is very frustrated with the disciples’ behavior, and he’s like, you guys aren’t listening to me so I have a new rule for you.
But that’s not what he says. He says, a new rule, a new commandment, I give to you, love one another. Now, love, in English, is ambiguous enough that it can mean anything and it can mean nothing I love my wife. I love cake. I don’t actually love cake, but I do love my wife. I love spinach tamales. This is true.
In English, we have hollowed out the word love. What do you mean by love? The great Raymon Carver story, What We Talk About When We Tall About Love gets to this ambiguity.
Love one another does not seem like a rule. Don’t steal. That’s a rule. No speeding. Another rule. How could you make loving a rule?
In some ways, an English love has become more about my will and desire and less about the actions I do. I’m gonna tease this out because I think this is really important. So, when I say I love something, it’s not about what I do or my relationship to this thing, but my desires about it, my thoughts, my will, how I see myself in relation to it.
That’s not what Jesus is saying here. That’s not how Jesus understands love. Love is not the feeling in your gut. Love is what you do. What are you doing? How are you living? How are you acting? What is your posture towards this person? Love one another. Love each other. It’s incoherent if we’re talking about feelings and emotions. It is coherent if we’re talking about actions, about the way Christ shows us to love each other. John 13 is the same passage where he washes the disciples’s feet. This is. The Maundy, the mandatum, the command of Maundy Thursday, love one another. One of the ways we love one another is washing each other’s feet, caring intimately for each other. Sharing at the table, the Lord together, doing these things. Jesus isn’t commanding everybody his disciples to all have mushy gushy feelings for each other. It’s mostly irrelevant. The point is, what do you do about it? And I think we can see this new commandment in a similar way to no confetti in the karaoke place or no candles in the pool. Jesus is responding to the actions of the disciples. They didn’t want to wash each other’s feet. They didn’t want to have him wash their feet.
There’s an implication of a why here. Why should we do that, Jesus? I think there’s a few ways to answer that why and each is valid.
One is because Jesus said so. Especially at Easter, this should be a valid point for a Christian. The words of Jesus guide us because Jesus rose from the dead to save us. So why should we not listen to what he’s gonna say?
The second point is that we harm ourselves when we don’t love one another. It’s like confetti in a karaoke room. We’re causing harm if we don’t love one another, it’s like there’s a million pieces of confetti that God has to pick up or another person has to pick up and it is exhausting. So let’s just not use confetti. Right? Make a new rule. No confetti. We’ll make a new rule. Love one another.
And ultimately, like every rule, law, and commandment; it is teleological. It has a goal. It has a purpose. There’s some overarching reason for it, whether it’s the laws of the state of Texas, of the United States, of the United Nations, of the Old Testament of the New Testament, each law has a focus in the future.
Jesus helps to give us that, understanding here. He says, “Little children, I’m with you, only a little longer. ” Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
People know that you follow Jesus when you love one another. And the converse is true. People will not know you follow Jesus when you don’t love. People will not know where you’re going when you don’t love. And then you just come down to the question: is it really worth it? You know, I guess confetti is fun. You know, it’s like, yay, look at all the little pieces of paper. Woo hoo! Party! Is it worth it? In the short term, selfishness can be enjoyable. Yay, I’m the center of the world, Yay, don’t have to think about anybody else. Woo hoo!
Is it worth it? No we’re not just left to our own devices to be moral heroes and fight the selfishness taught to us by the world. No, we are offered grace. We were offered the Holy Spirit to form us and transform us to love one another, so that in loving each other, we’re shown as the disciples of Jesus Christ.
As well, we are not the originators of love. We are not the creators of love. There is a heavenly conservation of energy going on. With that physical law, energy is neither created nor destroyed. For us, we neither create nor destroy love. Our wills can direct for good or ill. We know what we should love when we look to who loved us first. Or as Saint Augustine put it:
We cannot love unless someone has loved us first. Listen to the apostle John: We love him, because he first loved us. The source of man’s love for God can only be found in the fact that God loved him first. He has given us himself as the object of our love, and he has also given us its source. What this source is you may learn more clearly from the apostle Paul who tells us: The love of God has been poured into our hearts. This love is not something we generate ourselves; it comes to us through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.1
There is not one who does not love something, but the question is, what to love. Not love as a feeling but love as an action, a verb, an incontrovertible activity. This is it.
God has loved us first. We see that on the cross with what Jesus did for us. We see that through his teaching, through his welcoming of sinners and healing of the sick, that he could love even us. We see that new life is possible because he rose again. What are you going to do with that love?
This is the context for the new rule Jesus gives. He knows what the question is and he supplies the answer: love one another. We know what he means by love because we know how he lived: he served, he gave away, he healed, he broke bread, he celebrated, he sacrificed. Our tradition has put those together as the means of grace. The means of grace are the way Jesus lived. They aren’t focused on what we consume with our bodies, as the heavenly voice makes clear to Peter in Acts 11: ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ They are how we love ourselves and love our neighbor.
We call these the means of grace. There are some we can do by ourselves: prayer, studying the scriptures, Fasting, Not being controlled by our body. There are some we can do with others. Worship, Communion, holy conferencing, which has gathered together as Christians and talking about what matters, How is it with your soul? As well, there are some we can do for others: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick. These acts aren’t charity as a separate thing. They aren’t ways to feel better about ourselves, but how Jesus shows us to love.
These are usually divided between works of piety (spiritual works) and works of mercy (charitable works) but there is no true division. And the works of mercy are just for strangers. It starts right where you are. It starts with your spouse, with your children, with your siblings, with your neighbors. Are you caring for the people in your love? Are you following the new rule? It is for your own good. Jesus gave it to us to help us, not to burden us with expectations. There is also mercy. Mercy is a means of love the Jesus shows us. A means of grace that lets us love one another.
Love one another. If you don’t love, you’re dead. Your soul wastes away. Sure, the false safety of selfishness may cover you for days or weeks or years even, but the storms will come.
This was the last week of the Covenant Preschool. They are off for the summer. Brenda and I had the privilege to spend two days a week teaching chapel to the kids. One of the songs we often sang was about the parable of Jesus where he says,
The wise man built his house upon the rock And the rains came tumbling down
This comes from Matthew 7
24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
If you don’t love, your house is built on sand. Your house will not survive. Your soul will not survive. Jesus knows this. That is why he gives us a new rule. The new rule is so we can built on the rock of his love and sacrifice. Love another. Do this. Give of yourself. Give of your money. Give of your time. Do not hoard yourself. Love one another.
May we receive this new commandment. May we put it into practice here and now.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Footnotes
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Saint Augustine ↩