Scripture: John 13:34
So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.
I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody. - Martin Luther King Jr.
30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these. (Mk 12:30-31)
I. We Love As God Commands
So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. (Jn 13:34)
You shall love your neighbour as yourself. (Lev 19:18)
A. Jesus - Our Model to Love People
Before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus, knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end… Jesus rose from supper… and began by washing the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. (Jn 13:1-5)
12 When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done for you? 13 You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. 14 If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15 For I have given you an example so that you also should do just as I have done to you.' (Jn 13:12-15)
We are to love as Jesus loved - to serve one another with the humble attitude of a servant.
My command is this: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. (Jn 15:12)
B. Jesus - Our Power to Love People
4 Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. 5 Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. (Jn 15:4-5)
I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. (Jn 15:9-10)
Without Jesus, we would be powerless to accomplish anything - not able to love others.
Jesus' love was founded upon His relationship with God the Father.
As Jesus remains in his Father's love, we are to remain in Jesus’ love.
II. We Love As God First Loved Us
"Though our feelings come and go, God’s love for us does not." ... "God loves us NOT because we are lovable, because He is love. Not because He needs to receive, because He delights to give." - C. S. Lewis
A. God Takes the Initiative to Love Us
9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1 Jn 4:9-11)
B. God Loves Us Deeply and Unconditionally
"Before the world began, you were on His mind / And every tear you cry is precious in His eyes
Because of His great love, He gave His only Son / And everything was done, so you would come.
Nothing you can do could make Him love you more / And nothing that you've done could make Him close the door.
Because of His great love, He gave His only Son / Everything was done, so you would come"
~ "So You Would Come" by Hillsong Worship
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. (Jn 3:16)
He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? (Rom 8:32)
For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” (Rom 5:10)
but God, being rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace have ye been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus: that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Eph 2:4-7)
People matter to God, and they are precious to Him.
“God gives us people to love and things to use, Not things to love and people to use.” - Er. Digvijay Singh
Loving people is what drove God to willingly sacrifice His only Son to give up His life for us.
