Or, One Rule That Creates Glorious Community on Earth
Scripture: John 13:31-35
Date: August 18, 2013
Speaker: Sean Higgins
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There is a revelatory reason why God, in the Person of the Son, took on flesh and lived among men. When John wrote, “We have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth,” he wasn’t exaggerating. The glory of God in Jesus reached depths that would not have been known had Jesus stayed in heaven. The way of God’s getting honor for Himself on earth is the same way of life that God calls us to on earth after salvation.
Not everyone can handle this. Even Jesus’ own disciples weren’t ready. In John 13 He is preparing them for His departure and their assignment on this final night before His crucifixion.
There are three distinct notes in this paragraph. Verses 31-32 ring the note of glory. Some form of glorified is found five times in two sentences. Verse 33 strikes the note of Jesus’ imminent departure along with His explanation that the disciples could not follow Him, which verse 36 picks up again. In between are verses 34 and 35 which require a certain behavior by those who represent Christ. The key note, love, resounds four times in two sentences. The three notes together make a major chord that form the backbone to the title track of our community.
Three notes: immediate glory, imminent departure, imperative love. In context, the glorification comes as a surprise. It sounds as if the glory lands before He leaves. His commandment makes sense in light of His leaving, but does it have anything to do with His glory? Absolutely. It’s why He leaves His disciples on earth when He left. Ecclesiastes 3:8 says that there is a time to love, and Jesus defines His people as those who love one another here and now.
The Father and Son are at it again in a circumstance most unbecoming them and, because of that, most honoring to them.
When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. (John 13:31–32, ESV)
Notice the time indicators: when, now, at once. This is a feast of adverbs. John records the response of Jesus as He relates this glory talk to a definitive hour.
Judas just left the building. Since the beginning of chapter 13 Jesus and the Twelve were in position to share the Passover meal. Jesus washed all their feet (verses 1-17) and then announced that one of them would betray Him (verses 18-30). The disciples questioned who it could be. Jesus told John, then shared the morsel of bread with Judas. After Satan entered him, Judas immediately went out and it was night (verse 30).
When he had gone out, when Judas left and Jesus was alone with the 11, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of man glorified.” The now along with the passive verbs tie Jesus’ glory to Judas’ exit. How can that be? To be glorified means to be exalted, not sold. It means to be honored, not betrayed; praised, not killed. Instead of complaining about Judas’ disloyalty and duplicity, Jesus said it was glory for Him.
Not only for Him. And God is glorified in him, in the Son of Man. Again, this is not future, it is now, the dark of the night. Something doesn’t fit and can’t help but glorify God as it glorifies the Son.
[T]he supreme moment of divine self-disclosure, the greatest moment of displayed glory, was in the shame of the cross. That is the primary reason why the title Son of Man is employed here. (Carson, 482)
The situation signals His glorification in verse 31. God secures His glorification in verse 32. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. God will exalt the Son certainly and deliberately. Jesus descended in glory and will be ascended in glory.
Had the Son of Man not come, He could never have been sold or sacrificed for sinners. Had the Son of Man not been sacrificed for sinners, we would not know His glory. It is His glory to go low.
Jesus already told the crowd that He was leaving soon. Now He says the same thing to His disciples.
Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’ (John 13:33, ESV)
Little children is τεκνία, used only here in John’s Gospel but many times in 1 John. Jesus was only 33, but He was their leader and He fulfilled the fatherly role in the Passover feast. His address expresses His tender affection for them, and it also underlines some of the immaturities in His disciples. He loved them, but they were not fully mature yet.
He told the Jews that He was leaving (7:33-34; 8:21) but He also told them that they would die in their sins. He does not tell the disciples anything like that. They would miss Him, seek Him, and yet they could not go where He was going. He doesn’t leave because He can’t wait to get away from them; He’s leaving because it’s His time.
In verse 36 Jesus tells Peter that “you cannot follow me know, but you will follow afterward.” The disciples could not follow Jesus in His sacrificial death, though they would follow Him in death. They also could follow Jesus to heaven and the Father but they would not yet. He had work for them to do.
The flow of thought breaks with these two verses. What a break it is. Peter gets caught up on Jesus leaving and seems to miss this instruction. Jesus mandated behavior that would shape a community and that would be obvious to the world.
There may be no more practical and impossible sounding verse in John than this.
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. (John 13:34, ESV)
Thankfully Jesus will repeat this again (15:12), so we don’t have to wring every drop now. But we need as much as we can. This verse is the reason for calling the Thursday of Passion Week “Maundy Thursday.” The Latin word for “commandment” is mandatum, so Maundy is “Commandment Thursday,” not some odd Godfather reference. It is unlike any other Thursday in history.
The command to love is not only not new, it was well known. God commanded all Israel to love Him with all their being (Deuteronomy 6:5) and He commanded them to love their neighbors (Leviticus 19:18). Neighbor certainly includes one another, so the act of loving nor the aim of love is new. It also isn’t enough to say that Jesus just calls it “new” to get the disciples’ attention (contra Calvin).
What is new is the glorious standard of love. Love one another, love one another, have love for one another just as I have loved you (also in 15:12). Love just as Jesus = LJAJ.
How did He love? He loved by humble service, as the foot-washing demonstrated. He loved by personal sacrifice, as the cross demonstrated (cf. 15:13). But what makes this just as glorious? Or, what is so new, so special, so divine about this love? The Trinitarian, glorious love of Jesus was costly and undeserving. Jesus loved the unlovely to beauty. Jesus loved the immature to spiritual adulthood. Jesus loved the unrighteous into saintliness. Jesus’ love changed lives, His love created a new community of people from immature, proud, selfish. When He chose His team, He chose the to adore the unadorable at His own expense.
He was (and is) the Teacher and the Lord. He is the Son of Man, one with the Father. And His glory, shone brightly on the cross as He loved His own to the end, those who were not lovely. This is new.
The greater the ugliness, the greater the love that brings it to loveliness.
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 5:3)
We will never be glorious until we love all the “one anothers” that annoy us. We wait to love until they take at least some sort of lovable step toward us. We want to parent children who already know what to do. We want to wash feet that aren’t dirty. We want to humble ourselves before great people so that they’ll see and lift us up. We want to serve others that deserve to be served. But this is not disciple-love. This is not our Lord’s commandment.
When we obey, the results are not ostentatious but they will be obvious.
By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35, ESV)
The whole world, all people, will see. They won’t be able to explain it but that’s what makes it interesting. Up to this point it was obvious who the disciples of Jesus were because they went where He went. Their feet touched the same ground His did. Now, as Jesus departs, this is how men will recognize who is with Jesus: those who love one another as He loved.
I say that this is the mark of community rather than the mark of discipleship because the love cannot be love in isolation. The commandment requires group interaction, not personal behavior alone. You is plural, disciples is plural, love one another is mutual, so it must be more than one. Love only exists in relationship. The trouble is that the only people we can have relationships with have a lot of problems. It’s why the “just as Jesus” clause hits so hard. Divine love grows toward the dark.
Jesus didn’t come and love so that we could have really good quiet times, personal devotions. He didn’t love us so that our eschatology could be orthodox (13:36-14:4). He didn’t come so that we would be bold martyrs (1 Corinthians 13:3). He came so that we would be glorious, full of His joy as we love others up to loveability. The world loves those who are already lovely. The world often doesn’t see anything obviously different about our community.
It is not enough to say that His love is counter-cultural. His love creates culture. It is community by commandment.
Yes, we are called to love our neighbors. We are called to love our enemies. But loving one another is more fundamental and more pressing and, in some ways, more difficult. It is a grown-up love.
The 11 were immature. Though they didn’t betray Jesus like Judas, they all denied Him. They were sinners, arguing about their own greatness while with Jesus. Jesus doesn’t fit His disciples to follow Him in presence, not immediately. He prepares them to follow Him in practice.
God promised a Savior:
I will give you as a covenant for the people,
a light for the nations,
to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness.
I am the LORD; that is my name;
my glory I give to no other,
(Isaiah 42:6a-7)
We, like our Lord, are glorious to the degree that we love the unlovely. This is part of why He came, part of why He leaves us here. We will not be able to love anything unlovely in heaven. We will not need overcoming love in heaven. It is glory to love the unglorified. The heavenly community won’t irritate us enough, neglect us, or challenge us. We don’t want to love, we want to love in a Thomas Kinkade painting where the snow gives you a warm feeling and you can’t hear anyone bickering because they’re all inside. That’s not divine love.
Oh that we would be accused of loving “The kind of person only a Christian would love.”
How does the note of Jesus’ glory end on the note of the disciples’ recognition? Because what makes Jesus glorious makes the disciples obvious: loving others who don’t deserve it at great cost. We love the ignorant, the complicated, the needy, the sinful. Now is the time to love like Jesus, a time to love when love counts to create community.