Bible Commentaries
John 13

Verse 1

The Love of Jesus for His Own

Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.— John 13:1.

1. Those who study St. John’s Gospel critically find it divided into sections. As many as seven divisions are made out by some. In a simpler way the Gospel divides itself into two. The first division, containing twelve chapters, relates how Jesus wrought the works of Him that sent Him while it was day. The second, beginning with this thirteenth chapter, describes His departure. The keynote of the first section of the second part is this, that “having loved his own, he loved them unto the end.”

The latter half of St. John’s Gospel, which begins with these words, is the Holy of Holies of the New Testament. Nowhere else do the blended lights of our Lord’s superhuman dignity and human tenderness shine with such lambent brightness. Nowhere else is His speech at once so simple and so deep. Nowhere else have we the heart of God so unveiled to us. On no other page, even of the Bible, have so many eyes, glistening with tears, looked and had the tears dried. The immortal words which Christ spoke in that upper chamber are His highest self-revelation in speech, even as the Cross to which they led up is His most perfect self-revelation in Acts 1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

2. The explanation of all that follows is in these words: “Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.” It is the key to His action of washing their feet, to give them a proof of His enduring love. It is the explanation of all His previous life, and of the death He is to accomplish soon. St. John gives us in these words the right point of view for understanding the true significance of all that follows and of all that went before. He was possessed and governed by love, the Apostle declares. If we do not see this, we see nothing and understand nothing. All that Jesus did and was, was the fruit of love. He had loved His own which were in the world, and now He loves them unto the end. A Latin proverb says that the end crowns the work. When the Saviour said on the Cross, “It is finished,” His end of sacrifice was the carrying forward and culmination of all His grace. This supreme act is the summit and crown of all His love.

I

Love the Explanation

St. John, looking back reflectively, sees that only love explains all that Jesus did that night. He remembers how the disciples, as they came to the Upper Room, were heated with false ambitions, and were squabbling about precedence, so angry with and jealous of each other that none of them would perform the usual office of taking off each other’s sandals and washing the feet. There had arisen a contention which of them would be accounted greatest, and no one would lower his pretensions by undertaking a menial task and so confess himself the servant of all. It was in a temper of self-assertion and in a mood of resentment that they entered the Upper Room. How can they listen to all the deep things of the Spirit which their Master desires to tell them so long as such passions are in their hearts? That Jesus should humble Himself to teach them the lesson He did must have brought a bitter humiliation to them. To St. John it was a proof of enduring love, far more remarkable on looking back on it than it could have been at the time. For the shadow of the Cross was on Christ’s heart, the betrayal, the desolation, the trial, the crucifixion, the crisis of His whole cause and Kingdom. The Apostle sees on looking back that only perfect love could have done what Jesus did then, as He turned from His own thoughts and bent to the menial task. He had loved them—that was plain,—and nothing had tired out that love, not their folly or thoughtlessness or selfishness. He came to minister, to serve, and He went on serving unto the end. Their childish pettiness on this occasion only gave a gentler pity to His love and a sweeter and more patient tone to His speech. He does not give up loving because He sees they are so unworthy of His love. The shadow of their unloveliness only throws into keener brilliance the light of His love.

How many kinds, measures, and tones of meaning are comprehended in this word “Love”! So it is in common language, and even when one specific use of it has been excluded. So it is in Scripture. There is a difference in the love of God as God, of Jesus Christ as Saviour, of our friends and relations, of our neighbours, of our enemies, of our people, of our kind. It is all love, but with what various combinations of idea and measures of feeling! So on the Divine side. The Father loved the Son; God loved the world; Jesus loved His own (in that common character); He loved them as individuals; He “loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus,” and there was one disciple “whom Jesus loved.” We are all sensible of the differences of impression conveyed in these connexions, though it would be vain to attempt to describe them. 1 [Note: T. D. Bernard, The Central Teaching of Jesus Christ, 35.]

1. Its Manifestation.—It is love that makes the man, builds the character, saves the city, and redeems the world. It is love that is the strongest and most potent motive of all in the action and speech of Jesus Christ. And here it is central to St. John’s statement, for Jesus “having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.” It is the key to all that follows right to the end of the section, which closes with the seventeenth chapter. That love is here, not as a lane of light going through these speeches, but as the sun in his full midday glory shining over the whole of the acts of Jesus Christ, and through the words that come from His lips. It is in love that He washes His disciples’ feet, as though He were the menial and they the master, so that He may impress upon their minds the sublimity of lowly service, of humble ministry for the salvation of the world. It is love that speaks out to this little band gathered at this Supper, and says, “The one badge which you are always to wear, by which you are always to be recognized everywhere, is love to one another.” It is love that says, Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God; believe in Me; believe in heaven; believe in the infinite power of the Spirit. It is love that tells upon these disciples, and binds them in love to Him, and makes them one with Him as the branch with the Vine. It is love that assures these followers of His, that though He will soon be received out of their sight, and they will no longer be able to grasp His hand, still another Comforter will come and be with them, and lead them into the sphere of all truth. And it is love that breathes out the great intercessory prayer, that these disciples may be kept from the evil of the world, and enabled to realize their unity with Him and with the Father; “Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end,” to the last, to the uttermost, till everything was finished. And at once He proceeded to wash their feet that He might show the reality and the quality of His love.

I was once talking with a friend about a man who had achieved great distinction, but who had somehow missed the love of his fellowmen, and my friend said: “The trouble with that man is that he cannot bow himself.” He had achieved integrity, rectitude, self-respect, but he had not attained that final grace of character which made him able to stoop and serve. 1 [Note: F. G. Peabody, Mornings in the College Chapel, 2nd Ser., 49.]

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lack’d any thing.

“A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here”

Love said, “You shall be he.”

“I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,

I cannot look on Thee.”

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

“Who made the eyes but I?”

“Truth, Lord; but I have marr’d them: let my shame

Go where it doth deserve.”

“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”

“My dear, then I will serve.”

“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste My meat.”

So I did sit and eat. 2 [Note: G. Herbert.]

2. Its Effect.—It was in the Upper Room that Jesus bound the hearts of His disciples to Himself for ever. This section of St. John’s Gospel has been described as “the development of faith in the disciples.” The narrative takes a new departure, retiring within the little company of the Twelve. The close is as clearly marked as the beginning. The precious scene which is here spread before us becomes more striking from the lurid background which it finds in the temple and the streets of Jerusalem. The growth of faith within—what a contrast to the growth of unbelief without! Here are the Eleven with Jesus—there are the scribes, the priests, the Pharisees. Outside, events are leading to the cross; inside, they are preparing for Pentecost and the salvation of the world. The last word the disciples spoke in that room shows how their faith had grown since they sat down with Jesus to the Paschal Feast: “Now know we that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee; by this we believe that thou camest forth from God.” Every fear and doubt has been driven out. Christ is all and in all to the disciples. After such a voluntary tribute, there was nothing left for Jesus save to bow with them at the feet of God. The world outside lies heavy on His heart; but its unbelief adds a new touch of gratitude and thanksgiving for the spirit of those who are with Him in the Upper Room. “O righteous Father, the world knew thee not, but I knew thee; and these knew that thou didst send me.”

If we want to kill our pride we must burn it in the consuming fire of shame. The pride of these twelve men melted away in the fierce heat of their own shame. Let a man know that Jesus is stooping at his feet with the basin, and the fire of shame will be kindled. For that is always the attitude of our Master towards us. “He loved me and gave himself for me.” And we may alter the tense of that great sentence, turning it from the past into the present, and it is equally and unutterably true, “He loves me, and gives himself for me.” It is when a man realizes that supreme sacrifice of our Lord that all his petty pride and vanity shrivel away. It was when St. Paul felt the Master at his feet that there came from his bursting heart the great and zealous ambition, “I count all things but loss that I may win Christ.” Christ changes our ideas of sovereignty; He takes the dispositions we had resented, and henceforth they are crowns. The servile virtues are lifted into heavenly places in Christ. Humility, obedience, service—all shine with the radiant distinction of the Lord. “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.” The washing of weary feet is a ministry ever needed in the dusty ways of human life; and if that ministry is to become a ready and spontaneous affection we need the fulness of the Holy Ghost. 1 [Note: J. H. Jowett, in The Examiner, April 12, 1906, p. 348.]

They thought to heal me, when they cast

Reproving glances towards me;

As if their proud contempt could shrive me

Of my sin, or scorn could drive me

E’er to mend my ways,—

Liefer end my days!

They thought to lift me, when they held

A pattern pure above me;

As if to gaze on cold perfection

Ever could give new direction

To my wrecked desires;

Or awake new fires!

Then came a voice of cadence sweet,

And winning tones that touched me,

“I love thee, friend”—and, deeply welling

In my soul, and all-compelling,

Love leapt at the sound;

Life and Heaven I found! 2 [Note: T. Crawford, Horæ, Serenæ, 18.]

II

Love for His Own

1. In regard to the love of Christ, the one distinction to be recognized here is that between His love to the world and His love to His own which are in the world. The love of Christ to the world is love to men as such: He being the head of the creation, which through Him came into being, and of the race of whose reason and conscience, He, as the Eternal Word, is the author, and with which, in taking flesh, He has assumed a natural and universal kindred. It is a love of compassion and benevolence and Divine desire, in which He gives Himself for all, and dies for all, and provides reconciliation, and preaches peace, and seeks the lost, and waits to be gracious, and would “draw all men unto himself.” But the love for His own which are in the world is no longer mere desire and endeavour. It is being realized in results intended. It has found response, and is generating a reciprocal life, and has the joy of exercising an attraction which is felt and owned, and of carrying on a work which imparts blessing and tends to perfection, restoring men to God through relations with Him who has loved them, relations which are spiritual, intimate, and eternal. Such love enters into the inner life of the beloved, and finds occasion for its exercise in their needs and dangers, their infirmities and failings. It delights to comfort and protect, to cleanse, to heal, to strengthen, to exalt. It is an inexhaustible fountain of gifts; it is the “love of Christ which passeth knowledge.” Yet, being true love, it is not content to give. It desires also to receive. It would be understood and trusted and confided in. It invites sympathy and fellowship. It claims reciprocity of affection. It would not only love, but be loved. Even in these last respects this is the character of the love which these chapters disclose. For our sake they disclose it, teaching us how He once loved, and by consequence how He ever loves, how He now loves, His own which are in the world.

Is there any reason why we should be afraid of saying that the universal love of Jesus Christ, which gathers into His bosom all mankind, does fall with special tenderness and sweetness upon those who have made Him theirs and have surrendered themselves to be His? Surely it must be that He has special nearness to those who love Him; surely it is reasonable that He should have special delight in those who try to resemble Him; surely it is only what one might expect of Him that He should in a special manner honour the drafts, so to speak, of those who have confidence in Him, and are building their whole lives upon Him. Surely, because the sun shines down upon dunghills and all impurities, that is no reason why it should not lie with special brightness on the polished mirror that reflects its lustre. Surely, because Jesus Christ loves the publicans and the harlots and the outcasts and the sinners, that is no reason why He should not bend with special tenderness over those who, loving Him, try to serve Him, and have set all their hopes upon Him. The rainbow strides across the sky, but there is a rainbow in every little dewdrop that hangs glistening on the blades of grass. 1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

True charity or love in its noblest forms is in some measure like the Divine love. In some ways it is ubiquitous, though in other ways it seems condensed or concentrated. As Dr. Martineau said concerning the omnipresence of God and His special presence in the soul of Christ, no distant star missed Him the more because He shone with such peculiar brightness in the fair glory of that pure life. 1 [Note: A. H. Craufurd, The Religion and Ethics of Tolstoy, 74.]

Perhaps we do not yet know what the word “to love” means. There are within us lives in which we love unconsciously. To love thus means more than to have pity, to make inner sacrifices, to be anxious to help and give happiness; it is a thing that lies a thousand fathoms deeper, where our softest, swiftest, strongest words cannot reach it. 2 [Note: M. Macterlinck, The Treasure of the Humble, 162.]

2. He loved His own which were in the world. For He must leave them in the world. For many years after He has reached His glory, they will be exposed to pain and peril. So, in His tender pitying love for “his own,” He devoted His last free hours of life to their instruction and warning, and comfort. In the majesty of His humility the Only-begotten Son of God washed the disciples’ feet, even those of the traitor Judas. He instituted the blessed Sacrament of the Supper as the memorial of His love. He gave the disciples the promise of the Comforter. He left them the legacy of His own peace. He poured out in their behalf as well as His own the powerful pleadings of His great intercessory prayer.

The emigrant who, after years of absence in a foreign land, is at length on the eve of returning to his native shores, may be excused if he allows the new ties formed in the strange country to slacken, seeing he has the near prospect of looking again upon the old familiar scenes, and upon the faces of father and mother, in his childhood’s home. But who can conceive the attractions and associations of the Redeemer’s home? In going back to God He was returning to the glories of heaven, to the throne of the universe, to the companionships of eternity, to the bosom of the Father! And yet, in this same glorious hour, so far from being self-absorbed, His love begins to burn with irrepressible ardour for “his own,” whom He is to leave behind. 3 [Note: C. Jerdan, For the Lord’s Table, 36.]

III

Love to the End

“Unto the end”—this is the measure of the Saviour’s love, and the word does not mean merely so long as He lived, but also in the highest degree, to the very uttermost. It is not merely a measure of time, but a measure of the quality and passion of love. Not merely to the end of His life did He love, but to the end of love, to the limits of a limitless love. There are no conditions, no barriers, no limits. Place the end where you will or how you will, draw the circumference as wide as you may, He fills the whole circle with His love. He loves unto the end, that is its quality. To the end of His life, the end of our life, the end of the world, the end of time—more than that, it is to the end of an endless thing, to the extreme limit of the limitless, the very end of love itself. It does not mean merely that He loved till He died, not merely that He loved in the highest degree; it includes all that and more. It means that He loved through all that love brought Him, the humiliation, the suffering, the sorrowful way, the Cross. Love to the end expresses the height and depth and breadth and strength of love; and that was how He loved and loves. Shakespeare, in the cxvi. Sonnet, gives this enduring quality as characteristic of the highest and best love:

Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove: …

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

Many good commentators prefer to read the last words of the text, “He loved them unto the uttermost,” rather than “unto the end”—so taking them to express the depth and degree rather than the permanence and perpetuity of our Lord’s love. And that seems to me to be far the worthier and the nobler meaning, as well as the one which is borne out by the usual signification of the expression in other Greek authors. It is much to know that the emotions of these last moments did not interrupt Christ’s love. It is even more to know that in some sense they perfected it, giving even a greater vitality to its tenderness, and a more precious sweetness to its manifestations. So understood, the words explain for us why it was that in the sanctity of the Upper Room there ensued the marvellous act of the feet-washing, the marvellous discourses which follow, and the climax of all, that High-priestly prayer. They give utterance to a love which Christ’s consciousness at that solemn hour tended to sharpen and to deepen. 1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

1. He has loved His own all the way.—Let us interpret all our experience by this great fact, and the whole path is illumined and the meaning of much that was dark is made clear. We will not judge God by every little unexplained corner of the road, but by the whole long stretch of His providence. While we were in the dark patches we did not understand and sometimes doubted, but on looking back over all the way we see it to be ruled and governed and directed by love. The disciples might sometimes think they had reason to doubt the Master’s perfect love. At this very time they might ask, why if He loved them they should be bereaved, why they were to be left as sheep among the wolves? His dealing with them was indeed marked by love, but was it all love and only love and love unto the very end? St. John saw afterwards that it was so, from first to last—indeed there was no last.

We sometimes do not understand the way of His love. Some passages and events puzzle us and alarm our faith. We cannot explain them on the hypothesis that they are the result of absolute love. Why should certain things happen that we dreaded, and other things be denied us that we desired? As George Bowen says in his beautiful book, Love Revealed: “He takes extraordinary liberties with us. Believing in His love and having our own particular conception of what love is, we settle in our minds that a certain contingency can never by any possibility be allowed to come to pass. Against everything else we prepare—not against that. We feel that it would be an unpardonable outrage to His most holy nature to suppose for a moment that He should suffer that contingency to come to pass. And yet that is the very thing that He brings to pass. We had boasted of the love of Jesus among our neighbours and told them that He would not suffer our brother Lazarus to die, but would assuredly come and restore him to health; and lo! Lazarus dies and is buried, and it is much if our sense of the love of Jesus be not buried with him. He takes what seem to us frightful liberties with our sensibilities and with our trust.” Well, St. John did not understand all that was taking place that night in the Upper Room, and all that happened so soon after, but his final testimony afterwards was, as the final explanation of it all: “Having loved his own, he loved them unto the end.” 1 [Note: H. Black, Christ’s Service of Love, 199.]

2. And He loves His own still.—In the glory, when He reached it, He poured out the same loving heart; and to-day He looks down upon us with the same face that bent over the table in the Upper Room, and the same tenderness flows to us. When St. John saw his Master next, after His Ascension, amidst the glories of the vision in his rocky Patmos, though His face was as the sun shineth in his strength, it was the old face. Though His hand bore the stars in a cluster, it was the hand that had been pierced with the nails. Though the breast was girded with the golden girdle of sovereignty and of priesthood, it was the breast on which St. John’s happy head had lain; and though the voice was “as the sound of many waters,” it soothed itself to a murmur, gentle as that with which the tideless sea about him rippled upon the silvery sand when He said, “Fear not … I am the first and the last.” Knowing that He goes to the Father, He loves to the uttermost, and being with the Father, He still so loves.

Having loved, He loves. Because He had been a certain thing, therefore He is and He shall be that same. That is an argument that implies Divinity. About nothing human can we say that because it has been therefore it shall be. Alas! about much that is human we have to say the converse, that because it has been, therefore it will cease to be. And though they are few and they are poor who have had no experience in their lives of human hearts whose love in the past has been such that it manifestly is for ever, yet we cannot with the same absolute confidence say about one another, even about the dearest, “Having loved, he loves.” But we can say so about Christ. There is no exhaustion in that great stream which pours out from His heart, no diminution in its flow.

“He loved His own unto the end,”

And asked their love;

He said, “I call you each My friend,

And not My servant; and I send

One from above,

Who shall reveal such grace and truth to you

As in My sojourn here ye never knew.”

“But why depart?” they cry, “why will

To leave us here?

Thou sayest that Thou dost love us still;

Can it be love if thus Thou fill

Our cup of fear?

O Master, Master, should’st Thou now depart

All sorrow needs must overwhelm our heart.”

Yet it is love: He said “I go;

For could I stay,

Your earth-bound thoughts would never know

Love’s fullest mysteries, which flow

From Me alway;

My human heart might linger with you yet,

But now affections must on heaven be set.

“You could not know Me more, unless

My Spirit came

And taught the ways of righteousness,

How sin and judgment to confess,

How learn to blame

All clinging to inferior things of earth,

Blind to the glory of your heavenly birth.

“My peace I leave with you, but not

As this world gives;

My Spirit comes to you, yet what

He teaches shows no earthly lot:

He ever lives,

The world must learn. I hear the Father’s call

Away from earth!—A while I leave you all.

“Arise! let us go hence.” He rose,

And, as He spake,

Calmly He moved, as one who knows

The coming onset of his foes.

The night winds shake

With distant sounds, as through the olive grove

“ Let us depart” is echoed from above. 1 [Note: William Josiah Irons.]

The Love of Jesus for His Own

Literature

Beeching (H. C.), The Bible Doctrine of the Sacraments, 68.

Benson (R. M.), The Final Passover, ii. (pt. i.), 1.

Bernard (T. D.), The Central Teaching of Jesus Christ, 31.

Black (H.), Christ’s Service of Love, 192.

Blackwood (A.), Christian Service and Responsibility, 26.

Carter (T. T.), Meditations on the Public Life of our Lord, ii. 222.

Elmslie (W. G.), Memoir and Sermons, 267.

Jeffrey (J.), The Personal Ministry of the Son of Man, 253.

Jerdan (C.), For the Lord’s Table, 30.

Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year: Sundays after Trinity, xiii–end, 451.

McClelland (T. C), The Mind of Christ, 69.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: John ix.–xiv., 170.

Morrison (G. H.), The Footsteps of the Flock, 241.

Peabody (F. G.), Mornings in the College Cluipel, 2nd Ser., 48.

Raleigh (A.), The Way to the City, 23.

Smellie (A.), In the Hour of Silence, 69.

Smith (J.), Short Studies, 153.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xiv., No. 810.

Taylor (W. M.), Peter the Apostle, 110.

Telford (J.), The Story of the Upper Room, 14.

Watson (J.), The Upper Room, 60.

Wilkinson (J. B.), Mission Sermons, 3rd Ser., 324.

Christian World Pulpit, xlvi. 199 (Wright); lvii. 349 (Wiseman); Ixiii. 344 (Lacey); lxxiv. 397 (Goldsmith French); lxxviii. 95 (Wicher).

Churchman’s Pulpit: Fifth Sunday in Lent: vi. 230 (Wilson); Holy Week: vi. 480 (Codd); Ascension Day: viii. 439 (Lacey).

Examiner (1906), 348 (Jowett).

Preacher’s Magazine, vii. 197 (Clifford).

Verse 10

Regeneration and Renewal

Jesus saith to him, He that is bathed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit.— John 13:10.

1. This answer of our Lord to Peter has naturally a double meaning. It is both literal and figurative. Just as one who, having bathed in the morning, considers himself clean and does not repeat this total ablution at meal-time, but is contented with washing his feet on entering, to remove such accidental defilement as he may have contracted by the way; so he who, by sincerely attaching himself to Christ, has found pardon for his sins, needs nothing else than a daily and continual purification from the moral defilement of which he becomes conscious during the course of his life. Peter was clean because he sincerely believed in Christ. The purpose, then, of what Jesus was now doing for him was not to reconcile him to God, but to remove from him, by such an example of humility, that particular defilement, the desire for earthly power and greatness, which Jesus at that very moment observed in His own.

I never understood the full meaning of our Lord’s words in St. John 13:10, until I beheld the better sort of East Indian natives return home after performing their customary ablutions. As they return to their habitations barefoot, they necessarily contract in their progress some portion of dirt on their feet; and this is universally the case, however nigh their dwellings may be to the riverside. When, therefore, they return, the first thing they do is to mount a low stool, and pour water into a small vessel to cleanse them from the soil which they may have contracted on their journey homewards; if they are of the higher class of society, a servant performs it for them, and then they are “clean every whit.” 1 [Note: D. L. Moody.]

If you speak of sanctification as the original act of God in separating us to Himself, then it is a completed thing, for we are described as “having been sanctified in Christ Jesus.” If, again, you speak of it as a legal cleansing from all past guilt, it is complete; for, being washed in the precious blood, we are already clean. But if you regard it as the personal holiness of daily life, the purifying of the heart through faith by the indwelling power of the Holy Ghost, then I am prepared to maintain from the whole testimony of the whole Word of God from one end to the other, that so long as we are in this world of conflict the sacred work is not complete, but progressive. 1 [Note: E. Hoare, Sanctification, 66.]

2. It is doubtful whether in this new rite which preceded the Paschal supper, and in the reference to a past bathing, there is any specific allusion to baptism. Of course the sacramental process of initiation into the Christian society, and the action-parable of the Upper Room, express a common truth, that flesh and spirit must alike be cleansed before a frail, erring man is fit to stand in the presence of the Divine King and fulfil His behests. We have no direct statement that the twelve Apostles ever were baptized, although it is more than probable that those who were followers of John had received the rite at his hands, and these may have administered it to their comrades. Jesus Himself did not baptize. Yet without any express mention of the baptism of the twelve, Jesus affirms that they had been “bathed,” and that, with one sad exception, the virtue of the act remained. It was by the Word they had been cleansed. There is no suggestion that the spiritual change was coincident in time with the use of an outward rite which typified it. By response to the personal influence of Jesus Christ, they knew in the first fresh moments of their surrender to His will that the prophetic promise had been fulfilled, and that from the guilty errors and disabilities of the past they had been purified.

A modern writer, who lived for years in distressing poverty, and had no facilities in his sordid lodgings for washing, used to perform the greater part of his morning toilet at the British Museum, where he was a constant reader. He describes the shame he felt when he found a notice affixed, “These basins are to be used for casual ablutions only.” He had the sensations of a detected criminal. There is a wide distinction between the bathing of the body and “casual ablutions,” and the distinction runs through the teaching of the incident before us. The daily-repeated grace is a complement to the washing of regeneration which comes through the all-encircling, soul-pervading influences of Jesus Christ. It is not to supersede or obscure that primary need, as Simon Peter was in danger of supposing. 1 [Note: T. G. Selby, The Divine Craftsman, 210.]

One evening, before Thomas De Quincey died, he said to his daughter, “I cannot bear the weight of clothes on my feet.” She pulled off the heavy blankets. “Yes, my love,” he said, “that is much better; I am better in every way. You know these are the feet that Jesus washed.” Ah, I scarcely can tell which I should admire most: His passion for me or His patience with me; His suffering or His longsuffering. 2 [Note: A. Smellie, In the Hour of Silence, 289.]

I

Regeneration

1. In this text Jesus teaches that the efficacy of a disciple’s first act of faith abides, and must not be thought of as invalidated by after-infirmities. If there were Divine forces present in that memorable change, it surely had qualities of permanence in it, for that which God effects cannot pass away as the morning cloud. We do not commit ourselves to the doctrines of indefectible grace and unconditional perseverance when we so interpret the Master’s saying. The reference here made to Judas proves that to the rule of patient, tireless, long-continued, all-subduing grace there may be a tragic break. By false dealing, by calculated delinquency, by obstinate transgression, the bathed man may hopelessly defile himself again. But in eleven cases out of twelve the sanctifying grace asserts its permanence, for it is stamped with some of the qualities of its unchanging Minister.

When the great warrior knew that the end was sure, he met it with the confident resignation of his faith. He had seen death too often and too near to dread the parting hour of mortal anguish. Chaplains, preachers, godly persons, attended in an adjoining room and came in and out as the heavy hours went on, to read the Bible to him or to pray with him. To one of them he put the moving question, so deep with penitential meaning, so pathetic in its humility and misgiving, in its wistful recall of the bright bygone dawn of life in the soul: “Tell me, is it possible to fall from grace?” “No, it is not possible,” said the minister. “Then,” said the dying Cromwell, “I am safe, for I know that I was once in grace.” 1 [Note: John Morley, Oliver Cromwell, 506.]

The efforts of an unregenerate man to resist evil may be compared to the waves that break away from the receding tide; they are vain and constantly declining struggles against the backward movement of the heart. The falls of a regenerate man, on the other hand, are the recessions of the wave in an advancing tide; the great progression will still be Godward. What we want is the flow of the new nature to overbear all the obstacles of wind and sand, and this must be given by attraction from above. 2 [Note: John Ker, Thoughts for Heart and Life, 21.]

2. Why should the grace which wipes out past sin, and renews the thoughts and affections of the heart, fill this commanding place in the religious history? The Master forbids the idea that those successive effusions of spiritual influence, which keep the disciple in constant fitness for His uses, can compare in vital importance with this initial transformation. As He judges things, regeneration is a fact standing apart, and nothing must come into competition with it. The answer is many-sided. Initiation into the cleansing fellowship of Jesus is coincident with a deeper and more exhaustive self-discovery than is possible at the later stages of the religious history, unless indeed there has been flagrant, stupefying apostasy. The new convert has put off his disguises, making a frank and a full confession of sin and attaining a memorable release from its power. The whole manhood is moved by the fresh and dramatic disclosures of saving grace which attend the first surrender to the gospel call. The past is put off with a thoroughness which leaves little or no room for repetition. A man convinced of sin, and impelled by the new-born hope of redemption from its power, is passive under the processes of Divine mercy to an extent never perhaps equalled again. As those blessed influences which purify from the taint of the past immerse the soul, a strangely quiescent and submissive temper arises. The disciple is more conscious of God’s act and less of his own than in those subsequent experiences in which the factors of self-discipline and self-direction tend to predominate. And because Divine power is so supremely conspicuous in this purifying change its results abide, as perhaps grace sought through channels of daily edification does not.

Many and great gifts of the Holy Spirit do come really into a man, which yet are not regeneration; but they go and come. Whereas that is regeneration when and where God hath planted His habitation, and God is become one with man. In God, neither the world, nor pleasure, nor joy is suffered; nature must want all these when the mind standeth in God. 1 [Note: Matthew Weyer.]

II

Renewal

1. When the gift which changes the moral habits, and puts away the dishonour and condemnation of the past, has been received, accessory processes are needed so that the disciple may be kept without spot. Christ’s followers are moving in the midst of the unregenerate, and it is only through daily vigilance and faith that they can escape the mischances inseparable from their position in the world. Through this lowly ministry, commonly performed by the slave at the opening of a feast, Jesus wished to save His disciples from that loss of hope which their imminent backsliding might cause, to remind them of the gentle and compassionate view He took of their infirmities, and to prevent, where it might still be possible, infirmities from passing into flagrant sins. He is willing to treat their passing moods of envy and ambition as mere casualties of the way, like the dust and films of foulness cleaving to the feet of the pilgrim. Such things do not belong to the new manhood which has been called forth within them, but have in part happened through contact with the world.

Learn a lesson from the eye of the miner, who all day long is working amid the flying coal-dust. When he emerges in the light of day, his face may be grimy enough; but his eyes are clear and lustrous, because the fountain of tears, in the lachrymal gland, is ever pouring its gentle tides over the eye, cleansing away each speck of dust as soon as it alights. Is not this the miracle of cleansing which our spirits need in such a world as this? And this is what our blessed Lord is prepared to do for us, if only we will trust Him. 2 [Note: F. B. Meyer, Present Tenses, 22.]

As these men had with shame to lay their feet in Christ’s hands, so must we. As His hands had to come in contact with the soiled feet of the disciples, so has His moral nature to come in contact with the sins from which He cleanses us. His heart is purer than were His hands, and He shrinks more from contact with moral than with physical pollution; and yet without ceasing we bring Him into contact with such pollution. When we consider what those stains actually are from which we must ask Christ to wash us, we feel tempted to exclaim with Peter, “Thou shalt never wash my feet!” As these men must have shivered with shame through all their nature, so do we when we see Christ stoop before us to wash away once again the defilement we have contracted; when we lay our feet soiled with the miry and dusty ways of life in His sacred hands; when we see the uncomplaining, unreproachful grace with which He performs for us this lowly and painful office. But only thus are we prepared for communion with Him and with one another. Only by admitting that we need cleansing, and by humbly allowing Him to cleanse us, are we brought into true fellowship with Him. With the humble and contrite spirit which has thrown down all barriers of pride and freely admits His love and rejoices in His holiness does He abide. 1 [Note: Marcus Dods.]

2. We must seek daily release from the incipient defilements which fasten upon the regenerate personality without at first bringing upon it specific marks of guilt and wrong-doing. The neglected stain, however extenuating the circumstances in which it affixed itself, may end in a disfigurement that will be more than skin-deep in its results. Forgetfulness of the solemn lesson taught by the feet-washing may make the apostate. A lapse of temper, an unwatched desire provoked by our converse with the world, often incubates into a flagrant sin. “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath”; and may we not add, upon any thoughtless mood or unchastened temper which has settled upon us whilst moving through secular scenes? The feet that have trod the hot, foul highways, or that perhaps have not even crossed the threshold of the home, must be washed. Do not slight the little shortcomings which befall you, and allow them to accrete into blemishes which may vitiate the life.

To become indifferent or insensitive to the stains of daily sin is one of the saddest things that can befall us. Little by little it puts a space between us and the Saviour, as begrimed windows seem to put the light further and further off. We must keep the glass clean if we would have the cheerful light; and we must keep close touch with the pardoning blood if we would maintain the joy of salvation. 1 [Note: J. R. Howatt, Jesus the Poet, 273.]

In describing the different habits of the people of two adjacent provinces the Chinese say, “A Hupeh man does not sleep unless he has first cleansed his feet; but a Honan man only washes his feet on the day when he fords a river.”

Up the long slope of this low sandy shore

Are rolled the tidal waters day by day;

Traces of wandering feet are washed away,

Relics of busy hands are seen no more.

The soiled and trampled surface is smooth’d o’er

By punctual waves that high behests obey;

Once and again the tides assert their sway,

And o’er the sands their cleansing waters pour.

Even so, Lord, daily, hourly, o’er my soul

Sin-stained and care-worn, let Thy heavenly Grace—

A blest, atoning flood—divinely roll,

And all the footsteps of the world efface,

That like the wave-washed sand this soul of mine,

Spotless and fair, smooth and serene, may shine! 2 [Note: Richard Wilton.]

Regeneration and Renewal

Literature

Arnold (T.), Sermons, ii. 127.

Barrett (G. S.), Musings for Quiet Hours, 74.

Bonar (H.), Family Sermons, 87.

Farrar (F. W.), In the Days of thy Youth, 243.

Howatt (J. R.), Jesus the Poet, 272.

Jerdan (C.), Gospel Milk and Honey, 285.

Robertson (F. W.), Sermons, iii. 239.

Selby (T. G.), The Divine Craftsman, 207.

Smellie (A.), In the Hour of Silence, 289.

Temple (F.), Sermons in Rugby School Chapel, ii. 116.

Waterston (R.), Thoughts on the Lord’s Supper, 91.

Webster (F. S.), My Lord and I, 154.

Wordsworth (C.), Christian Boyhood at a Public School, i. 438.

Expositor, 2nd Ser., iv. 146 (Cox).

Verse 34

The New Commandment

A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.— John 13:34.

When the Lord spoke to His disciples the words of the text, Judas had just left the company for the purpose of carrying out his plans. It was a night much to be observed, the events of which are recorded in the chapter from which the text is taken; it was the night upon which the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was instituted, in which Judas joined; it was the night upon which Christ gave that remarkable lesson in humility to His disciples by washing their feet, the feet of Judas apparently amongst the rest; it was the night, too, on which the Lord gave distinct warning to this same Judas of the treachery which he was about to commit; and it was after receiving this warning that Judas went out to do his work, leaving the eleven faithful disciples behind. Any lesson, therefore, given on such a night would be likely to be well remembered, to sink deeply into the heart, and one cannot be surprised that the Lord should take advantage of such an occasion to impress some important precepts and doctrines upon His disciples; one might expect that some things which the Lord would desire to say to the Apostles before His passion, and which could scarcely be said in the presence of Judas, would now be uttered without reserve. And indeed it does seem as though the departure of Judas had taken (if one may venture to say so) a weight from off the heart of the Lord, for He enters at once into some of His deepest and most affectionate conversations with the faithful eleven.

The time is short, and there is much to be done. The preparations for His capture will begin forthwith, and He has many things to say to His Apostles which cannot be so well said at any other time. What lesson shall He take first? Upon what doctrine shall He chiefly lay stress? “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” Can we wonder that this new commandment should have afterwards so completely absorbed St. John’s own mind, when we remember that he heard it enunciated under such circumstances as these?

I

The New Commandment

1. The emphatic word of the text is the word translated “one another.” And the moment we place the emphasis there the meaning is evident. “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another.” Jesus had only the eleven disciples with Him; for the traitor had already gone out into the night. In the hearing of these eleven He had already announced the old commandment, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” with an added emphasis and extended grasp. In particular, He had pointed out that their neighbour included their enemy, even such as the hated and despised Samaritan. Now He says, “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love”—not your enemies, but—“one another.” The old commandment is not taken away; it lies upon these men with a great obligation, such as never was known by Jew or Gentile before. But another is added to it, another and a different commandment, that Peter love John, and John love Andrew, and Andrew love “Judas-not-Iscariot.” “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another.”

In the seventeenth century the minister of Anwoth, on the shores of Galloway, was the famous Samuel Rutherford, the great religious oracle of the Covenanters.

It is one of the traditions cherished on the spot, that on a Saturday evening, at one of those family gatherings whence, in the language of a great Scottish poet,

Old Scotia’s grandeur springs,

when Rutherford was catechizing his children and servants, a stranger knocked at the door of the Manse, and (like the young English traveller in the celebrated romance which has given fresh life to those same hills in our own age), begged shelter for the night. The minister kindly received him, and asked him to take his place amongst the family and assist at their religious exercises. It so happened that the question in the Catechism which came to the stranger’s turn was that which asks, “How many commandments are there?” He answered, “Eleven.” “Eleven!” exclaimed Rutherford; “I am surprised that a person of your age and appearance should not know better. What do you mean?” And he answered, “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”

The stranger proved to be the great divine and scholar, Archbishop Ussher, the Primate of the Church of Ireland. 1 [Note: R. E. Prothero, The Life and Correspondence of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, ii. 272.]

2. It is the love of one follower of Christ to another. And it was new, altogether new; for till then there were no Christians to love or be loved. The disciples recognized it as new. Of this we have an immediate and conclusive proof. When a new thing comes into the world, one of the first needs is a new name to call it by. A new invention or discovery must have its new name—the “telephone,” let us say. So the disciples, recognizing that a new thing had appeared in the world chose a word,—like “telephone,” compound of two things,—a word not absolutely new, but rarely used before, to name it. Phil-adelphia they called it, “love of brothers,” “brotherly-love.” And their use of this word shows us that they recognized this commandment as not only new, but different in kind from the old commandment of love. In the rope of Christian virtues, as it has been well called, which St. Peter weaves in the first chapter of his second letter, the last two strands are “brotherly-love” and “love,” as the Revised Version does well to inform us: “In your faith supply virtue … and in your godliness love-of-the-brethren, and in your love-of-the-brethren love.” The two virtues are kept distinct, for they rest upon two separate and distinct commands, the one very old, and the other altogether new.

The Law had also already taught some points of this duty. Thus the Mosaic statute said, “Thou shalt not suffer sin upon thy brother,”—a mode of brother-love which, though negative in its form, was positive in its spirit. But in its expressiveness and comprehensiveness this command was new. It was now given in direct phraseology, and it developed the one principle to which all preceding enactments were to be traced. Incidental injunctions had contained some one or other of the features of this brother-love; but all such commands were absorbed in this novel and engrossing declaration, “Love one another.” Various practical elements had been previously delineated; but now, and for the first time, the theory was enforced. 1 [Note: J. Eadie, The Divine Love, 244.]

This new love is the fruit of the Holy Spirit dwelling in the Church. It is like the difference between carrying water with great exertion from a distant fountain and having a stream from that fountain flow by one’s own door, from which he can drink copiously, by whose invigorating scent he feels his spirits revived, into which he can throw himself for a refreshing bath. The Holy Spirit comes with glorious blessings to the children of God under the New Covenant. They drink, not with scant measure, but from a full and overflowing cup. They revel in the fulness of eternal love. And He that creates this blessedness is the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, whom Jesus has sent from the Father. 2 [Note: A. Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, 574.]

II

The Old and the New

1. There rest upon the follower of Christ two different commands to love. The old is not taken away; the new is added to it. Thou shalt love thine enemies, thou shalt do good to them that hate thee, thou shalt bless them that curse thee, thou shalt pray for them that despitefully use thee. That is the great Mosaic command: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Christ added nothing to it when He gave it to His followers. He simply pointed out its scope and intensity. Then, when the time came, He gave them another commandment to love, of a different scope and a different nature. And thenceforth these two separate commandments have lain upon every follower of Christ.

If we would take even the old commandment and live up to it, it would solve a great many perplexing problems. Lay it down along the line of life, and see in imagination how life’s problems would find in it their solution. “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Let the slave-master simply apply that rule, and will he not straightway manumit his slave and set him free? Let us apply that rule to the perplexing problem of immigration. What if you or I were living under the harrow in Italy or Germany, and we saw the broad acres of America ready with fruitful juices to answer to our plow and our hoe,—what should we want America to do for us? Apply it to the labour problem. Let all working men, banded together as Knights of Labour or any other organization, do to the employer as they would have the employer do to them; and let the employers, the board of directors, the railroad managers, do to their employed as they would wish done to themselves, the relation being reversed: would there be any labour problem left? Our labour problem as it actually presents itself in real life is simply this: How can a community of men that are dealing with each other selfishly live peaceably? And the answer is, They cannot at all. Peace can be brought about only when that law of justice which is expressed by the Golden Rule and the law, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” are inwrought into the industrial fabric of society. Why, if the girl in the kitchen would always act as she would wish to be acted by if she were mistress, and the mistress would always act to the girl in the kitchen as she would wish to be acted by if she were the girl in the kitchen, the greatest plague of life would be a plague no longer. 1 [Note: L. Abbott, Signs of Promise, 234.]

2. But is it possible for the Christian to love in two different ways? Yes; it is not only possible, it is inevitable. Not only must he love the world out of Christ in one way, and his brethren in Christ in another, but he cannot help it. Mark Guy Pearse, in his inimitable way, tells a story which lends itself readily to illustration. “Said one of my little ones to the youngest, in that threatening tone which is usually adopted in teaching, ‘You must be good, you know, or father won‘t love you.’ Then I called him to myself, and I said, gravely and tenderly: ‘Do you know what you have said? It is not true, my boy—not a bit true.’ ‘Isn’t it?’ said the little one, surprised and doubtful. ‘No,’ I said; ‘it is far away from the truth.’ ‘But you won’t love us if we are not good, will you?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I can’t help loving you; I shall love you for ever and ever, because I can’t help it. When you are good I shall love you with a love that makes me glad; and when you are not good I shall love you with a love that hurts me; but I can’t help loving you, because I am your father you know.’ ”

Truly God has bound Himself by love’s sweet constraint to make us capable of a love that is similar to His own; that is to share the highest of all things with us to the full. The self-sacrificing love that began in God must also go on in us. By every means, our hearts must be made capable of possessing and reciprocating it all. God knows how sweet it is to love and to be loved. And so the glory that He gave to Jesus—the supreme glory of self-sacrificing love—He has given even to us also, that we may be one in love even with the Father and the Son. Having therefore equipped us with this highest power, He lays on us the command which, enforced by His example, finds such an echo in our hearts. “Above all things have fervent love among yourselves!” 1 [Note: Frank W. Crossley.]

(1) God the Father loves with this twofold love. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” Was the love that demanded that a love that made Him glad? Was it not a love that “hurt” Him? But, says Jesus, “If a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him.” Why, the Father loves every man, whether he keeps the commandments of the Lord or not. But this is a new love—a love that makes the Father glad. So also is God the Son capable of a twofold love. What a yearning love there is in that cry over the self-doomed city: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!” How different from the love He bore to that disciple—“the disciple whom Jesus loved!”

If you are reverent, you may see the love of Jesus by loading in succession John 11:1-5, Mark 14:3-9, and Luke 10:38-42. “Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.” And one man is known to all history as the friend of Jesus. They called Him the friend of publicans and sinners, a name that dimly reveals the inner secret of His life. And the last hours of His life were reserved, not for the crowd or the impenitent, but for those who loved Him best, and whose love He trusted when He went down to death. 2 [Note: F. W. Lewis, The Unseen Life, 18.]

(2) And so also to the follower of the Lord is this double love not merely possible but quite inevitable—a love that hurts, and a love that makes him glad. Sharing the love of Christ which sent Him to die for sinners, he loves those for whom Christ died, though they do not recognize Him as a Prince and a Saviour. It is a real love in the true Christian, an anxious, eager, almost consuming love sometimes—a love which brings no gladness, but burns the breast with yearning desire. It is a love which suffers persecution, which makes the gentle woman courageous, which amazes and staggers the unbeliever. But there is a love also which makes the follower of Jesus glad.

In a block of London’s poorest abodes a woman was visiting one night. Trying room after room, she found only misery, filth, brutality. When to the weary knock at one more door a cheerful “Come in” was the response, and she found herself welcomed at the bright fireside of a poor but real follower of Jesus, there rushed forth to meet that welcome a love that made her glad. The one is a love that demands self-denial, the other is spontaneous, irresistible. The one makes us fit for the inheritance of the saints in light, the other proves us saints upon the earth.

III

The Example

1. “As I loved you”—these words point to an action which is past and done, not to a continued state. Westcott endeavours to preserve the tense and yet apply it in a general way. “The exact form (‘I loved’),” he says “implies that Christ’s work is now ideally finished.” But a much simpler explanation lies to our hand. “That ye love one another; as I loved you.” The act He refers to is just past. It is the washing of their feet. We view that marvellous action chiefly as a great wonder of condescending love. He meant it as an instance of true brotherly love. If I, your Lord and Master, act as a brother towards you, ye ought to act as brothers towards one another. A new commandment I give unto you, that ye act towards one another as I have just acted towards you. The whole strange action of the feet-washing leads up to this command; and the command interprets the action. “As I have just loved you”—the exact meaning of the word is brought out better by that translation than by any other. In washing their feet He offered them a single instance of the brotherly love He commanded. It was, however, an instance which involved the principle, and was capable of endless application.

2. The instance of washing the disciples’ feet involves, we say, the principle. From this and other instances of Christ’s love St. John deduces that principle and applies it: “Hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” Not die for the brethren. We may be called to death, and we may not; but we are to lay down our lives for the brethren. It is a comparatively easy thing to die for other people; but to live for them,—to lie down in the muddy road and let other men walk over us, to stand and let other people climb upon us, to be underneath our equals, to be the means by which they climb to preferment and reward,—that is hard. And that is what Christ did, and what Christ held up as the ideal for His children evermore.

“It is well,” said John Wesley, “that you should be thoroughly sensible of this: the Heaven of Heavens is Love, there is nothing higher in religion, there is in effect nothing else. If you look for anything but more Love, you are looking wide of the mark: you are getting out of the royal way.”

“Beloved, let us love one another,” says St. John,

Eagle of eagles calling from above:

Words of strong nourishment for life to feed upon,

“Beloved, let us love.”

Voice of an eagle, yea, Voice of the Dove:

If we may love, winter is past and gone;

Publish we, praise we, for lo it is enough.

More sunny than sunshine that ever yet shone,

Sweetener of the bitter, smoother of the rough,

Highest lesson of all lessons for all to con,

“Beloved, let us love.” 1 [Note: C. G. Rossetti.]

3. Brotherly love is to be so openly shown that the followers of Christ will be recognized thereby. “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” Discipleship had previously been recognized by various tests. But no “master” had ever dreamed of imposing such an obligation, and creating by it such a characteristic. The scholars of the Academy, the Portico, or the Lyceum were at once known by their modes of reasoning, their attachment to distinctive theories, and their frequent appeals to Plato, Zeno, or Aristotle. The Jew was recognized by his dress and language, his reverence for Moses, his selection among meats and drinks, and his antipathy to all the races of the uncircumcision. If you entered a company of Greeks, and found them theorizing upon pleasure, its nature, enjoyment, and modes, you would at once pronounce them to be Epicureans; or if, mixing with another crowd, you were met with such sounds as fate, liberty, necessity, wisdom, and chief good, you would feel in a moment that you were among the Stoics. Did you, in any city of Judæa, see a man clothed with a robe fringed deeper than common, and adorned with a phylactery of unusual breadth; did you follow him, and hear him pray with a stentorian voice to attract all passers-by, or see him give alms so ostentatiously as to draw upon him the public gaze and admiration, you would have no doubt that you beheld a Pharisee. And if, on the streets of Jerusalem, you met one in whose dress the prominent portions of the national uniform were carefully pared down, who, as he passed with you near the temple, observed with a quiet sneer that the scent of the burning sacrifice tainted the air, or who, as he looked on the place of sepulchres, assumed a philosophic air and spoke of death as the debt of nature, as a hard and universal necessity; smiled at the idea of a spirit-land, and hinted that the prevailing belief on that point was not consonant with reason, or based on a rational interpretation of Scripture—you would have no difficulty in detecting the speaker to be a Sadducee. But our Lord discards what is external; and His followers are to be known not by dress, language, or occupation, but by the mutual kindness which they cherish and exercise towards one another. They are to be known not by mind, but by heart; not by intellect, but by soul.

In the first age of the Church the critical importance of the mutual love of Christians was recognized. Jerome preserves an anecdote of St. John which admirably illustrates this fact. In his last days, when he had to be carried into church, and was too old to speak for any length of time, the Apostle used in addressing the congregation to repeat simply the old commandment, which yet is, indeed, always new, “Little children, love one another.” Then, as ever since, Christians were impatient of that teaching. His disciples, weary of the continual repetition, asked why he always said this. “Because,” he replied, “it is the Lord’s commandment: and if it only be fulfilled, it is enough.” Tertullian, in a famous passage of his “Apology,” describes the impression made on the heathen by the mutual love of believers. They could not understand it. “See,’ say they, ‘how they love each other!’ for they themselves hate each other. ‘And see how ready they are to die for each other!’ for they themselves are more ready to slay each other.” 1 [Note: H. H. Henson, Godly Union and Concord, 161.]

Two centuries later than Tertullian a still more illustrious Christian—Chrysostom—describes the scandal caused to the heathen by the lovelessness of believers. His language is on many grounds very remarkable, and singularly apposite to the conditions of the modern Church. He is commenting on Christ’s “new commandment,” and the testimony which, by obeying it, Christians are to deliver to the world; and, after his practice, he draws on his intimate knowledge of the religious life of his time in order to illustrate the sacred text, and to press home on his hearers its practical lessons. “Miracles, he says, “do not so much attract the heathen as the mode of life; and nothing so much causes a right life as love … And with good reason. When one of them sees the greedy man, the plunderer, exhorting others to do the contrary, when he sees the man who was commanded to love even his enemies treating his very kindred like brutes, he will say that the words are folly … We, we are the cause of their remaining in error. Their own doctrines they have long condemned, and in like manner they admire ours, but they are hindered by our mode of life.” Chrysostom goes on to say that it is vain to point out to the disgusted heathen the virtues of famous Christians of former times. About them they are sceptical so long as the Christians whom they see and know are scandalously unworthy of their profession. “Wherefore,” he concludes, “I fear lest some grievous thing come to pass, and we draw down upon us heavy vengeance from God.” 2 [Note: Ibid. 162.]

Almost twenty years ago, while living in America, I went to reside in a little town called Delaware, in Ohio; and the first Saturday evening of my residence I went as a young man to the Y.M.C.A. prayer-meeting. There were about one hundred young men present, and the meeting was of a most hearty type. The last hymn sung was—

Blest be the tie that binds

Our hearts in Christian love.

And during the singing of that hymn there was a general handshaking going on, and I, as a stranger, was specially singled out for attention. The result, so far as I was concerned, was that I attended that prayer-meeting regularly for more than five years. That may be a trifle too unconventional for our Churches, but we want more, much more, of the spirit that prompted that exhibition of sympathetic Christian friendliness and love. 1 [Note: W. Lee, From Dust to Jewels, 96.]

“What is love, Mary?” said Seventeen to Thirteen, who was busy with her English lessons.

“ I think it is a verb,” said John, “and I think it must have been originally the perfect of live, like thrive, throve, strive, strove.”

“ Capital, John,” suddenly growled uncle Oldbuck, “it was that originally, and it will be our own faults, children, if it is not that at last, as well as, ay, and more than at first.” 2 [Note: John Brown, Horæ Subsecivæ, 2nd Ser., 299.]

If we really and lovingly studied the characters of others we should often end by being interested and even fascinated where at first we were only repelled. A portrait-painter must often feel this. Some of us may be reminded of the lines of Browning. “Beside the Drawing-board”:—

Little girl with the poor coarse hand

I turned from to a cold clay cast—

I have my lesson, understand

The worth of flesh and blood at last.

Nothing but beauty in a Hand?

Because he could not change the hue,

Mend the lines and make them true

To this which met his soul’s demand—

Would Da Vinci turn from you?

And, more than that, if we love and care for others we shall often find that the very fact of our loving them helps them to make themselves more love-worthy, just as a carefully tended plant responds to the gardener’s care. 3 [Note: E. Wordsworth, Onward Steps, 129.]

“As every lord giveth a certain livery to his servants,” says Latimer, “Love is the Livery of Christ.”

The New Commandment

Literature

Abbott (L.), Signs of Promise, 232.

Alford (H.), Quebec Chapel Sermons, iv. 223.

Bernard (T. D.), The Central Teaching of Jesus Christ, 113.

Eadie (J.), The Divine Love, 242.

Goodwin (H.), Parish Sermons, iii. 258.

Greenhough (J. G.), in Great Texts of the NT, 97.

Henson (H. H.), Godly Union and Concord, 153.

Horne (W.), Religious Life and Thought, 13.

Horton (R. F.), The Commandments of Jesus, 319.

Hughes (H. P.), The Philanthropy of God, 15.

Jack (J. W.), After His Likeness, 13.

Kuyper (R.), The Work of the Holy Spirit, 570.

Lee (W.), From Dust to Jewels, 85.

Lewis (F. W.), The Unseen Life, 13.

Lilley (J. P.), The Pathway of Light, 79.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: John ix.–xiv., 226.

Maclaren (A.), Last Sheaves, 56.

Mantle (J. G.), According to the Pattern, 75.

Marjoribanks (T.), The Fulness of the Godhead, 77.

Morgan (G. C.), The Ten Commandments, 203.

Robertson (F. W.), Sermons, 1st Ser., 234.

Senior (W.), God’s “Ten Words,” 345.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, li. (1905), No. 241.

Stanford (C.), Central Truths, 153.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit) xiii. (1876), No. 1008.

Wilson (J. H.), The Gospel and its Fruits, 233.

Wilson (J. M.), Rochdale Sermons, 239.

Wordsworth (E.), Onward Steps, 123.

Christian World Pulpit, xlvii. 166 (Klein); lx. 305 (Henson); lxxvi. 49 (Ronald).

Church of England Pulpit, lii. 290 (Henson); lxi. 322 (Plummer).

Churchman’s Pulpit: Holy Week: vi. 490 (Robertson).