Perhaps no human person knew Jesus as well as John the Beloved Disciple. His Gospel reveals depths of knowledge as to who Jesus is found nowhere else. More than any other New Testament writer, John seems to reveal Jesus’ inner motivations. His gospel is very different to the other three in a number of ways.
John records conversations Jesus has with individuals when the other disciples were not present; Nicodemus, for example, and the woman by the well in Samaria. It seems that Jesus kept John present at these times, and the gospel accounts are the result. In the other gospels, Jesus seems only to have come to Jerusalem towards the end of his life; much of John seems to happen there. If Jesus went up to Jerusalem privately, and took John with him as a travelling companion, that would explain why only John tells stories such as that of the lame man by the Pool of Bethesda or that of the man born blind.
Most significantly, only John records the many words spoken by Jesus to his disciples at the Last Supper. In addition to earlier teachings such as “I am the Light of the World” and “I am the Resurrection and the life,” comes this profound teaching: “I give you a new commandment; love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you must love one another. A man has no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. What I command you is to love one another.”
Jesus is speaking on the threshold of his suffering and death for our sake. What he did, he did because he loves us unconditionally and to the very depths of his being. To be prepared to die for someone else is the ultimate expression of love. And he demands the same of his disciples. The word “friends” is used to contrast the disciples’ new status as honoured guests with that of servants, who merely work in a house and do their master’s bidding. But this new status is dependent upon the disciples loving one another even to laying down their lives for one another.
It is significant that Jesus calls this a new Commandment. The Commandments, or Law, were the foundation of the Jewish religion. Without them there can be no Jewish religion, because they form the basis of Israel’s relationship with God. Jesus swallows them up into this new Commandment: “Love one another; just as I have loved you, so you must love one another.” He converts the commandments from being regulations governing Israel’s behaviour into a dynamic personal relationship; followers of Jesus are bound to each other, to Jesus and through Jesus, to the Father, through love. A total, unconditional love which refuses nothing to the loved one, not even one’s own life; a love which transforms us, making us like the Lord who loves us.
Are we capable of such love? Yes, because Jesus has first loved us, and has poured that love into our hearts. Because he has loved us so, we can love one another so. In Jesus, the command of God in Deuteronomy, “Hear, O Israel; the Lord your God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” has become a powerful reality. In us, it must become the same reality.
Fr Phillip
