Just As I Have Loved You

“I am giving you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you too are to love one another.”

— John 13:34 AMP

When I opened today’s Scripture passage, I felt for a moment as though He were standing right here.

“I am giving you a new commandment…”

There is something about the first person that makes you stop when you actually hear it. Not Jesus gave His disciples a commandment. Not Christians are commanded to love. Those statements are true, but they create distance. John does not give us distance.

I am giving you.

Present. Personal. Direct.

And then I reached the part that arrested me:

“Just as I have loved you…”

I know how the sentence works grammatically. But that is not how it landed in my spirit. I heard it almost without the full stop our eyes instinctively place around the thought:

Love one another just as I have loved you, love one another.

Almost as though His love is not merely the example attached to the commandment. His love is the measurement, architecture, substance, and manner of it.

And perhaps that sounds like semantics until we walk back into the room where He said it.

Because once you see what has just happened in that room, “just as I have loved you” becomes almost unbearably beautiful.

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Go Back Into the Room

Do not begin at verse 34. The room is already heavy by then.

It is Passover. The disciples are gathered with Yeshua, and John tells us:

“Jesus knew that His hour had come for Him to leave this world and return to the Father. Having greatly loved His own who were in the world, He loved them and continuously loves them with His perfect love to the end.” — John 13:1 AMP

He knew.

The arrest. The abandonment. The cross. Judas would betray Him. Peter would deny Him. The others would scatter.

And John introduces the evening by telling us that Yeshua loved them to the end.

The Greek phrase is eis telos—εἰς τέλος. To the end. To completion. To the uttermost.

And then Yeshua gets up, removes His outer garment, takes a towel, pours water into a basin—

and God kneels.

The One through whom John has already told us all things were made is on the floor washing actual dirt from human feet.

And among the feet in that room are the feet of Judas.

That changes the commandment.

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Love With Its Eyes Open

Yeshua knows what Judas is going to do. Yet John does not tell us that He skipped Judas when He washed their feet.

We sometimes imagine love as something made possible by ignorance: If you knew what they were really going to do, you wouldn’t love them like that.

But Yeshua knew.

His love was not naïve because His knowledge was complete.

Biblical love is not blindness. Perfect love and perfect discernment coexist in the same Person.

Yeshua can wash Judas’s feet and still call betrayal betrayal. He can love Peter and tell him he will deny Him. He can love and correct. Love and confront. Love and withdraw.

So when He says, “Just as I have loved you,” we cannot fill the word love with whatever our culture currently means by it.

He has spent the evening showing us His definition.

Then Judas leaves.

“After taking the piece of bread, he went out immediately; and it was night.” — John 13:30 AMP

And it was night.

In a Gospel saturated with light and darkness, that sentence carries weight. Judas walks into the night, and immediately Yeshua begins speaking of glory:

“Now is the Son of Man glorified…”

Wait.

Betrayal has just left the room. The cross is moving closer.

And Yeshua says:

Now. Glory.

Then, inside that atmosphere:

Love one another.

This commandment was not born in sentimental conditions.

It was born under pressure.

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The Measure Has Changed

But commanding people to love was not new.

Torah had already said:

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” — Leviticus 19:18

So why does Yeshua call this a new commandment?

The Greek word is kainēn—καινὴν—from kainos, something new or fresh in quality. Then comes the phrase that changes the measure:

kathōs ēgapēsa hymas—καθὼς ἠγάπησα ὑμᾶς.

“Just as I loved you.”

The Torah command had said:

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Now Yeshua places Himself before them:

As I have loved you.

The measure has changed.

The question is no longer merely, How would I want to be treated?

Now:

How has He loved me?

The Greek kathōs carries the sense of just as, according as, in the manner that.

The manner in which I have loved you is now to become the manner in which you love.

His love interprets ours.

And notice something breathtaking: when Yeshua says this, they still have not seen the full extent of what it means.

Their feet are clean from His hands.

But Calvary has not happened yet.

He gives them a command whose full definition will not become visible until later.

Tomorrow, they will understand another dimension. Three days later, another. After resurrection, another. After receiving Holy Spirit, another.

We are commanded to love according to a Love we will spend eternity discovering.

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What Does His Love Look Like Here?

Maybe, then, we have been asking the wrong question.

We often ask:

Do I love this person?

Maybe the better question is:

What does the love of Yeshua look like toward this person right now?

Because love is not one behavior.

Sometimes love draws near. Sometimes it tells truth. Sometimes it forgives while wisdom requires trust to be rebuilt. Sometimes it refuses to rescue someone from consequences. Sometimes it says, I love you, and no.Sometimes, I love you, and I am still here.

Love is allegiance to another person’s genuine good under the government of God.

And that requires Holy Spirit because formulas cannot love people.

The people in that room prove it. They would misunderstand, fear, scatter, deny, need forgiveness, and need restoration.

Yeshua knew all of that when He said:

Love one another.

Perhaps part of loving “just as I have loved you” is refusing to demand finished fruit from people God is still cultivating.

Not enabling what is harmful. Not pretending wounds do not hurt.

But remembering that we are loving people who are still becoming.

Because that is how He has loved us.

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By This

Then Yeshua says:

“By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you have love and unselfish concern for one another.” — John 13:35 AMP

By this.

Love becomes evidence.

And John never gets over it. Years later he writes:

“No one has seen God at any time. But if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is completed and perfected in us.” — 1 John 4:12 AMP

Wait.

No one has seen God.

If we love one another.

What does one statement have to do with the other?

Everything.

The unseen God becomes perceptible through embodied love.

Your patience may make Him perceptible. Your refusal to retaliate may make Him perceptible. A boundary established without hatred may reveal His holiness. Forgiveness may reveal His mercy. Truth spoken in love may reveal His heart.

Suddenly love one another is not sentimental.

It is revelatory.

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Just As I Have Loved You

And maybe before we ask Holy Spirit whom we need to love better, we need to stay with the phrase that comes first:

As I have loved you.

Because we cannot continually give from a love we refuse to receive.

How has He loved you?

Not theoretically.

You.

Where has He washed the dust from your feet without humiliating you for having walked through dirt? Where has He known exactly what was inside you and remained? Where has He corrected you without discarding you? Where has He told you no because His love could see farther than your desire?

Where has He loved you all the way through?

Perhaps we have been trying to obey the second half of the sentence without being submerged in the first.

Love one another—just as I have loved you.

Receive the pattern before trying to reproduce it.

And then ask:

Yeshua, what does Your love look like here?

Sometimes His answer will require tenderness. Sometimes courage. Sometimes proximity. Sometimes distance.

But if it is His love, it will carry His nature.

And now I see the room differently.

The towel was already preaching Calvary.

He laid aside His garment. He stooped. He served. He washed.

And soon He would lay down something far greater than a garment.

The King was already showing them what He meant by:

“Just as I have loved you.”

Not softer love.

Not harder love.

His love.

Love with a towel and a backbone. Love with mercy and discernment. Love that kneels without becoming inferior. Love that serves without becoming enslaved. Love that forgives without calling evil good. Love that sees dirt and reaches for water. Love that sees betrayal and refuses to become betrayal.

And perhaps that is why it felt this morning as though He were standing right here saying it again.

Not merely to them.

To us.

I am giving you a new commandment.

Love one another,

just as I have loved you.

And perhaps that is precisely why He did not leave us to accomplish it alone.

The One commanding the love has given us His Spirit. We are not being asked to manufacture Christlike love through greater human effort, but to become so inhabited by His love that what has been poured into us begins finding its way through us.

His love received.

His love embodied.

His love given.

Until perhaps someone encounters the way we love and catches a glimpse of the One they cannot yet see.

“By this everyone will know that you are My disciples…”

Not because we told them.

Because somehow, through the way we loved, they could see.

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I HEAR THE SPIRIT SAY…

“Beloved, before you ask Me how to love them, let Me love you.

You keep reaching for obedience, and I keep drawing you back to the words you hurry past:

Just as I have loved you.

Come back underneath the towel.

You do not need to hide the dirt from the One holding the basin. I know where you have walked. I know what hurt. I know where betrayal taught you to anticipate betrayal and where disappointment tempted tenderness to become self-protection.

And I am not ashamed of your feet. I knew there would be dust when I knelt.

There has never been a moment when I discovered something about you that changed My mind about loving you.

I have always loved you with My eyes open.

Learn that from Me.

Do not mistake discernment for permission to stop loving. And do not mistake love for permission to stop discerning.

My love has a spine.

It can kneel and stand. Forgive and establish a boundary. Tell the truth and remain tender.

Becoming more loving does not mean becoming easier to mistreat.

It means becoming more like Me.

So when you do not know what love requires, ask Me:

“Yeshua, what does Your love look like here?”

Then listen.

Sometimes I will tell you to kneel. Sometimes to stand. Sometimes to speak. Sometimes to wait. Sometimes to open the door. Sometimes to close it.

But remember this:

Darkness does not get to teach you how to become dark.

What someone did to you does not get to determine who you become.

And do not turn even this into another thing you must accomplish for Me.

Receive Me.

You cannot repay love. You can only receive it until it changes you.

Until one day you notice that where you once retaliated, you pause. Where you once abandoned yourself to keep someone else, you remain rooted. Where you once hardened, tenderness remains without weakness.

And you wonder when you changed.

Beloved, you were not manufacturing love.

You were becoming inhabited by it.

So stay here.

Just as I have loved you.

Before the giving is the receiving. Before the towel passes into your hands, let Me hold your feet in Mine.

And then, when someone stands before you carrying dust from roads you have never walked, wounds you do not understand, defenses you did not create, and places still waiting for My healing, you will not have to manufacture something holy.

You will remember the basin.

You will remember the towel.

You will remember your own feet in My hands.

And you will ask Me:

“Yeshua, how would You love here?”

Then listen.

Sometimes I will tell you to kneel. Sometimes to stand. Sometimes to speak. Sometimes to wait. Sometimes to open the door. Sometimes to close it.

But whatever I tell you, if it is My love, it will look like Me.

And perhaps that is how they will see Me.

Not because you became perfect. Not because everyone treated you well. Not because love always required you to stay.

But because someone came to you carrying the dust of a road you had never walked—

and you remembered how I loved you on yours.”