Immediately after Jesus’ betrayer Judas Iscariot exits the last supper, The Lord Jesus whips out a brand new commandment for His remaining disciples in John 13:34 :

“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.”

The commandment the disciples would have been familiar with up until that point and knew very well was, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” from Leviticus 19:18. So this was indeed a new commandment in that it had never before been issued in scripture or by Christ while He was with His disciples.

It was also a commandment that was prompted or initiated by the Lord’s imminent departure from His disciples. He was not going to be with them any longer and this was one of the three things the Lord introduced them to. It was His departure that gave rise to the introduction of all three and in particular this one. His imminent departure was the immediate trigger to the issuing of this new commandment elevating its importance. Here was one of the the things He was leaving with them and wanted them to intentionally value and pursue. After informing them that they could not follow Him where He would be going thereafter, He introduces this new commandment which had hitherto never been given. And the commandment could not be any clearer – that they love one another: just as he had loved them.

His love had been on display for them to see and was about to climax in His sacrifice for them. The Lord reiterated the command in John 15:12 linking it on this occasion to the greatest and most enduring expression of His love for them. The extent or measure of the love they were to love one another with was defined by Christ Himself when He stated, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)

Even today Christ and His sacrificial love for us remains the model of our love for one another. It behoves us therefore that in order to fulfill this command we ourselves need to know Christ’s love for us. For unless we come into the knowledge of Christ’s love for us, unless we grow in our knowledge and understanding of His love, we will fail miserably at fulfilling this command. So this new command introduced and instituted by Christ has a double edge: get to know and grow in the knowledge of how much we are loved by the Lord; and then love the brethren to the same extent and in the same manner.

To love in the same way and to the same extent Christ loves us is a big ask, a very tall order. Very often we try to generate that love or put it on. But that’s impossible and definitely not what the Lord commanded. The ability to love as Christ loved rests on one thing and one thing only: knowing and growing in that knowledge of Christ’s love for oneself. One is truly able to fulfil this command to love the brethren as Christ loved us in as much as one knows or gets to know Christ’s love for oneself. This is the deciding factor, knowing the love of Christ for oneself. Period. Where that knowledge is lacking or absent, Christ’s command will also be lacking or absent.

We are to love with the love that we have been loved with and that love begs to be known and discovered by each one of us. Only then can it be transmitted through us. We are not called to generate our own love but transmit and share that which we have received – His love.

Christ is not seeking the creation of our love but the transmission of His through us.

It was not any kind of love that Christ wanted His disciples to be identified by but His kind of love. The measure of that love was defined by Christ Himself when He stated, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13). Any other kind of love or love that stops short of Christ’s would be doing Him a disservice – it would be a gross misrepresentation of Him as this was what Christ intended His disciples to be identified by as His.

This was the marker that Christ selected to identify His with Him.

It was also not without reason that John mentions the fact that The Lord loved His own to the end at the start of the evening of the passover meal – John 13:1 ​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, he loved them to the end.

This was and still is the nature and extent of Christ’s love for His own, for us. Unlike the other rabbis and their disciples, Christ’s were not to be known by their brand of interpretation of scripture but by how they lived in community with one another, by the brand of love that permeated that community. This is where the rubber meets the road – in our conducts, behaviour and interactions with one another is where it’s going to tell if we are really and truly disciples of Christ.

This was the “trademark” that the Lord selected for His community.