Love as I Have Loved You

John 15:12-13 – “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”

That you love one another as I have loved you: Jesus spoke these words to the disciples as they stood in the upper room, having risen from the table, and we sense the emphasis created by repetition. Jesus really cared that His disciples love one another, and that they do so according to the measure and quality of His love for them.

Marcus Dods explains, “Perhaps they expected minute, detailed instructions such as they had received when first sent out (see Matthew 10). Instead of this, love was to be their sufficient guide.”

William Barclay applies this principle as follows: “We are sent out into the world to love one another. Sometimes we live as if we were sent into the world to compete with one another, or to dispute with one another, or even to quarrel with one another.”

Merrill C. Tenney urges disciples of Jesus: “Unity instead of rivalry, trust instead of suspicion, obedience instead of self-assertion must rule the disciples’ common labors.”

Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends: Jesus described the measure and quality of His love for them, to use as a pattern for the way they should love each other. His love is complete and of surpassing greatness, laying down its life.

Based on The Enduring Word Bible Commentary by David Guzik.