Chapter 33: How To Love Like Jesus

What do we need to know and who do we need to be to love like Him?

Over the last few chapters we have been focusing on how Jesus radically alters the game when he came to earth. He gave us his mission statement showing us that he came to earth to undo the curse of sin. As his ministry progressed we saw how he undid death, disease, demon possession, and dearth (a lack of what is needed). We then saw how Jesus radically alters the status quo when it comes to our personal lives too. Last week we saw that this starts with the need to be born again and we explored what that means for us. You can read all about that here.

This week we continue looking at how Jesus changes the lives of those who seek to follow him. We see that to follow Jesus means that we need to love like him by radically serving those around us, even at the cost of our own dignity.

The best example of this is found in John 13:1-10 where Jesus washes his disciple’s feet.

John 13:1-10

Before the Passover Festival, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. Now when it was time for supper, the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas, Simon Iscariot’s son, to betray him. Jesus knew that the Father had given everything into his hands, that he had come from God, and that he was going back to God. So he got up from supper, laid aside his outer clothing, took a towel, and tied it around himself. Next, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet and to dry them with the towel tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who asked him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered him, “What I’m doing you don’t realize now, but afterward you will understand.” “You will never wash my feet,” Peter said. Jesus replied, “If I don’t wash you, you have no part with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not only my feet, but also my hands and my head.” “One who has bathed,” Jesus told him, “doesn’t need to wash anything except his feet, but he is completely clean. You are clean, but not all of you.” For he knew who would betray him. This is why he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

What is radical service built on?

In this account we learn that if we are to follow in Jesus’ footsteps, radically serving others, we need to serve from a foundation of unconditional love. The event of Jesus washing his disciple’s feet is set against the backdrop of the Passover Festival. As we have seen previously, this festival was an annual celebrate of how God saved Israel out of slavery in Egypt. To be safe from the Angel of Death, the Israelites had to sacrifice a Passover lamb, smearing it’s blood over their doorposts in a visceral reminder that blood was needed for salvation. The fact that the foot washing happens in the middle of the Passover feast gives us a powerful hint of the extent of Jesus’ love. He knew that at the conclusion of this Passover, he would ultimately be crucified and sacrifices on behalf of his people. His blood would cover his chosen people, in the same way the Passover lamb’s blood covered the people.

This profound love of Jesus shows us what we are called to. To serve radically we need to consider the breadth and depth of our love for other people. A crucial element for us to realise is that our service of other people does not depend on the other person… Notice whose feet Jesus washed: Simon Peter, sure, that makes sense – he was going to build the church. John, the disciple Jesus loved – well that makes sense too. But also Judas – the betrayer. Jesus knew that Judas would betray him, and yet even here Jesus shows his radical love for the betrayer. If we are going to follow in Jesus’ footsteps and loving radically like he did, we need to love unconditionally. Jesus’ example calls us into a kind of love the world at the time would not have understood. It is a kind of radical love the world still doesn’t understand. Yet it is the kind of love God’s kingdom is built on.

What was Jesus’ Identity?

How did Jesus see himself? Jesus knew who he was and what he came to do. He understood his purpose. Notice what John says in v1.  “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”

Jesus was fully aware that his time was up and that he would soon be crucified. His mission was almost at an end. He was the Son of God, destined to return to the Father. His identity was securely rooted in his relationship with God. Knowing who he was, he continued pursuing his mission to its fullest extent.

This is crucial for us to understand as believers. Who we are in Jesus is the core of our identity. It is the central thing that should shape our actions and interactions. Our world today is especially interested in this concept of identity. Our world tells us that we are our gender identity, we are our cultural identity, we are our racial identity, we are our socioeconomic status, and we are our political ideology. Even our hobbies and interests can be the things by which people define themselves. Part of the reason our world is so divided today is because we have bought into the lie that if someone else isn’t part of our identity group, we cannot agree or get along.

What we need to realize is that as Christians we are first and foremost “little-Christs”. This is our core identity, everything else is subject to and formed by that core identity. There is no such thing as a white-male-middle-class-Christian. There is just a Jesus follower who happens to be white, and male and middle class. There is no such thing as a conservative-republican-Christian. There is just a Jesus follower who happens to be conservative and republican. Our core identity is not our political ideology, racial background, socioeconomic status or anything else. As Christians, our core identity is Christ and him crucified.

When we recognize this, we are radically freed to serve people from vastly different groups. Because our identity anchor is in Jesus, we no longer need to be externally validated by our group. We don’t need to play the same identity games the world plays, because we are not of this world. We can just as happily serve people we vehemently disagree with as we can people who look like us and think like us, precisely because we see them in terms of their relationship to Jesus rather than the identity markers they have chosen for themselves. Every human being is but a lost sheep in need of a shepherd. Every human being’s identity is fundamentally and primarily defined by whether or not they have been found by the chief shepherd.

So where to from here?

This image of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet call all who would follow him into a life of radical service. This life of service points us toward the Garden City, where we see a beautiful picture of the day when we will join all others who follow Jesus from every nation, tribe and tongue, living in perfect unity with God himself. All who believe will one day walk into that Garden City, but will you be there?