The Love of Jesus for His Own

Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.—John 13:1.

1. Those who study St. John’s Gospel critically find it divided into sections. As many as seven divisions are made out by some. In a simpler way the Gospel divides itself into two. The first division, containing twelve chapters, relates how Jesus wrought the works of Him that sent Him while it was day. The second, beginning with this thirteenth chapter, describes His departure. The keynote of the first section of the second part is this, that “having loved his own, he loved them unto the end.”

The latter half of St. John’s Gospel, which begins with these words, is the Holy of Holies of the New Testament. Nowhere else do the blended lights of our Lord’s superhuman dignity and human tenderness shine with such lambent brightness. Nowhere else is His speech at once so simple and so deep. Nowhere else have we the heart of God so unveiled to us. On no other page, even of the Bible, have so many eyes, glistening with tears, looked and had the tears dried. The immortal words which Christ spoke in that upper chamber are His highest self-revelation in speech, even as the Cross to which they led up is His most perfect self-revelation in Acts 1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

2. The explanation of all that follows is in these words: “Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.” It is the key to His action of washing their feet, to give them a proof of His enduring love. It is the explanation of all His previous life, and of the death He is to accomplish soon. St. John gives us in these words the right point of view for understanding the true significance of all that follows and of all that went before. He was possessed and governed by love, the Apostle declares. If we do not see this, we see nothing and understand nothing. All that Jesus did and was, was the fruit of love. He had loved His own which were in the world, and now He loves them unto the end. A Latin proverb says that the end crowns the work. When the Saviour said on the Cross, “It is finished,” His end of sacrifice was the carrying forward and culmination of all His grace. This supreme act is the summit and crown of all His love.

I

Love the Explanation

St. John, looking back reflectively, sees that only love explains all that Jesus did that night. He remembers how the disciples, as they came to the Upper Room, were heated with false ambitions, and were squabbling about precedence, so angry with and jealous of each other that none of them would perform the usual office of taking off each other’s sandals and washing the feet. There had arisen a contention which of them would be accounted greatest, and no one would lower his pretensions by undertaking a menial task and so confess himself the servant of all. It was in a temper of self-assertion and in a mood of resentment that they entered the Upper Room. How can they listen to all the deep things of the Spirit which their Master desires to tell them so long as such passions are in their hearts? That Jesus should humble Himself to teach them the lesson He did must have brought a bitter humiliation to them. To St. John it was a proof of enduring love, far more remarkable on looking back on it than it could have been at the time. For the shadow of the Cross was on Christ’s heart, the betrayal, the desolation, the trial, the crucifixion, the crisis of His whole cause and Kingdom. The Apostle sees on looking back that only perfect love could have done what Jesus did then, as He turned from His own thoughts and bent to the menial task. He had loved them—that was plain,—and nothing had tired out that love, not their folly or thoughtlessness or selfishness. He came to minister, to serve, and He went on serving unto the end. Their childish pettiness on this occasion only gave a gentler pity to His love and a sweeter and more patient tone to His speech. He does not give up loving because He sees they are so unworthy of His love. The shadow of their unloveliness only throws into keener brilliance the light of His love.

How many kinds, measures, and tones of meaning are comprehended in this word “Love”! So it is in common language, and even when one specific use of it has been excluded. So it is in Scripture. There is a difference in the love of God as God, of Jesus Christ as Saviour, of our friends and relations, of our neighbours, of our enemies, of our people, of our kind. It is all love, but with what various combinations of idea and measures of feeling! So on the Divine side. The Father loved the Son; God loved the world; Jesus loved His own (in that common character); He loved them as individuals; He “loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus,” and there was one disciple “whom Jesus loved.” We are all sensible of the differences of impression conveyed in these connexions, though it would be vain to attempt to describe them.1 [Note: T. D. Bernard, The Central Teaching of Jesus Christ, 35.]

1. Its Manifestation.—It is love that makes the man, builds the character, saves the city, and redeems the world. It is love that is the strongest and most potent motive of all in the action and speech of Jesus Christ. And here it is central to St. John’s statement, for Jesus “having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.” It is the key to all that follows right to the end of the section, which closes with the seventeenth chapter. That love is here, not as a lane of light going through these speeches, but as the sun in his full midday glory shining over the whole of the acts of Jesus Christ, and through the words that come from His lips. It is in love that He washes His disciples’ feet, as though He were the menial and they the master, so that He may impress upon their minds the sublimity of lowly service, of humble ministry for the salvation of the world. It is love that speaks out to this little band gathered at this Supper, and says, “The one badge which you are always to wear, by which you are always to be recognized everywhere, is love to one another.” It is love that says, Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God; believe in Me; believe in heaven; believe in the infinite power of the Spirit. It is love that tells upon these disciples, and binds them in love to Him, and makes them one with Him as the branch with the Vine. It is love that assures these followers of His, that though He will soon be received out of their sight, and they will no longer be able to grasp His hand, still another Comforter will come and be with them, and lead them into the sphere of all truth. And it is love that breathes out the great intercessory prayer, that these disciples may be kept from the evil of the world, and enabled to realize their unity with Him and with the Father; “Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end,” to the last, to the uttermost, till everything was finished. And at once He proceeded to wash their feet that He might show the reality and the quality of His love.

I was once talking with a friend about a man who had achieved great distinction, but who had somehow missed the love of his fellowmen, and my friend said: “The trouble with that man is that he cannot bow himself.” He had achieved integrity, rectitude, self-respect, but he had not attained that final grace of character which made him able to stoop and serve.1 [Note: F. G. Peabody, Mornings in the College Chapel, 2nd Ser., 49.]

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lack’d any thing.

“A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here”

Love said, “You shall be he.”

“I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,

I cannot look on Thee.”

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

“Who made the eyes but I?”

“Truth, Lord; but I have marr’d them: let my shame

Go where it doth deserve.”

“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”

“My dear, then I will serve.”

“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste My meat.”

So I did sit and eat.2 [Note: G. Herbert.]

2. Its Effect.—It was in the Upper Room that Jesus bound the hearts of His disciples to Himself for ever. This section of St. John’s Gospel has been described as “the development of faith in the disciples.” The narrative takes a new departure, retiring within the little company of the Twelve. The close is as clearly marked as the beginning. The precious scene which is here spread before us becomes more striking from the lurid background which it finds in the temple and the streets of Jerusalem. The growth of faith within—what a contrast to the growth of unbelief without! Here are the Eleven with Jesus—there are the scribes, the priests, the Pharisees. Outside, events are leading to the cross; inside, they are preparing for Pentecost and the salvation of the world. The last word the disciples spoke in that room shows how their faith had grown since they sat down with Jesus to the Paschal Feast: “Now know we that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee; by this we believe that thou camest forth from God.” Every fear and doubt has been driven out. Christ is all and in all to the disciples. After such a voluntary tribute, there was nothing left for Jesus save to bow with them at the feet of God. The world outside lies heavy on His heart; but its unbelief adds a new touch of gratitude and thanksgiving for the spirit of those who are with Him in the Upper Room. “O righteous Father, the world knew thee not, but I knew thee; and these knew that thou didst send me.”

If we want to kill our pride we must burn it in the consuming fire of shame. The pride of these twelve men melted away in the fierce heat of their own shame. Let a man know that Jesus is stooping at his feet with the basin, and the fire of shame will be kindled. For that is always the attitude of our Master towards us. “He loved me and gave himself for me.” And we may alter the tense of that great sentence, turning it from the past into the present, and it is equally and unutterably true, “He loves me, and gives himself for me.” It is when a man realizes that supreme sacrifice of our Lord that all his petty pride and vanity shrivel away. It was when St. Paul felt the Master at his feet that there came from his bursting heart the great and zealous ambition, “I count all things but loss that I may win Christ.” Christ changes our ideas of sovereignty; He takes the dispositions we had resented, and henceforth they are crowns. The servile virtues are lifted into heavenly places in Christ. Humility, obedience, service—all shine with the radiant distinction of the Lord. “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.” The washing of weary feet is a ministry ever needed in the dusty ways of human life; and if that ministry is to become a ready and spontaneous affection we need the fulness of the Holy Ghost.1 [Note: J. H. Jowett, in The Examiner, April 12, 1906, p. 348.]

They thought to heal me, when they cast

Reproving glances towards me;

As if their proud contempt could shrive me

Of my sin, or scorn could drive me

E’er to mend my ways,—

Liefer end my days!

They thought to lift me, when they held

A pattern pure above me;

As if to gaze on cold perfection

Ever could give new direction

To my wrecked desires;

Or awake new fires!

Then came a voice of cadence sweet,

And winning tones that touched me,

“I love thee, friend”—and, deeply welling

In my soul, and all-compelling,

Love leapt at the sound;

Life and Heaven I found!2 [Note: T. Crawford, Horæ, Serenæ, 18.]

II

Love for His Own

1. In regard to the love of Christ, the one distinction to be recognized here is that between His love to the world and His love to His own which are in the world. The love of Christ to the world is love to men as such: He being the head of the creation, which through Him came into being, and of the race of whose reason and conscience, He, as the Eternal Word, is the author, and with which, in taking flesh, He has assumed a natural and universal kindred. It is a love of compassion and benevolence and Divine desire, in which He gives Himself for all, and dies for all, and provides reconciliation, and preaches peace, and seeks the lost, and waits to be gracious, and would “draw all men unto himself.” But the love for His own which are in the world is no longer mere desire and endeavour. It is being realized in results intended. It has found response, and is generating a reciprocal life, and has the joy of exercising an attraction which is felt and owned, and of carrying on a work which imparts blessing and tends to perfection, restoring men to God through relations with Him who has loved them, relations which are spiritual, intimate, and eternal. Such love enters into the inner life of the beloved, and finds occasion for its exercise in their needs and dangers, their infirmities and failings. It delights to comfort and protect, to cleanse, to heal, to strengthen, to exalt. It is an inexhaustible fountain of gifts; it is the “love of Christ which passeth knowledge.” Yet, being true love, it is not content to give. It desires also to receive. It would be understood and trusted and confided in. It invites sympathy and fellowship. It claims reciprocity of affection. It would not only love, but be loved. Even in these last respects this is the character of the love which these chapters disclose. For our sake they disclose it, teaching us how He once loved, and by consequence how He ever loves, how He now loves, His own which are in the world.

Is there any reason why we should be afraid of saying that the universal love of Jesus Christ, which gathers into His bosom all mankind, does fall with special tenderness and sweetness upon those who have made Him theirs and have surrendered themselves to be His? Surely it must be that He has special nearness to those who love Him; surely it is reasonable that He should have special delight in those who try to resemble Him; surely it is only what one might expect of Him that He should in a special manner honour the drafts, so to speak, of those who have confidence in Him, and are building their whole lives upon Him. Surely, because the sun shines down upon dunghills and all impurities, that is no reason why it should not lie with special brightness on the polished mirror that reflects its lustre. Surely, because Jesus Christ loves the publicans and the harlots and the outcasts and the sinners, that is no reason why He should not bend with special tenderness over those who, loving Him, try to serve Him, and have set all their hopes upon Him. The rainbow strides across the sky, but there is a rainbow in every little dewdrop that hangs glistening on the blades of grass.1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

True charity or love in its noblest forms is in some measure like the Divine love. In some ways it is ubiquitous, though in other ways it seems condensed or concentrated. As Dr. Martineau said concerning the omnipresence of God and His special presence in the soul of Christ, no distant star missed Him the more because He shone with such peculiar brightness in the fair glory of that pure life.1 [Note: A. H. Craufurd, The Religion and Ethics of Tolstoy, 74.]

Perhaps we do not yet know what the word “to love” means. There are within us lives in which we love unconsciously. To love thus means more than to have pity, to make inner sacrifices, to be anxious to help and give happiness; it is a thing that lies a thousand fathoms deeper, where our softest, swiftest, strongest words cannot reach it.2 [Note: M. Macterlinck, The Treasure of the Humble, 162.]

2. He loved His own which were in the world. For He must leave them in the world. For many years after He has reached His glory, they will be exposed to pain and peril. So, in His tender pitying love for “his own,” He devoted His last free hours of life to their instruction and warning, and comfort. In the majesty of His humility the Only-begotten Son of God washed the disciples’ feet, even those of the traitor Judas. He instituted the blessed Sacrament of the Supper as the memorial of His love. He gave the disciples the promise of the Comforter. He left them the legacy of His own peace. He poured out in their behalf as well as His own the powerful pleadings of His great intercessory prayer.

The emigrant who, after years of absence in a foreign land, is at length on the eve of returning to his native shores, may be excused if he allows the new ties formed in the strange country to slacken, seeing he has the near prospect of looking again upon the old familiar scenes, and upon the faces of father and mother, in his childhood’s home. But who can conceive the attractions and associations of the Redeemer’s home? In going back to God He was returning to the glories of heaven, to the throne of the universe, to the companionships of eternity, to the bosom of the Father! And yet, in this same glorious hour, so far from being self-absorbed, His love begins to burn with irrepressible ardour for “his own,” whom He is to leave behind.3 [Note: C. Jerdan, For the Lord’s Table, 36.]

III

Love to the End

“Unto the end”—this is the measure of the Saviour’s love, and the word does not mean merely so long as He lived, but also in the highest degree, to the very uttermost. It is not merely a measure of time, but a measure of the quality and passion of love. Not merely to the end of His life did He love, but to the end of love, to the limits of a limitless love. There are no conditions, no barriers, no limits. Place the end where you will or how you will, draw the circumference as wide as you may, He fills the whole circle with His love. He loves unto the end, that is its quality. To the end of His life, the end of our life, the end of the world, the end of time—more than that, it is to the end of an endless thing, to the extreme limit of the limitless, the very end of love itself. It does not mean merely that He loved till He died, not merely that He loved in the highest degree; it includes all that and more. It means that He loved through all that love brought Him, the humiliation, the suffering, the sorrowful way, the Cross. Love to the end expresses the height and depth and breadth and strength of love; and that was how He loved and loves. Shakespeare, in the cxvi. Sonnet, gives this enduring quality as characteristic of the highest and best love:

Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove: …

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

Many good commentators prefer to read the last words of the text, “He loved them unto the uttermost,” rather than “unto the end”—so taking them to express the depth and degree rather than the permanence and perpetuity of our Lord’s love. And that seems to me to be far the worthier and the nobler meaning, as well as the one which is borne out by the usual signification of the expression in other Greek authors. It is much to know that the emotions of these last moments did not interrupt Christ’s love. It is even more to know that in some sense they perfected it, giving even a greater vitality to its tenderness, and a more precious sweetness to its manifestations. So understood, the words explain for us why it was that in the sanctity of the Upper Room there ensued the marvellous act of the feet-washing, the marvellous discourses which follow, and the climax of all, that High-priestly prayer. They give utterance to a love which Christ’s consciousness at that solemn hour tended to sharpen and to deepen.1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

1. He has loved His own all the way.—Let us interpret all our experience by this great fact, and the whole path is illumined and the meaning of much that was dark is made clear. We will not judge God by every little unexplained corner of the road, but by the whole long stretch of His providence. While we were in the dark patches we did not understand and sometimes doubted, but on looking back over all the way we see it to be ruled and governed and directed by love. The disciples might sometimes think they had reason to doubt the Master’s perfect love. At this very time they might ask, why if He loved them they should be bereaved, why they were to be left as sheep among the wolves? His dealing with them was indeed marked by love, but was it all love and only love and love unto the very end? St. John saw afterwards that it was so, from first to last—indeed there was no last.

We sometimes do not understand the way of His love. Some passages and events puzzle us and alarm our faith. We cannot explain them on the hypothesis that they are the result of absolute love. Why should certain things happen that we dreaded, and other things be denied us that we desired? As George Bowen says in his beautiful book, Love Revealed: “He takes extraordinary liberties with us. Believing in His love and having our own particular conception of what love is, we settle in our minds that a certain contingency can never by any possibility be allowed to come to pass. Against everything else we prepare—not against that. We feel that it would be an unpardonable outrage to His most holy nature to suppose for a moment that He should suffer that contingency to come to pass. And yet that is the very thing that He brings to pass. We had boasted of the love of Jesus among our neighbours and told them that He would not suffer our brother Lazarus to die, but would assuredly come and restore him to health; and lo! Lazarus dies and is buried, and it is much if our sense of the love of Jesus be not buried with him. He takes what seem to us frightful liberties with our sensibilities and with our trust.” Well, St. John did not understand all that was taking place that night in the Upper Room, and all that happened so soon after, but his final testimony afterwards was, as the final explanation of it all: “Having loved his own, he loved them unto the end.”1 [Note: H. Black, Christ’s Service of Love, 199.]

2. And He loves His own still.—In the glory, when He reached it, He poured out the same loving heart; and to-day He looks down upon us with the same face that bent over the table in the Upper Room, and the same tenderness flows to us. When St. John saw his Master next, after His Ascension, amidst the glories of the vision in his rocky Patmos, though His face was as the sun shineth in his strength, it was the old face. Though His hand bore the stars in a cluster, it was the hand that had been pierced with the nails. Though the breast was girded with the golden girdle of sovereignty and of priesthood, it was the breast on which St. John’s happy head had lain; and though the voice was “as the sound of many waters,” it soothed itself to a murmur, gentle as that with which the tideless sea about him rippled upon the silvery sand when He said, “Fear not … I am the first and the last.” Knowing that He goes to the Father, He loves to the uttermost, and being with the Father, He still so loves.

Having loved, He loves. Because He had been a certain thing, therefore He is and He shall be that same. That is an argument that implies Divinity. About nothing human can we say that because it has been therefore it shall be. Alas! about much that is human we have to say the converse, that because it has been, therefore it will cease to be. And though they are few and they are poor who have had no experience in their lives of human hearts whose love in the past has been such that it manifestly is for ever, yet we cannot with the same absolute confidence say about one another, even about the dearest, “Having loved, he loves.” But we can say so about Christ. There is no exhaustion in that great stream which pours out from His heart, no diminution in its flow.

“He loved His own unto the end,”

And asked their love;

He said, “I call you each My friend,

And not My servant; and I send

One from above,

Who shall reveal such grace and truth to you

As in My sojourn here ye never knew.”

“But why depart?” they cry, “why will

To leave us here?

Thou sayest that Thou dost love us still;

Can it be love if thus Thou fill

Our cup of fear?

O Master, Master, should’st Thou now depart

All sorrow needs must overwhelm our heart.”

Yet it is love: He said “I go;

For could I stay,

Your earth-bound thoughts would never know

Love’s fullest mysteries, which flow

From Me alway;

My human heart might linger with you yet,

But now affections must on heaven be set.

“You could not know Me more, unless

My Spirit came

And taught the ways of righteousness,

How sin and judgment to confess,

How learn to blame

All clinging to inferior things of earth,

Blind to the glory of your heavenly birth.

“My peace I leave with you, but not

As this world gives;

My Spirit comes to you, yet what

He teaches shows no earthly lot:

He ever lives,

The world must learn. I hear the Father’s call

Away from earth!—A while I leave you all.

“Arise! let us go hence.” He rose,

And, as He spake,

Calmly He moved, as one who knows

The coming onset of his foes.

The night winds shake

With distant sounds, as through the olive grove

“Let us depart” is echoed from above.1 [Note: William Josiah Irons.]

The Love of Jesus for His Own

Literature

Beeching (H. C.), The Bible Doctrine of the Sacraments, 68.

Benson (R. M.), The Final Passover, ii. (pt. i.), 1.

Bernard (T. D.), The Central Teaching of Jesus Christ, 31.

Black (H.), Christ’s Service of Love, 192.

Blackwood (A.), Christian Service and Responsibility, 26.

Carter (T. T.), Meditations on the Public Life of our Lord, ii. 222.

Elmslie (W. G.), Memoir and Sermons, 267.

Jeffrey (J.), The Personal Ministry of the Son of Man, 253.

Jerdan (C.), For the Lord’s Table, 30.

Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year: Sundays after Trinity, xiii–end, 451.

McClelland (T. C), The Mind of Christ, 69.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: John ix.–xiv., 170.

Morrison (G. H.), The Footsteps of the Flock, 241.

Peabody (F. G.), Mornings in the College Cluipel, 2nd Ser., 48.

Raleigh (A.), The Way to the City, 23.

Smellie (A.), In the Hour of Silence, 69.

Smith (J.), Short Studies, 153.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xiv., No. 810.

Taylor (W. M.), Peter the Apostle, 110.

Telford (J.), The Story of the Upper Room, 14.

Watson (J.), The Upper Room, 60.

Wilkinson (J. B.), Mission Sermons, 3rd Ser., 324.

Christian World Pulpit, xlvi. 199 (Wright); lvii. 349 (Wiseman); Ixiii. 344 (Lacey); lxxiv. 397 (Goldsmith French); lxxviii. 95 (Wicher).

Churchman’s Pulpit: Fifth Sunday in Lent: vi. 230 (Wilson); Holy Week: vi. 480 (Codd); Ascension Day: viii. 439 (Lacey).

Examiner (1906), 348 (Jowett).

Preacher’s Magazine, vii. 197 (Clifford).