A New Commandment - John 13:31-38

READ JOHN 13:31-38

Jesus, only you can show us how to love. You do not just talk about love; you demonstrated your love by dying for those who are guilty and cannot offer anything to you. I do not show love well. I am far away from your example – I’m sorry. Thank you for loving me when I cannot love as I should. Jesus, would you please destroy the obstacles to loving as I should. I want to be a better disciple. Amen

Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. - Romans 13:8

The Lord Jesus declares that he is giving his disciples a new commandment, that they should love one another.… But was not this already commanded in the ancient law of God, where it is written, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”? Why, then, is it called a new one by the Lord, when it is proven to be so old? Is it a new commandment because he has divested us of the old and clothed us with the new person? For it is not indeed every kind of love that renews him that listens to it, or rather yields it obedience, but that love regarding which the Lord, in order to distinguish it from all carnal affection, added, “as I have loved you. “… For this they hear and observe, “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another,” not as those who are corrupt love one another or as human beings who love one another only in a human way. Instead, they are to love one another as those who are God’s. All of them are to love as children of the Highest, who are siblings, therefore, of his only Son. They are to love with that mutual love by which he loved them when about to lead them on to the goal where all sufficiency should be theirs and where their every desire should be satisfied with good things. - Augustine

A better vision of love would change us to the core. Outreach would become a focus because there is nothing more loving than reaching others with the gospel.