“Love” is one of the most commonly used and frequently
misunderstood words in the English language. The complexities of this word are
evidenced in that the Greek language actually had at least four distinct words
to describe the various ways in which we use the word “Love.” We use this one
word to describe our love for God, His love for us, the love we have for our
spouse, our children, our parents, siblings, and friends. But we also use it to
describe how we feel about our favorite foods, sports teams, pastimes, hobbies,
and interests. If we were teaching English to someone who had no concept of our
language, imagine how confusing it would be for them to find that we use the
same word to describe, for example, our affection for our spouse, our parents,
and pizza. Surely, we understand that the different uses of the word convey
different meanings. When someone tells us that they love us, we certainly hope
that they mean something more significant than how they feel about food or
entertainment. Deep within each of us there is a longing to both love and to be
loved in a way that transcends these earthly affections. In short, we want to
experience a perfect love. Our frequent experiences and disappointments seem to
suggest, in the words of the old country song, that we’ve been “looking for
love in all the wrong places.” There is a perfect love that can be found, but
it can only be found in one place ultimately. Our text today shows us the
source of this love.
Before we dive into it, we need to orient ourselves a bit to
where we are in the Gospel of John. We’ve just passed the half-way point here.
The first chapter told us of the eternal origins of Jesus Christ, and how God
came to dwell among us as a man in Him. From that point, over the next 11
chapters, we’ve covered the highlights of Jesus’ three year public ministry. As
Chapter 12 began, we were entering into the final week of His earthly life.
That means that the entire second half of John’s Gospel is devoted to a single
week. But more noteworthy is this: Chapters 13-19, the lion’s share of the
remainder of the book is devoted to a single 24-hour period that begins here in
verse 1. It is Thursday night as the Chapter begins. And it is as if John has
put his Gospel into super-slow-motion. They will not leave the upper room where
they are observing the Passover meal together until the Chapter 18. By the end
of Chapter 19, Jesus will be dead and in the tomb.
These events did not come upon Jesus by surprise. John says
here in verse 1 that He knew “that His hour had come that He would depart out
of this world to the Father.” This “hour” had been known to Jesus since He
first left the glories of heaven to enter this world. The events of this hour,
including His betrayal and crucifixion, were the very reason He had come. At
the wedding of Cana in Galilee in John 2,
Jesus stated that His hour had not yet come. On two other occasions (John 7:30
and 8:20), John states that no one was able to seize Jesus because His hour had
not yet come. But beginning in John 12, Jesus began to say that His hour had
come, and here it is stated that He knew it had come, this hour that He would
depart out of this world and go to the Father. He knew that His death was at
hand, less than 24 hours away in fact.
It would be understandable, in these moments, if Jesus
turned His thoughts solely to Himself. If we were to read that He withdrew from
everyone to spend the evening in prayer in preparation for His death, it would
not surprise us. But this is not what He did. Instead, He gathered with His
disciples for this meal and He determined to demonstrate His love for them. And
in so doing, we see perfect love on display and are drawn to that love as the
fulfillment of our heart’s greatest desire.
So, what do we learn – what are the facts – about this
perfect love that we can discern from our text? Let’s consider them here.
I. Notice the special objects of His love.
1 John 4:8 tells us that God is love. It is His nature to
love, and He cannot not love. In fact,
the Scriptures make it plain that God loves the entire human race. John 3:16
comes to mind – “God so loved the world.”
That word “world” in Scripture can and sometimes does mean the universe and/or
planet Earth. It also means at times a way of thinking or a system of belief
that operates against God in the world. And it often is used to refer to the
human race, God’s image-bearers in the world. That’s how it is used in John
3:16. Some would suggest that God does not love those who reject or do not believe
in Him. Scripture actually proves this to be false in a number of ways. First
of all, we have direct statements like John 3:16 that say without question that
He does. We also have passages that imply God’s love for unbelievers, such as
when Jesus weeps over the city of Jerusalem
(Lk 19:41), or in Ezekiel 33:11 when God says, “I take no pleasure in the death
of the wicked.”
We also have His love for unbelievers expressed in His
commandments in the Law. When asked what the greatest commandment is, Jesus
responded, of course, that it is to love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.”
Then He continued by saying that the second is like the first, in that “You
shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:28-31). When Jesus was
immediately asked, therefore, “Who is my neighbor?”, He responded with the
parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritans and the Jews bitterly despised
one another. But the point of Jesus’ parable was that our love should be
extended to all people, even those who are not like us. Jesus even commands us
in the Sermon on the Mount to love our enemies (Mt 5:43-44). What does this
prove? Well for one thing, because God’s law is an expression of His own
nature, He does not command us to do something that He does not do, or to think
or act in a way that is not consistent with His own character. Also, because
Jesus fulfilled the entire Law in His life of perfect righteousness and
absolute sinlessness, we know that He Himself lived in complete obedience even
to these commands.
And then we have actual incidents in which we see His love
for unbelievers on display. One that comes to mind is the story of the Rich
Young Ruler in Mark 10. When he asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal
life, Jesus told him, “You know the commandments, do not murder, do not commit
adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your
father and mother.” The man said to Him, “Teacher, I have kept all these things
from my youth up,” which was obviously not true, because it is not true of
anyone. And the Bible says that Jesus looked upon him, and “felt a love for
him,” even as He said, “One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and
give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”
That call to come and follow Him was the key. He was inviting this young man
into a personal relationship with Himself. And the Bible says that “at these
words he was saddened, and he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much
property.” Here was a man who blatantly rejected Jesus’ offer of eternal life,
and who walked away from the invitation. How did Jesus feel about that man? The
Bible says He loved him.
In God’s love for the entire human race, He acts in
lovingkindness toward all men in some ways. Jesus said that God causes the sun
to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the
unrighteous (Mt 5:45). In Acts 14:17, Paul addressed a crowd of unbelievers in
Lystra and said that God had done good for them and given the rains from heaven
and fruitful seasons, satisfying their hearts with food and gladness. There is
no one on the earth whom God does not love! He proves His love over and over
again in His many gifts to mankind. Everything from the next breath you draw to
the next meal you will eat comes to you as a gift from His hand. We can say
without hesitation on the authority of God’s Word that, whoever you are, God
genuinely loves you.
But, now I want us to notice something here in our text. In
His final hours on the earth before His crucifixion, Jesus’ heart was not
occupied with this universal love that He has for the entire human race. He has
withdrawn from the multitudes and drawn to Himself His twelve disciples, and
John says that He “loved His own.” “His own” are those who belong to Him in a
personal relationship by faith. These are the special objects of His perfect
love. He did not stop loving the rest of the world, and He never has and never
will. But, His love for His own is qualitatively different than His love for
the rest of humanity. It has been well said by some, “God has given some things
to all men, and all things to some men.” We can say the same of the love of
Jesus. He has given some of it to all, and all of it to some. And those “some”
are His own. In fact, it is this perfect love of Jesus that unites us to Him
and makes us His own.
He loved His own, John says, “who were in the world.” That’s
an important statement (actually all statements in Scripture are important!). This
world that is fallen and thoroughly corrupted by sin; this world of humanity
that is lost an in rebellion against God; this world that Jesus was soon to
leave – this is where the special objects of His perfect love dwell. That means
that they are still imperfect, still battling the presence and power of sin in
their own lives, still affected daily by the outworking of sin’s effects in the
world. But they are no less beloved of the Lord Jesus. In this very chapter,
Jesus will tell Peter (one of His own) that he will deny the Lord three times
before sunrise the next morning, but that did not negate His love for Peter.
The Lord doesn’t love you because you are good. He loves in spite of the fact
that you are not good. He loves you with this special kind of love because you
are His. We will all fall and fail as long as we are in this world, but if we
are His, we fall into His loving arms which are able to raise us back up when
we do. Peter experienced that, and so will you if you are His own.
There is a strain of teaching that calls itself Christian
that says if you love God and trust Him enough, then He will love you back and
protect you so that bad things won’t happen to you. This weekend, one of the
preachers of that message has been across the street at the Coliseum, and in a
few weeks another will come in behind him. But don’t believe it for a moment;
it is a lie from the devil. As long as you are in this world, you will wrestle
with sin and its devastating effects, both in your own self and all around you.
You will be hurt, you will be grieved, you will experience suffering and
tragedy, because no one in this world is immune to it. Jesus Himself was not
immune to it. And when those things happen to you (not if, but when), the devil
will tempt you to think that you are not loved by the Lord Jesus. But friends,
you must hear this statement very clearly: “He loved His own, who were in the
world.” He has promised to take His own out of this world eventually to be with
Him, but for now, you remain in the world. But it is not home. You are in the
world, but Jesus says in John 17 that you are not “of the world.” You are just
passing through on your way to your true, eternal home with Him. Don’t be like
the world, and don’t love this world and the things in it too dearly, because
you are a pilgrim here. Be in it, and be His special objects of love in it, and
bring others into the experience of His perfect love as you bear witness to
them of your true King and true Kingdom, but you are not of this world. Your
citizenship has been transferred elsewhere. Jesus will say in John 16:33 that
in this world, you will have tribulations, but take courage, because He has
overcome the world. And the one who has overcome this world loves you, and if
you are His own, you are the special object of His perfect love, regardless of
what hardships you encounter in this world. As I have often said, “In this
world, you may often be unwell, but you are never unloved if you are one of His
own.”
Now, moving on from the special objects of His love, let’s
notice the second fact of His perfect love …
II. Notice the fervent intensity of His love.
In football, there is a penalty for what they call “piling
on,” when multiple players jump on the ball carrier after he’s already been
tackled. That’s a bad thing in football. It will get you 15 yards. But in the
Bible, we often find a literary phenomenon that we could call “piling on” that is
often a good thing. It’s when a biblical writer, under the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit repeats a word for emphatic intensity. And we find that here in
John 13:1. John says, “Having loved His
own who were in the world, He loved them
to the end.” Having loved them, He loved them. And He loves His own “to the
end.” That’s how the NASB translates the Greek prepositional phrase here. But
it is not the only way it can be translated accurately. It could also be
rendered with reference to completion, like “He loved them to the uttermost.” In
2011, the NIV was revised, and by all accounts it is a far inferior translation
than the 1984 edition of it. In the older edition, the NIV translated our verse
here this way: “He now showed them the full extent of His love.” As one
commentator handles the phrase, it is love “in its highest intensity.”[1] This
is how Jesus loves His own. It is the
demonstration and the proof of it. So how
does He love His own? He shows us here.
You might have heard sayings like, “Actions speak louder
than words,” or “A picture is worth a thousand words.” It is not that words
have no value, but words can be empty or meaningless if they are not
accompanied by deeds that validate the words. Jesus did not just tell His
disciples that He loved them. He showed them. He showed them His love on more
than one occasion, but what He was about to do for them was the greatest act of
love they had ever seen, and it foreshadowed an even greater act of love.
In verse 4 we read that He got up from the supper, laid
aside His garments, took up a towel and girded Himself. In so doing, He was
putting aside the dress of the Teacher and Master, and taking up the simple and
humble garb of the servant. Then, verse 5 says that He poured water into the
basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel
with which He was girded. This was one of the most menial tasks one could
perform, the washing of the dirty feet of another. Most people, even most
servants, would consider this task beneath them. But the Lord Jesus did not.
Even though He was the Lord of Glory, He was not ashamed to serve His disciples
by washing their feet.
In Luke’s account of this last supper, we find that the
disciples were actually disputing amongst themselves on that very evening about
which of them was the greatest. But Jesus wanted to teach them that greatness in
God’s Kingdom was seen from a different perspective. He said, “The kings of the
Gentiles lord it over them; and those who have authority over them are called
‘Benefactors.’ But it is not this way with you, but the one who is greatest
among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like the servant. For
who is greater, the one who reclines at the table or the one who serves? Is it
not the one who reclines at the table? But I am among you as the one who
serves” (Lk 22:26-27). And He demonstrated it by washing their feet, what the
lowliest of servants would ordinarily do, and what apparently none of them were
willing to do for one another or even for Him. No greater act of love had ever
been seen by them, or by any man. But it was merely a shadow of the ultimate
act of loving service that He would render for them.
In Mark 10, upon hearing them bickering once again about who
was the greatest among them, Jesus taught them with almost the exact same
words, and then He said this: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be
served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” To ransom is to
pay a price on behalf of another that they may be released from captivity. The
entire human race is held captive in sin, and Jesus had come to be the ransom
that they may be set free. And the price of that ransom was His very life. If
what they had witnessed at the table blew their minds, what they would witness
on the ensuing day would even moreso, as the Lord Jesus would lay down His life
on the cross to take the sins of the world upon Himself that He might bear the
wrath of God in our place. This is the full extent of His love. He loved us
with His life and He loved us with His death. He was serving us by meeting our
greatest need – the need to be rescued from sin and reconciled to God. In the
words of Philippians 2, even though He existed in the form of God, He did not
cling to His equality with God, but “emptied Himself, taking the form of a
bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance
as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even
death on a cross” (Php 2:6-8).
Jesus says in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than
this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” Would you lay down your life
for your friends, for your loved ones? I dare say that many of us would say
“Yes.” If it came down to it, I would gladly forsake my own life for my wife
and children. I have told my best friend in the world on more than one
occasion, and I truly mean it, I would take a bullet for him. After all, he led
me to Jesus. But the love of Christ is greater still than even this. As Paul
says in Romans 5:6-8, “While we were still helpless, at the right time Christ
died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though
perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates
His own love toward us, in that while we were yet siners, Christ died for us.”
In verse 10, he says, “While we were enemies we were reconciled to God through
the death of His Son.” He did more than lay down His life for His friends, He
laid down His life for His enemies, that He might make them – no, that He might
make US – to become His friends.
Do you wonder if you are loved by the Lord? My friends, He
has shown us the fervent intensity of His love. Had we been in that upper room,
He would have washed our feet in the humble service of love. We weren’t there,
so that didn’t happen. But something greater did. He did more than take up a
towel for you. He took up a cross for you. This is how He loved us and how we
know He loves us. He loves us with His cross. This is the fervent intensity of
His love.
Now let’s look at the final fact of His perfect love for His
own.
III. Notice the unending duration of His love
We’re still looking at that little phrase, “He loved them to
the end.” Remember we said that the phrase could also be translated either as
“to the end” or as “to the uttermost.” Well, which is it? Well, it is both. This
Greek phrase occurs five other times in the New Testament. Four of them speak
of duration, one speaks of intensity. Here it means both. In several passages,
John uses phrases that have more than one meaning, and he uses them in such a
way that both meanings are implied, intended, and expected. As one scholar
notes, “It is better … not to separate the two ideas, for because the love of
Jesus was of the highest degree, it would consequently carry through to the
very end.”[2] And
that is the case here. He does intend to convey to us the fervent intensity of
Jesus’ love: He loved His own to the uttermost. And he intends to convey the
unending duration of His love: He loved us to the end. To the end of what? To
the end of His life, to the end of their lives, or to the end of all things, to
the end of all time and into eternity future? The answer is, “Yes! All of the
above.” His perfect love for His own never ends.
The text speaks of His love in the past: “Having loved His
own.” He had been loving them up the very moment. And then it speaks of His
love in the present: “He loved them,” or we might say, “He was loving them even
at the moment.” And then it speaks of His love in the future: “He loved them to
the end.”
Some time ago, I was visiting with one of our members, and
she had been given a piece of jewelry by a family member with a Hebrew
inscription. If I remember correctly, it was a silver circle hanging from the
end of a necklace. She asked me to translate it for her on the spot, and I told
her that my Hebrew was a little too rusty to do that, so I scribbled down the
inscription and came back to the office to work on it. As I began to parse the
words, the meaning leaped off the page: “Loved with an everlasting love.” It’s
from Jeremiah 31:3, where the Lord says to His own, “I have loved you with an
everlasting love.” We who are His own, are loved with the everlasting love of
the Lord Jesus that will never, ever end. It is as if the Lord Jesus has placed
that very pendant around our necks to promise us forever, “I love you, and My
love for you will never end.”
Think of it. He has given to His own a life that transcends
death, even as the Lord Jesus overcame death. And why has He granted us
everlasting life? Is it not that we might be with Him forever? Why in the world
does He want us to be with Him forever? Is it not so that for all eternity He
might lavish upon us the riches of His mercy and grace and that we might bask
in the glory of His love forever? If you
are His own, if you have come to Christ by faith in Him and been adopted by His
grace into the family of God, you need not fear that you will ever be unloved.
His love for you will never cease. Having loved His own, He loves us to the
very end.
Is it not the yearning of every human heart to be loved with
a perfect love? Is not the cause of so much of our disillusionment and
depression the fact that human and earthly loves have so often failed us, and
that we have failed to live in that kind of love? This love is attainable. It
can be yours. But it can only be found in Jesus. He alone can love to the
uttermost with an everlasting love. He has shown you His love in the cross, and
He will love you to the end. If you do not know Him by faith as your Lord and
Savior, it is His love that has brought you to this place and given you the opportunity
to receive Him. The Bible says that it is His kindness that leads us to
repentance. Would you turn from sin and turn to Christ to trust Him as your
Master and your Rescuer from enslavement to sin? His love has been poured out
for you. Will you receive it? If you will, you will become His own, the special
object of His perfect love that is of the utmost intensity and unending
duration. And many of you have entered into that love. If you have, you need
never feel unloved. If every other person fails you in life, the Lord will not.
If all other loves fail you, the love of Jesus never will. The Lord says, “Can
a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget, but I will not forget you. Behold, I have inscribed you
on the palms of My hands” (Isa 49:16). You have been inscribed there with the
markings of the nails that were driven through His hands as He died for you on
the cross. You are loved, and you are loved with an everlasting love. Will you
rest in that love, and if all other loves fail you, will you be content in
knowing that you are loved by Your Redeemer and Your King forever?
[1] Herman
Ridderbos, cited in Andreas Kostenberger, John
(Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids : Baker, 2004), 402.
[2] Robert
H. Mounce, “John,” in The Expositor’s
Bible Commentary (Revised ed.; Grand
Rapids : Zondervan, 2007), 10:545.
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