John 15:12-13 12This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
Jesus has called for his disciples to obey his commands. He now repeats (13:35) the central command and identity marker of a disciple: to love one another. Jesus gave many commands in his teachings. He elevated obedience to a new level by connecting it to faith in him and how this faith transforms the heart, one’s thinking, and behavior. Verse 12 is a summary of his commands and gets to the central and unifying idea of Christian behavior. Being a Christian is not complicated if faith and obedience are put in the right order. When obedience to a set of commands or rituals is attempted from human effort, it leads to the defeat and emptiness of legalism.
Loving one another begins with loving Jesus, which is demonstrated by obeying him (14:15). Some human effort is involved, but the love that we express as Jesus’ disciples is not our own but his. He extends his love to and through us by the Holy Spirit. John reflects on these themes also in his first epistle in 1 John 4:7-21. The sequence is important to remember: God loves the Son; the Son loves disciples (those who believe in him); disciples love one another. It is the same love. As the incarnated Son, Jesus had total trust in the Father and expressed this as love. He showed this obedient love by going to the cross as the Lamb to take away the sins of the world (1 John 3:16).
Verse 13 shows that this self-sacrifice serves as the model of the love disciples ought to show to one another. The verse has the ring of a timeless proverb but has a specific historical application. The greatest love a person can have is to die in the place of another. Two words for “love” are used in this verse. The first word, greater love (agapēn), reflects the love Jesus showed through his death on the cross (verse 12). The second word, often translated as friends (tōn philōn), expresses the love shown between friends.
The greatest way to express one’s love to a friend is to die in that person’s place. To do that requires the greatest faith that one is not wasting one’s own life. History is full of stories of soldiers or other heroes dying for a cause, such as the safety of a nation or group. Christians who die for one another can do so with the hope of resurrection and the confidence of eternal life. Jesus went to the cross with full assurance that this was the Father’s will and that the Father would raise him from the dead. Total faith brings total confidence and assurance.
These verses intend a specific application and are connected to the historical event of Jesus’ own death on the cross as an expression of love for his disciples. He elsewhere calls for disciples to extend this love even to enemies (Matthew 5:43-47). The love for one’s friends and the love for one’s enemies is the same love. Dying for one’s friend is exceedingly difficult and takes great confidence in the hope of resurrection. Dying for one’s enemy is beyond human imagination and capacity. The only way to do that is to let the same love Jesus showed on the cross by dying for us, God’s enemies at the time (Romans 5:8-10), flow through us. We can only love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19).
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