Focus: The spiritual life for Christians is expressed in Jesus’ command to love God

and love one another.

Introduction
When I came to faith in my early adulthood I was advised to start by reading the
Gospel according to John, because it was the most spiritual of the four Gospels. I don’t
remember being told exactly why it was more spiritual than Matthew, Mark or Luke,
and looking back I’m not so sure the people who advised me had much clue as to
what that actually meant either. I certainly know I didn’t have a clue...but I read it
anyway.

There’s a widely held expectation in our culture that something spiritual should
provide us with guidance for life or at least sense of connection with life. The Gospel
according to John certainly offers that, but not in a spiritual self-help book kind of
way. John introduces us and even confronts us with the person of Jesus – how much
we’re willing to allow this encounter with Jesus to shape our lives is up to us.

As a young Christian I was looking for guidance on how to live an authentic spiritual
life. Sometimes John’s Gospel opened up my horizons, it offered new ways of connecting
with God, particularly with it’s appealing images of Jesus as the light of life, the living
water, the bread from heaven and the true vine. Other times I became bogged down in
the controversy and conflict Jesus had with those who opposed him. Then in the 13th
through to the 17th chapter of John’s Gospel I came across the extended teaching and
concluding prayer that Jesus gave during the final meal he shared with his disciples
before his betrayal and execution.

Here, in the middle of what is often referred to as the farewell discourse, Jesus
repeatedly teaches about the importance of keeping his commandments. When I first
read these a feeling of excitement, anticipation...here was something for me to do. Unlike
Matthew and Luke, I didn’t remember John’s Gospel recording any of Jesus’ ethical
teachings. So I searched through John’s Gospel looking for the commandments that Jesus
was talking about. I was surprised by what I find.

What Does Jesus Command Us To Do?

In the Gospel according to John we discover only one commandment, and that is that we
love one another. Jesus first gives this commandment in John 13:34. Apparently just
after the meal has finished Jesus turned to his disciples and said, “I give you a new
commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love
one another.”

Later that same evening, in John 15:12, Jesus repeated this commandment almost word
for word, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

What exactly is love? The answer to that question of course depends on who you ask. A
psychologist, a neuroscientist and a theologian will each have different ways of
approaching that question. A psychologist will talk about the different types of love.

Robert Sternberg’s popular theory, for example, describes love as being comprised of
three different elements that form a love triangle; affection, desire and commitment.
Depending on which of these are present in a relationship they combine together to
produce 8 different types of love, ranging from non-love through to consummate love
with friendship, romance and companionship at various other points. Sociologists
describe the evolutionary importance of love for developing strong social cohesion in
human communities. Neurologists examine love according to the brain’s biochemistry,
for example the role that oxytocin plays in forming a monogamous bond between a
couples.

Each of these perspectives can serve to deepen our awareness of the mystery we call
love. For Christians, however, love is ultimately revealed and understood by who Jesus
was and is; how he lived and died and how he loves us now. That is why in the first letter
of John 5:6 John follows up his call to love with a reminder that Jesus was not only
revealed through his baptism but through his death on the cross. When Jesus
commanded his followers to love one another he didn’t talk about brain chemistry or
social theory. He simply pointed to the love he was about to demonstrate on the cross,
and said...”love one another as I have loved you.”

What Sounds Easy Is Hard Work

When our understanding of love exists at the superficial level it all sounds easy.
“All you need is love,” sang The Beatles, but in reality they struggled and failed to love
each other. “Love is the drug for me,” sang Brian Ferry in Roxy Music, but we all know
we need more than a dopamine rush for love to be sacrificial. When we are experiencing
the infatuation of falling in love of course we think we would lay down our lives for our
beloved. But once the chemical rush has worn off we may not even do the washing up
without grumbling. Jesus is calling us to the sacrificial, compassionate kind of love that
can only grow through commitment, companionship and service. And that kind of love,
if we are honest, is more difficult in reality than it sounds. The love that Jesus commands
us to show to one another requires us to make an effort, and to overcome our
selfishness.

Having said that, we need to understand that Jesus does not give commandments that
are bad for us; they are not intended to make our life miserable. In 1 John 5:3 we are
reminded that the commands of Jesus “are not burdensome.” Jesus said the same. “Come
to me all who are weary and heavy burdened and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)
He was talking to people who had been oppressed by the religion of rules. The Jesus kind
of love is not a love that Jesus expects us to carry out on our own. We are not self-
sufficient, self-enclosed organisms that already have all the resources we need to love. In
fact, if we try to obey the commands of Jesus by sheer will power alone, and while
disconnected from God, we will discover time and again that what the biologist Richard
Dawkins says about us is true; we are governed only by the inherent selfishness of our
genes. The Gospel according to John, however, reminds us, that even though our natural
inclinations are selfish, in companionship and intimacy with Jesus we can grow
spiritually in such away that enables us to live and act beyond the limits of our
biological nature.

God is Love
Love, according to Jesus, is never limited to the interaction that goes on between
people. Sandwiched between each of his commandments to love, Jesus offers us an
important insight as to how we can keep his commandments. It is only through our
love for him and through our participation in the life of God that we are empowered
to keep Christ’s commandment to love.

In John 14:15 Jesus put it like this, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
In this particular instance Jesus also promised that if we keep his commandments
God will send the Holy Spirit to live within us.

Only moments later in John 14:21 Jesus made the same point again, “They who have
my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me
will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

Finally in John 15:10 Jesus tells his followers that by obeying his commandment to
love they will share in the communion of love that Jesus himself shares with the
Father. “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept
my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.”

We discover here in Jesus’ teaching a circle of love. If we love Jesus then we will be
empowered to keep his commandment to love one another. And as we love one
another we will be living (abiding) in the love that God has for us, thereby bringing us
back full circle to our love for Christ. This is what Jesus meant when he described the
importance of abiding in his love with the image of a fruitful branch growing from a
vine.

Some theologians when describing the nature of God as Trinity have described the
Holy Spirit as the flow of love between the Father and the Son; the very love that itself
is the source of life and creation.

New Testament scholar Scott McKnight summarizes this understanding like this.

“Ever wonder what God was doing way back before time, before creation, billions of
years ago? I confess to wondering about this, and the greatest theologians of the
church have an answer: since God is love, God was loving. What God was doing was
dwelling in love — Father loving Son, Son loving Father; Father loving Spirit, Spirit
loving Father; Son loving Spirit, and Spirit loving Son. Endless, ceaseless, expanding,
entirely satisfying, and creating love from one to the other. God was loving, God is
loving, and God always will be loving. Love is who God is, and love is what God does.”

It will be impossible to love as Christians if we do not genuinely believe that God is

loving. Love is used 30 times in the writings of John while the word “believe”,
meaning to trust in Jesus and the God he reveals, is used 61times. We need to be
socialised into the love of God through our companionship with Christ.

Conclusion
Some Christians overly spiritualise love by putting the emphasis only on loving God.
Love for such Christians is only experienced through the devotional life of prayer and
worship. But our relationship with God is always seeking in some way to find its
fulfilment in our relationships with each other. Without an outlet to express the flow
of God’s love our spiritual life soon becomes a self-absorbed escapism.
Other Christians, often those with a strong sense of social responsibility, put the
emphasis only on caring for others or serving the community. Love for such people is
often an expression of duty but with very little awareness of the Holy Spirit’s
empowering presence. Without devotion and faith our wellsprings of love soon dry
up.

The litmus test for spiritual health is whether we are growing in both our love for God
and for others. The letters of John are like companion texts to the Gospel according to
John. Understood together they remind us that the Christian life, discipleship to Jesus is
always a twofold command; first of all to have faith in Jesus, to believe and trust in the
love that God has revealed to us by sending his Son, and secondly to find ways to love
those in whom God is also at work.

Saint Augustine, one of the great thinkers of the church, summarised for all of us the
guiding principle of the Christian discipleship with these simple words:
“Love, and then do what you will.”