SERMON: “The Love of Christ” (John 13:1)
“The Love of Christ” (John 13:1)
Series: “John: Life in Christ’s Name” Text: John 13:1
By: Shaun Marksbury Date: March
3, 2024
Venue: Living Water Baptist Church Occasion: AM Service
I.
Introduction
Love is a popular
topic today. The world loves to talk
about love! However, if you get up close
to examine the kind of love the world has, it is but a superficial veneer. For instance, people will get divorced today
for some of the silliest reasons.[1] Here
are some examples of that:
- A man divorced his wife just days after their wedding
because he finally saw her without makeup. He felt deceived by her cosmetics, including the
false eyelashes. A beach outing revealed
the truth when the ocean washed away her makeup.
- A woman in California left her husband of 22
years after she learned he had voted for President Donald J. Trump. She considered it a “betrayal.”
- Another woman divorced her husband, because, as she said on national television, he was just “too nice.” She was bothered by how often he said “I love you” and that his great cooking caused her to gain weight.
For many people,
love is a noun, a feeling or an idea that you can fall into or out of, hence
frivolous divorces. In Scripture, though,
it is most often a verb — something done for someone else. Scripture demonstrates love through the
actions of God in Christ. When Scripture
commands Christians to love one another, for instance, it always gives tangible
examples of service. Love is the
opposite of self-serving in God’s Word.
This section of
text takes place in an upper room in a larger Jerusalem home. It includes a meal, which the other Gospels
record as Jesus’s last supper with His disciples. While the other three Gospels (Matthew, Mark,
and Luke) focus on the institution of the Lord’s Supper or communion during the
meal, John gives far more details from that night, highlighting other events
and teaching from that evening. These
events include Jesus washing His disciples’ feet and His promise to send them the
Holy Spirit. Some consider these five
chapters Jeus’s “farewell discourse;” it parallels Moses’s final address to the
people in Deut. 31–33, and it seems to center around Jesus’s charge to the
disciples to remain in Him and His teaching (John 15:1–17).[2]
We’ll note four
points about Christ’s love. This love
doesn’t just apply to His disciples at that moment, of course, but to us as
well. Christ
loves all those who are His own with a sacrificial love, a divine love, a sanctifying
love, and a complete love.
II.
First, Jesus loves us with a sacrificial love
Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus
knowing that His hour had come…
As we get into this
verse, we should use the first few words here to set the stage. First, we need to remind ourselves what the
Passover was. It was an event God
commanded for yearly observance to remind the people of how He delivered them from
Egypt. Remember that, on the night of
the final plague, the enslaved Jews applied the blood of a lamb to the
doorposts of their homes; the angel of death then “passed over” the homes
protected by the blood, sparing the firstborn inside (Exod. 12:7, 12–13). The meal occurred after the sacrifice of the
lambs. This work pointed to the
redemption found in Jesus Christ, who’s blood covers sinners and protects them from
the wrath to come.
As such, one
commentary notes,
This
Passover would be the last divinely authorized one. From this point on there would be a new
memorial—not one recalling the lambs’ blood on the doorposts but the blood of
the Lamb of God (1:29, 36; Rev. 5:6; 6:9; 7:10, 17; 14:4, 10; 15:3; 19:9; 22:1,
3) “poured out for many for forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28). The Last Supper celebrated by the Lord with
His disciples gave Him opportunity to use the elements of the Passover meal to
form a transition from the old covenant Passover to the new covenant Lord’s
Supper (1 Cor. 11:23–26).[3]
So, this is the feast
of the Passover that we’re reading about here, and the text says that it was
just before it. We might take this to
mean that it was a day or two before, but this also could mean that it was just
before the feast or the Passover seder.
The other Gospels record that there were preparations to undertake; for
instance, Matthew 26:17–19 says, “Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Where
do You want us to prepare for You to eat the Passover?’ And He said, ‘Go into the city to a certain
man, and say to him, “The Teacher says, ‘My time is near; I am to keep the Passover at your house
with My disciples.’ ” ‘ The disciples
did as Jesus had directed them; and they prepared the Passover.” It would have been that evening, then, that
they ate the supper (v. 20).
One of the
confusing details John provides here is that this seems to take place before
the Passover. As the Reformation
Study Bible notes here:
The
Synoptic Gospels all state that the meal alluded to in 13:2 was the Passover
meal (Matt. 26:17–30; Mark 14:12–26; Luke 22:7–23). John, on the other hand, implies that the meal
took place on the eve of the Passover, and that Jesus died at the precise time
when the Passover lambs were being slaughtered (13:1, 29; 18:28; 19:14, 31,
42). Among scholars who accept the
truthfulness of John and the Synoptic Gospels, several possible solutions have
been proposed.
One solution might
be that v. 1 provides a summary of everything that is about to happen, while v.
2 takes the reader straight to the supper.
However, since John also says that Jesus was crucified at the same time
as the Passover lambs (19:14), that doesn’t seem to be a fitting solution. Moreover, since the Passover meal mentioned
in the previous Gospels would take place after the Passover sacrifice,
not before, this seems to create a larger problem.
One solution here
is that the Passover meal, as the other Gospels note, was part of the Feast of
Unleavened Bread, a week-long celebration.
Another consideration here is that northern, Galilean Jews (which would
include Jesus and eleven of the twelve disciples) observed days differently
from those in the south (including the priests and Sadducees). This might be confusing for us, but as one
commentary notes, this would have had “practical benefits at Passover, allowing
the feast to be celebrated on two consecutive days. That would have eased the crowded conditions
in Jerusalem, especially in the temple, where all the lambs would not have had
to be killed on the same day.”[4] It
is conceivable, then, that Jesus held His last supper, the Passover seder, on a
Thursday night before the priests would offer up sacrifices on Friday.
Jesus predicted His
death several times, but the disciples did not or would not understand. In Luke 9:44, Jesus said, “Let these words
sink into your ears; for the Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands
of men;” the next verse says, “But they did not understand this statement, and
it was concealed from them so that they would not perceive it; and they were
afraid to ask Him about this statement.”
Jesus tells them clearly in this chapter that He’s about to die, but again,
they don’t understand. Why might this
be?
In part, it is a
supernatural concealing until they were ready — consider that Peter was foolishly
willing to use his sword to prevent the arrest of our Lord. Consider also some of the other events and
teachings leading up to this moment; after the rich young ruler left them, Jesus
says that His disciples will sit with Him in glory (Matt. 19:27–28). They witnessed the healings along the way to
Jerusalem (20:29–34), and then the pageantry surrounding the triumphal entry
(21:1–11). Sparking the Olivet Discourse
in Matthew 24–25, they ask about the signs of Jesus’s coming kingdom. They were expecting victory, not the “defeat”
of Christ’s death.
But this is the
hour for which Christ came. He would
need to first redeem His disciples from sin before He could give them the glory
He promised. As Mark 10:45 says, “For
even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His
life a ransom for many.” And we read here
that Jesus knew His hour for doing just that had arrived.
It’s worth noting,
then, that Jesus had divine insight with His love. In fact, the tense of the verb describing Jesus’s
knowledge in the original language is perfect, meaning that it is a full or
completed action. He wasn’t “coming to
know” that it was His hour; He already knew.
There are other examples of this, such as Jesus “knowing all the things
that were coming upon Him” at His arrest (John 18:4) and, from the cross, Jesus
knew “all things had already been accomplished” (19:28). Jesus seemed to have complete knowledge of
what needed to occur and when, meaning that His sacrifice would be complete and
pleasing to the Father.
Not only is this a reference
to His atoning work, but also to His eventual glorification. Peter will later explain that the Old Testament
prophets were seeking to know the person and time surrounding “the sufferings
of Christ and the glories to follow” (1 Pet. 1:11). Yet, Jesus knew it was His time to
demonstrate that love upon the cross; again, as He said in Matthew 26:18, “My
time is near.” He knew all of this because of His divinity, bringing us to the
next point.
III.
Second, Jesus loves us with a divine love
that He would depart out of this world to
the Father,
We’ve already
considered a bit about the divine insight that our Lord had. He understood the calendar of events that the
Father had selected for Him. We see the
supernatural insight of our Lord throughout this chapter. For instance, He tells them that one of them
is about to betray Him (vv. 18–30). At
the end of this chapter, He predicts that Simon Peter will deny Him three times
before the rooster crows the next morning (vv. 36–38). He understood this because of His divinity.
This verse
reaffirms the truth of Christ’s divinity.
This has been a theme in the Book of John from the first verse. Even here, we read it again v. 3 — Jesus “had
come forth from God and was going back to God.”
Jesus says this in the upper room discourse, which might be why John
thinks of it here; “I came forth from the Father and have come into the world;
I am leaving the world again and going to the Father” (16:28). Of course, Jesus’s divine knowledge helped
Him to know both that the time had come and that He had come from the Father.
This speaks of His
preexistence. Again, as we noted in John
1:1–3, Jesus was already in the beginning with the Father, being God of very
God. He wasn’t created; He brought all
created things into being. He always has
existed, being older than time itself, there with the Ancient of Days (Dan.
7:13).
If Jesus is
eternal, then the love with which He loves is also eternal. He had His people in mind when He first
created the world. He will also keep
them into eternity. We’ll talk more
about that in a few minutes, but note for now that His is a divine love.
This love will grant
to us what we need, as we see next.
IV.
Third, Jesus loves us with a sanctifying love
having loved His own who were in the
world,
He was concerned
about those He was leaving behind in the world, specifically, His
disciples. We might be confused here
because, in the first chapter of this Gospel, John says that Jesus came to His own
which did not receive Him (1:11). Yet, the
next verse there talks about those who did receive Him (v. 12). Jesus said in the high priestly prayer that
He manifested the Father’s name to those whom the Father gave Him out of the
world. Obviously, those who Jesus loved here
would be those who received Him.
Of course, the context
here is His time alone with His disciples. His family isn’t there with Him, nor are the unbelieving
Pharisees and Sadducees, busy with their own position and duties. Jesus is there with His disciples, knowing
that He is about to be taken from them, and knowing that they will face strong
temptation. This is the night Jesus says,
“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission
to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not
fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers” (Luke
22:31–32). Jesus knows what lies before
those He loves.
As we consider
this, note the love of Christ is a particular love, a love for those who are
His. He takes this knowledge with Him to
the cross. As He offers up His life as
an atoning sacrifice, He doesn’t do so in the name of possibility. Rather He does so for particular people, those
who are His out from this world. His
love is a love for individual believers (including yourself).
This means that He
knows each of us. He sends the Holy
Spirit for believers so they are not left comfortless. He knows our struggles, our fears, our
anxieties, and our pain. He knows how
each of us are inclined to sin. And
because He’s our sympathetic high priest, He’ll give grace to all who need help
in this world (Heb. 4:15–16). His love
is that of provision.
And, while He is
there, He prays for more provision. As
we just noted, He prayed for Peter. He prays
to the Father in John 17:17, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.” The grace He provides is a grace which
instructs us to deny and godliness (Titus 2:11–12). His love is a love that sets us apart for His loving
elective purposes, and it’s a love which internally makes us more holy. His is a sanctifying love.
As we consider that
His is a sacrificial love, a divine love, and a sanctifying love, we are seeing
that His love is one of substance. This aren’t
just superficial feelings, fleeting moments which may pass at a whim. Rather, His love is perfect, complete until
the end. And that brings us to our final
point.
V.
Fourth, Jesus loves us with a complete love
He loved them to the end.
There are a couple
of ways of translating this. The New
American Standard Version here says He loves “to the end.” The footnote, though, suggests “to the uttermost; or eternally.”[5] There is a debate as to whether this would be
better rendered “in perfection.”[6] Either way, though, we get the picture
of the complete love that Christ has for His people.
You might ask, “Doesn’t
Jesus love everybody, though?” In
a sense, yes. In John’s Gospel, we read
that the incarnation was the result of God’s love for the whole world (John
3:16, cf. Titus 3:4). The Lord shows
grace to unbelievers, allowing the sun to rise both on the evil and the good,
and sending the rain for the crops of the righteous and the unrighteous (Matt.
5:45). Evidence of God’s love are all
around us in creation.
Yet, as we’ve noted
before, He also has a particular love. This is not strange. For instance, parents might have love for
children in general while having a unique love for their own children. Those who are of Christ have a unique love of
God upon them.
We’ve already considered
many of the ways in which the particular love of God is given to us in Christ. Ephesians 3:19 describes the love of Christ
as a love which surpasses knowledge or understanding. In chapters 13 through 17 of John, we see many
examples of Christ’s specific love for His disciples.
This is a complete
love. The Lord doesn’t just bring us to
a certain point in our spiritual journey with Him only to abandon us! As He said to Israel, “I have loved you with
an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness” (Jer.
31:3). Knowing our temptations, for
instance, He died that atoning death for our sins. Knowing our weakness, He rose from the grave
to give us new life. And His love
continues on into eternity.
We read elsewhere
that He guards our salvation (1 Pet. 1:5). As Jesus said back in John 10:28–29, “I give
eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them
out of My hand. My Father, who has given
them to Me, is greater than all; and
no one is able to snatch them out of
the Father’s hand.” He promised earlier
in the book of John that He wouldn’t cast out any who came to Him. Consider the dramatic ending of Romans 8,
which says,
Who
will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution,
or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, “For Your sake we are
being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” But
in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor
life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to
separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (vv. 35–39).
Because of Christ’s
complete love, He will hold on to us until the end.
Some struggle with what
we sometimes call eternal security. Still, once an unbeliever is adopted into the
family of God, that person does not become unadopted. Someone doesn’t become born again only to die
spiritually again. That would go against
everything Christ promised, and it would violate His love. As Jude 24 says, He is “able to keep you from
stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with
great joy.” So, another term theologians
use to describe our security in Christ is the perseverance of the saints; while
temptation may come, and we may wonder sometimes if we can stand, the love and
the grace of God keeps us secure until the end.
VI.
Conclusion
As we consider the love of Christ, we are
considering an example to us. We’ll see next
time that, as Christ washes His disciples’ feet, He tells them that He did this
to demonstrate the kind of service that we should show to one another. A bit later, we will read Him saying that we are
to love as He loved us (v. 34). We’ve
experienced the love of Christ, so we can show that love toward other members
of our church, toward our spouses, toward our children, and toward anyone else
with whom we have contact.
But the hope of
this message is not that if you love enough, Jesus will love you. In fact, the truth is that you probably do not
love as you ought to love. Yet, if you
are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, His love remains with you, nonetheless. Where you fall short, He offers both
forgiveness and grace.
Of course, you may
not have been a believer in Jesus. However,
if you realize that you do care about whether you have His love fixed upon you,
all you need to do is to call upon Him to be saved from the weight of your own
sins. You’ll find that He had you in
mind all along, even when you did not have Him in mind. Turn toward the love of Christ today.
[1] Lauren Cahn, “12 Crazy-But-True Reasons People Filed
for Divorce,” Dec. 02, 2022, https://www.rd.com/list/crazy-reasons-divorce/.
[2] Gerald L. Borchert, John 12–21, The New American Commentary, (Nashville: Broadman &
Holman Publishers, 2002), 25B:73–74.
[3] John F. MacArthur Jr., John 12–21, MacArthur New Testament Commentary, (Chicago, IL: Moody
Publishers, 2008), 62.
[4] MacArthur, 62–63.
[5] New American
Standard Bible: 1995 Update, (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995).
[6] MacArthur, 63.
