New Commandment Thursday

Montana Bible College Dean of Students & Discipleship Carter Knight composed a series of short devotionals for Holy Week. We hope they encourage you and help prepare your heart for worshiping our risen Savior! 

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 

- John 13:34

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 

- 1 John 4:9-11

How has Jesus loved us? Unless we know, we cannot obey Jesus' new commandment to love one another just as he has loved us. This new commandment from Jesus requires prior knowledge of his preemptive love. Namely, that we would know the God who is love, as his love is manifested in Christ, and thereby reflect his nature to one another.

First, this means that Jesus commands us to devote ourselves to the study of his divine love. Yes, the Father's Beloved One compels us to learn to be loved by God through himself. Have we wholeheartedly received this wholehearted love of God in Christ?

Let us never, neither in body or spirit, ignore the influence of this whole-hearted, full-souled, single-minded, and total-strength love of God for us in Christ.

Make it your life’s research to discover the devoted depths, giant grandeur, wide wonders, and longsuffering of God's love for you in Jesus. The solar system of his love never ceases to shine. It is a boundless universe full of life and light. Nothing in all creation can separate you from this love and no one can take you from him or him from you.

Though it is beyond comprehension or measure, let us apprehend and mark his love as far as we may trace it. Consider how love may be estimated by the greatest price one is willing to give for the sake of it. Now this is how God so loved us: as if we were his firstborn Son. Truly, for he gave his one beloved and only begotten Son to save us.

Moreover, Jesus himself loved us so much that he considered it his mission to extend the Father’s love – which is rightfully his alone – even to us who are given the right to become adopted children of God. This adoptive love, which could not be known through theory or guess, was made known in truth through Jesus’ ministry and extended in grace to all who believe in him. To believe in Jesus is to receive the perfect and eternal love of God the Father for God the Son, but now extended through Jesus to us.

What we require is a learned reception of God the Father’s moment by moment and evermore love for us in Christ. Therefore, do not neglect to bring this love of his to your remembrance. Look at Christ’s body, willingly broken for each one of you. Consider his blood, voluntarily shed for the forgiveness of our personal sins. Then, when in this way we so intimately know God’s love, we are constrained and compelled to love like Jesus.

To love one another like him is first and foremost to make this love of God known to one another. Speak of it, sing of it, serve like it.

Secondly, it is to genuinely care for all the necessities of one another’s life, both physical and spiritual. Give as you have received. Third, it is to continue personally receiving the love of God ourselves. We need not learn to love ourselves, but if we hope to truly love our Christian brother, then we must learn and relearn to be loved by God. 

To that end, hear this last word. Our world has no perfect love of its own. Rather, the fear of death chokes out all potential growth of perfect love. Scarcity of essential resources and the inescapable brevity of life combine to imperfect all human love. For this reason, it was necessary for the divine love, all loves excelling, to become manifest in Jesus Christ the God Man.

His is an undying love, stronger than death, and greater still because he voluntarily died for us.

Yet even the puncture wound of a Roman soldier’s spear could not keep the heart of Jesus from beating with divine, undying love for us.

Yes, the heart of him who was broken and bloodied both now and forever pulses with love for his people. Together, draw so close to him that our hearts keep rhythm with his own.