And it was night… That is where we left off in Chapter 13 of John’s gospel. Judas has left to carry out his full betrayal. The disciples have no clue; and no one is going to stop him. And we know from Jesus’ own words where this is all headed: He will be turned over to His enemies and killed. It certainly seems that the night, the dark, has won. Yet, Jesus sees it in a completely different light.

From Jesus’ viewpoint the betrayal is already an accomplished fact. He who knows the heart of every man, surely saw Satan taking his throne in Judas’ heart. The gospel writers all tell us that that is how it happened, that that is how Judas crossed the line, but they are all narrating from outside. Jesus saw it all from the inside… the heart of a friend, of a disciple He chose, a disciple He loved, a disciple He taught… a heart that He kept trying to lead to the Father’s heart, chose instead destruction.

We cannot imagine how that betrayal felt to Jesus, how that failure felt. But of one thing we can be sure, to One who knows the future, it was all then accomplished fact. it was not a surprise to Jesus when Judas showed up with the soldiers in the garden, no surprise when Judas betrayed Him with a kiss. Jesus had already gone through all that awful shock and pain when Judas left that supper that night.

And His reaction was:

John 13:31 When therefore he was gone out Jesus says, Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him.

There is only one other place in Scripture that I can think of where someone responds with similar calmness to such irrevocable loss:

Job 1:21 and he said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: Jehovah gave, and Jehovah hath taken away; blessed be the name of Jehovah!

And yet, Jesus goes beyond Job,

beyond stoically accepting God’s will…

Jesus is praising it.

Although what is going to happen at the cross will be painful beyond imagining (for who can begin to conceive what it would be like for the perfect sinless Son of God to take upon Himself the sin of all humanity… to the point that Paul describes it as Him becoming sin itself (2 Corinthians 5:21))…

Although that suffering will be magnified by His complete understanding of what it will do to His beloved disciples who will panic, who will run and hide in utter fear and shame, not only rejected by their own people but failed, abandoned, by their Messiah, the one they had put all their hope in…

Although He knows that he won’t be able to spare His mother that piercing agony prophesied to her when He was but a baby…

All that anguish becomes nothing when compared to what God the Father will have accomplished through it all: Salvation, eternal life, for all who choose to believe: the restoration of Creation back to God’s perfect plan. The anguish is real, maybe to us seemingly unbearable, but it is finite, it is temporal, it is but a gasp in comparison to an eternity with our Heavenly Father.

That is what Jesus sees and therefore, through it all, what He sees is the Father’s glory. He has fulfilled His mission: to glorify the Father by carrying out His will.

The cross is the Son’s glory; and its Triumph is the Father’s glory.

John 13:32 If God be glorified in him, God also shall glorify him in himself, and shall glorify him immediately.

And therefore, this is not the end because Blessing always follows Obedience. The cross will be for Jesus just a steppingstone, from this world back to where He came from, now and forever in Glory. That is what He now tells His disciples:

John 13:33 Children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me; and, as I said to the Jews, Where I go ye cannot come, I say to you also now.

He knows they won’t get it right then, but He has more to say. Because the fact that He no longer will be here bodily with them means a new age is about to begin: the age of the Church. And that is the age where those that believe on the Son of God, who – as John told us at the beginning of this gospel – become children of God themselves, filled with eternal life – those will become the body of Christ, the physical presence of Christ, to the rest of the world.

If that is to be so, they too have to change, they too have to be transformed as Jesus will be transformed. And that transformation starts in the heart:

John 13:34 A new commandment I give to you, that ye love one another;

as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

The word for love throughout this verse is Agape.

This is a new commandment. Jesus says so. Back in the Sermon on the Mount He had already taught them, had taught us, the level of love required of us by the Law and beyond: Love your neighbor as yourself. Love your enemies and pray for them. Mercy, lovingkindness, peace bringing… are all to be the hallmarks by which the children of God are known. But He is now calling us to a Love that goes even beyond that love.

The Sermon on the Mount calls us to love with abandon, putting the goal of the salvation of others above our wants. But He is calling us now to be children of God the way He showed what it means to be Son of God. He is calling us to sacrificial Love, putting the goal of the salvation of others not just above our wants but our needs, even above our lives.

John 13:35 By this shall all know that ye are disciples of mine, if ye have love amongst yourselves.

Who is one another?

There is a delicate point here, a question we need to ask: is Jesus telling His disciples that this Agape Love, this sacrificial Love, is the kind of love they should have for one another? In other words, this is the way disciples should love disciples..?  Isn’t that how we tend to hear this verse every time it is quoted? As if it is saying, “this is the way you love believers, your Church family”

Is that possible? Is it possible that that is what Jesus meant? Because if it is, and you and I know human nature, it will imply to us that that level of love is not merited by the world, that unbelievers do not deserve it.

Do you see the danger here?

Could Jesus have meant that? I know… someone is going to quote me Paul when he says in Galatians 6:10 (NIV) Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.

But if we are honest, that certainly has a different “feel.” We have a hint of that difference in that first phrase: “as we have opportunity.” All we have to do is go back to the previous verse to realize that what Paul is saying there is that we have an ongoing practical duty to do good, that that is our responsibility. And more than once in the New Testament it is pointed out that we personally owe our first duty to our family. As we have the opportunity, we work to support our families. We ought to care for our widows, to care for those that naturally depend on us, and not expect “the Church” to do that instead of us. In that same sense, Paul then tells us that that familial circle ought to extend, by generosity, outside the bonds of blood; it should extend to our Church family.

But is that the kind of love Jesus is talking about here?

We already know the answer. For when Jesus taught that we must love our neighbor as we love ourselves, a man in the audience – wanting to justify himself (that is wanting to find a loophole) – asked Him, “but who is my neighbor?”

And Jesus’ answer, through the parable of the merciful Samaritan, was: My neighbor is anyone I move to love. In other words, every person out there is worthy to be loved the way I love myself.

If one of Jesus’ disciples had raised his hand at this point in the conversation in John 13 and had asked, “but who is this one another that we are to love with agape love?” then Jesus’ answer would have been: the same kind of people that I have loved with agape love.

Love one another as I have Loved you ALL.

Anything less does not deserve the name agape.