WE ALL NEED, LOVE!!!

" Our Heavenly Father's Love, Needs No Artificial Ingredient Needed ”

Apostle Winfree, James, R, Sr. The Lord's Social Media Messenger, Blogger, Publisher, Writer, Truth Seeker & Biblical Mentor:

Awesome And All-Knowing And Wise Holy Spirit, You Are Our Teacher!!!

All The Old Covenants, Old Hebrews Laws Are Fulfilled In One Action Word,( Love ).

The verse that I want to focus on is John 13:34: “A new commandment Jesus gives to you, that you love one another: just as Christ has loved you, you also are to love one another.” There are glorious things in verses 31–35 that I am passing by. We will be back, Lord willing. Today there is only time for one verse and one question: What’s new about the commandment to love each other?

I pray that Jesus Himself will speak in this message concerning His commandment to us His Church that we love each other. Immerse your mind now in this word of God with me, and let the mind of Jesus saturate your mind. That is how we are changed. The word of God reveals the Son of God and the glory of God by the Spirit of God, and we are changed ( 2 Corinthians 3:18 ). This a miracle. If I did not believe in it, I would not be a preacher of this word. It has power far beyond mine and yours.

John 13:34: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as the Lord has loved you, you also are to love one another.” If you are a follower of Jesus, Christ, a believer of God through faith in Christ, you are a son and daughter under authority. You are not your own. You do not call the shots anymore. Jesus is more to you than Master of your life, but He is not less. He comes to you with more than commandments, but not less. You are a person whose life is defined by the will of another, namely, Jesus. What he wills you want.

And what He wills and commands in this verse is that we love each other, that His believers'and followers love each other. “A new commandment Jesus give you”, not a new suggestion, or a new idea, or a new possibility, or a new life-option, but a new commandment by and of Christ Jesus.

The question that has guided all my focus in this message is What’s new about the commandment to love each other? “A new commandment Jesus gives to you, that you love one another.” I see two answers implied in this verse. The key to the answers is found in the words in the second half of the verse: “. . . just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” The newness of the command to love each other is found in the words “as Christ have loved you.”

I see two ways that the commandment to love each other is new in those words. First, the command is new because it is a command to live out the love of Jesus. Second, the command is new because it is a command to live on the love of Jesus. The words “as I have loved you” contain a pattern for our love for each other, and they contain a power for our love for each other.

Loving each other is not a new command per se. It was already there in the Old Testament (Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”). What’s new is that Jesus is now the pattern we live by and the power we live on. Let’s look at these two kinds of newness.

The basis of the first kind of newness ( Jesus as our pattern ) is found earlier in John 13. Look at what Jesus does at the very beginning of this chapter to provide the example of what He means when He says, “Just as He has loved you, you also are to love one another.” John 13:1 and the following:

Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end. . . . Jesus’ love for us is about to be demonstrated. Christ laid aside His outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around His waist. Then He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. This is Philippians 2:3, counting others more significant than Himself as He takes the role of a servant slave . . . 12 When He had washed their feet and put on His outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? 13 You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. 14 If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15 I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.

So here we have Jesus giving us an acted out pattern of love. So when we get to verse 34 and our Master and King says, “Just as He has loved you, you also are to love one another,” we don’t have to go guessing what he means by “as.” As Jesus has loved you in the pattern He just gave to His true spiritual biblical believers and followers. Verse 15 says, “I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.” And verse 34 says, “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” So the pattern of love to be followed is clear.

This is how we are to love each other in the grace and faith of Jesus Christ. It involves at least two things. One is that we lay aside status and rank and prestige and privilege and take the form of a servant, that’s what Philippians 2:7 said, and that’s what Jesus does here. Verse 14: “If I then Jesus said, being your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” By virtue of My status and rank and privilege as our Lord and Teacher, I Am not obliged to wash your feet. But I “count you as more significant than Myself” and serve you. You getting this preachers and leaders in the Churches!!!?

So the first part of Jesus’ pattern is that it lays aside rank and privilege to serve believers first and then others. The second part of the pattern is that this love involves practical deeds of helpfulness. In those days, almost everyone walked. The roads and paths were dirt. There were probably no socks and no sidewalks. Everyone’s feet were more or less caked with dirt. The dirty work had to be done. Jesus did it for those who should have been doing it for Him. He laid down a sense of entitlement. And served.

The new commandment is that we look at this pattern, that we watch our Lord and Teacher and Savior do this and follow Him in it. We live out the love that we see in Jesus.

Jesus, Our Power: Living On His Love

That leaves one more angle on the newness of this command to love each other. I called it, not living out, but living on the love of Jesus. When Jesus says that the new commandment to love each other is a commandment to love as I have loved you, he draws attention not only to the pattern of love we follow, but the power to love that we need.

Here’s where I get this truth. If you search the Gospel of John for the closest verbal parallel to the words of verse 34 (“Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another”), the closest parallel is John 15:12: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” But here, instead of acting out a pattern to follow, Jesus describes a connection with himself that gives the power to love.

So the newness of the command to love like Jesus is not only the pattern of his behavior but his connection to vital power, our connection to that power by being connected to Him. Look three verses earlier at John 15:9–10: “As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Abide in My love. 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. Not Moses laws and commandments!!!”

Our Lord Jesus said the key to His love was His relationship with God the Father: “I abide in His love” ( verse 10 ). Jesus lives in constant and perfect union with the Father. The effect is that the Father’s love moves into Jesus and lives there as a divine power to love. Then Jesus says at the end of verse 9, “Abide in My love.” So He abides in His Father's love, and we are to abide in His love and love All nations, countries and color and skin tones of believers first and then All others.

That’s how we are able to love each other “as Christ loves us.” He loves us by abiding in the love of the Father. We love each other by abiding in the love of the Son which is the love of the Father.

We can see the picture Jesus has in His mind in verse 5: “I Am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” There’s where I get biblical truth. “Apart from Christ,” Jesus says, “you have no power to do anything.” You cannot love each other as I command you to love if you do not abide in Me as I abide in My Father. No laws or commandments and even All the laws we have on the books can make us love one another.

So the newness of Jesus’ commandment is not only that Jesus has become our pattern for love by taking the role of a servant, but also that Jesus has become our power for love by Himself abiding in the Father so that as we abide in him we are given the very love of the Father with which to love each other.

And if you wonder what hour-by-hour abiding in Jesus means, it means hour-by-hour trusting Him to meet all our needs and be our supreme treasure. And when we are confident that he will meet all our needs and be our treasure, we are freed and empowered to humble ourselves and meet the needs of others.

Which leaves one last question: How can we trust him to meet all our needs and be our treasure if we are sinners and deserve the only wrath from God and not love?

The answer is given in this very context. Right after saying in John 15:12, “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you,” He says in verse 13, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus could not leave us with only a pattern and only a power through union with Him by faith. He had to go deeper and solve the problem of John 3:36: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on Him.”

Our problem is not mainly that we don’t love as we should. Our problem is mainly that because of our sin, God’s wrath remains on us. How is it removed? Why does God cease to be angry with us and instead pour love into our lives through Jesus and empower us to love? The answer is John 15:13: Jesus laid down His life for His friends. Jesus died in our place. Jesus endured the wrath of God that we deserved so that God’s justice would be satisfied and his love could flow unhindered through Christ to us and through us to each other.

The commandment to love each other is new because Jesus is the pattern and the power of that love. And he can be those for us, even though we are sinners because he removed the wrath of God by laying down his life for us.

All the Laws, the Old Testament Commandments, The Word's Education Learning or Protesters will make us love each other, Only being Born Again will.

I pray that we will move together into the Gospel of Jesus Christ and start in the Churches First, begin to love one another just as we teach, preach every Sunday in our worships services. There are glories of Christ to be seen here that we have never seen before. And there is love to be lived here in loving members that some have never tasted before. The union of life in loving believers and life in the Gospel of Jesus Christ will be a good marriage. I hope you now, yes right now, start loving the way Jesus loves you. Amen.

We Only Share The Government Of Heaven, The Gospel Of Jesus Christ, That Is Changing And Transforming Lives, Forever!!!

2 Cor 9:7, So, let each one of us give as he and she have purposes in our hearts, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Go Out And Be Our Loving Heavenly Father Love To Your Spiritual Family First, And Then To All Others, And Be The Church That Christ Jesus Himself Birth And Built, His Loving And Living Believers Without Walls!!!.

apostlejrwinfree@gmail.com