Each week at the end of worship services, we are sent out with the words, “Remember that you are loved by Christ. Therefore, go to love Christ and love like Christ.” It’s a great reminder to us that the self-giving love of God in Jesus Christ is always the starting point for loving Christ and loving like Christ. If we start with ourselves, we fall well short of the standard of self-giving love to which Christ calls us. And just what is the level to which Christ calls us?

It will help us to remember that loving like Christ is not merely emotion but self-giving action. Let me provide a few examples of this in Scripture. The most famous verse in the Gospel, if not all the Bible, is John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (NIV, emphasis mine). This is God’s love in action. God does not just feel love for us or say that He loves us. God acts in accordance with who He is. In his first letter to the church the Apostle John proclaims, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). The larger context of this truth about God in 1 John 4 reads, 

“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 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. This is love: not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:8-10, emphasis mine).

God’s love is actively demonstrated by “sending (1 John 4:10) and “giving” (John 3:16) His Son in order that we can have an abundant and eternal life in a blessed relationship with God our Father.

On His last night with His disciples, prior to being arrested, Jesus said “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” And then He says to them, “Greater love has no man than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:12-13). Jesus will lay down His life for His friends on two levels. In the garden, Jesus convinced the detachment of soldiers and religious leaders to arrest only Him and allow His disciples to be set free (see John 18:8). Of course, on a much greater level, Jesus lays down His life in accordance with the Father’s will for the salvation of the world. The point is, to understand how we are to love, we must first look to the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Again, it is more than a mere feeling or emotion; love is action for the good of another pointing to the Father to bring Him glory. This is not easy! It wasn’t easy for Jesus so we can expect that it won’t be for us either.

Recently, at the encouragement of a friend, I’ve been meditating on the great commandment from Matthew’s gospel. Jesus has just silenced the leaders of one of the Jewish sects, the Sadducees. So, another Jewish sect, the Pharisees now take their turn at attempting to trip Jesus up by sending an expert in the law to test Him.

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law? Jesus replied, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your mind.’ This is the first and the greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40).

Bear in mind that there were 613 commandments in the law of Moses. That’s a lot of commands to keep straight! No wonder Jesus said His yoke is easy and His burden is light (see Matthew 11:28-30).

In his commentary on Matthew, N.T. Wright notes that it was not uncommon for Jewish teachers to ask a question about which commandment of the 613 was the most important. In addition, Jesus’ answer would have found wide agreement among the Jewish teachers of His day. In fact, as Wright notes, not only did these two commandments from Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18 inform God’s people as to what “they were supposed to do. They informed part of the prayer that every devout Jew prayed every day, in a tradition that continues to be unbroken to the present time”[1] (author’s emphasis). But did they truly love God and love their neighbor? And do we?

In Matthew 15, Jesus states that it is only through a renewed heart that we can expect actions and speech to flow from us that represent God’s loving intentions for the world. And of course, Jesus emphasized the same throughout the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. Again, Wright’s comments are helpful:

… [what] Jesus says here about loving God, and loving one another, only makes sense when we set it within Matthew’s larger gospel picture, of Jesus dying for the sins of the world, and rising again with the message of new life. That’s when these commandments get to come into their own: when they are not seen as orders to be obeyed in our own strength, but as invitations and promises to a new way of life in which, bit by bit, hatred and pride can be left behind and love can become a reality.[2]

I must often remind myself, “Steve, it is not about greater performance but about greater surrender to the goodness of God and His desire for who I am becoming in Christ.” I don’t know about you, but Christ and the Holy Spirit still have a lot of renewing work to do in my heart. The good news is that Christ is not finished with me or with you. If we continue to surrender our lives over to Christ, who has our best interests at heart, we will see that our trajectory in life looks more and more like His, enabling us to love Him and love like Him.

[1] N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part 2. (Louisville: Westminster Press John Knox, 2002), 94.

[2] Wright, 95.