“There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:31, NKJV)
In the previous teaching we reached a great mystery that will undoubtedly bring about a total reformation of unknown power and synergy, which will change the whole word – the way in which rhema words find a home within one another, happens ONLY if we are rooted and grounded in love. In this we find power! The immense importance of love in the Old Testament was discussed in the teaching of Day 1379. Now we will be looking at how the New Testament presents and thinks about this core issue.
The very first reference to love in the New Testament is fittingly then a proclamation God makes about his Son, Jesus, during his baptism: “And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’” (Matt. 3:17). Shortly after this Jesus brings a larger understanding of the Old Testament law of Lev. 19:19, and declares in Matt. 5:43-44: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you …” (Also see Matt. 19:19; Luke 6:35.)
What is known as the great commandment of love is spelled out in Matt. 22:37:39: “Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” In Mark 12:32 this gets added: “There is no other commandment greater than these.” To this Mark 12:33 adds the phrase “with all the strength,” and then presents it in contrast to the entire Old Testament’s cult of atonement: “And to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Please selah about this.
Love as a spiritual principle in the New Testament extends much wider than the practise thereof in the old covenant. After all, you and I are “delivered … from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love” (Col. 1:13), but we were elected to this love before time: “just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love” (Eph. 1:4). Jesus even speaks of a “new covenant” with a specific focus: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35). [Also see Mark 12:31; John 3:23; Rom. 13:8-10; Gal. 5:14; 1 John 3:11; 2 John 1:5-6; no wonder James 2:8 refers to love as the “royal law”.]
This new commandment for the new covenant is nestled in God’s characteristic nature of love, as, indeed, “God is love.” (1 John 4:8). In Rom. 5:5 this wondrous truth is shared: “the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Think about this for a moment – the totality of God’s nature, love, is already, in full, within you … the called of Jesus Christ; all who are in Rome, beloved of God, are called to be saints” (Rom. 1:6-7). The arresting scope of this love of the One who loves the entire world (John 3:16), lives within us. In fact, in his first letter, John, the apostle of love, writes: “And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. Love has been perfected among us …” (1 John 4:16-17). How extraordinary! We will return to this later.
It is, in other words, no longer an issue of trying to love people – it is rather an issue of breaking the walls of separation (Eph. 2:14) WITHIN ourselves, to allow the immense reservoir of love within us to flow freely.
The amazing thing about this is that even the capacity for love towards God, in other words your individual love for God, is also already poured out into your heart – this also comes from Him. If this is truly the case, then John 14:21 & 23 is also true: “He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him. If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.” Take note – if the love of God then lives within you, as we already know is the case, it brings about the following:
- the Father will love you
- the Son will love you
- Jesus will reveal Himself to you
- you will keep the word (TAKE NOTE: He does not love you because you keep the word. No, because you love Him you cannot but keep His word. It comes naturally.] And:
- through the Spirit, the Father and his Son make a home within you (Col. 1:8 rightly calls it “your love in the Spirit.” According to 2 Tim. 1:7 we then also have a spirit of love.
Not only does John 15 discuss the mystery of what it means to be part of Jesus Christ (at the hand of the extended Homeric comparison of Jesus as the vine, the individual members of Christ as the branches, and the vinedresser as God), it also notes that being established in love is the core of this mystery. Not only does Jesus “abide” in the love of God (John 15:10), but we are also told in the previous verse: “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.” (verse 9). The original Greek word here is menō, and according to Strong means: “abide, continue, dwell, endure, be present, remain, stand, tarry”.
A few verses later this principle of life is strictly presented by Jesus as something which should exist not only between Him and us, but that the same standard of love that God has for us should also be standard of the love between the members of the Body: “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends … These things I command you, that you love one another.” (John 15:12, 13, 17).
In verse 26 of John 17, in the intimacy of Jesus’s high priestly prayer to the Father, a key is presented which determines whether we are indeed found in His love: “And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” What would this mean? Which Name of God would it specifically refer to? This verse should be read alongside an earlier one in the same prayer: “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.” (John 17:6).
In his book Who Art Thou, Lord? The Good News Jesus Preached, Charles Van Divier Darnell writes: “Some … hold to the notion that God’s name itself is sacred and carries some mysterious, supernatural power.” (p. 177). This perspective most likely derives from the Jewish rabbis who misread Ex. 3:14-15 in a creative manner, to use one of Harold Bloom’s terms. The Scripture reads as follows: “And God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And He said, ‘Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, I AM has sent me to you.’ Moreover God said to Moses, ‘Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My name forever, and this is My memorial to all generations.’”
YHWH (the tetragrammatic abbreviation that points to YAHWEH) must forever be God’s name. In Hebrew forever is lĕ-ʿōlām, which the rabbis furnished with different vowels as lĕ-ʿallēm, which, interestingly enough, means hidden. They thus saw this verse as an order to hide God’s name instead of pronouncing it in full (Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushim 71a; TDNT 5:269). Thus the myth originated that magical power is nestled in the Name itself. This idea became especially popular after it had been propagated by the Rabbinical tradition which it called šēm ha-mĕfôrāš, derived from Judg. 13:18. Instead of translating wonderful in this verse as such, it is translated as mĕpāraš, unpronounceable, which means the Name of God is too holy to speak, too mysteriously hidden to know.
This is not true, according to, for instance, 1 Kings 8:43; Ps. 9:10; 91:14; Isa. 52:6; Jer. 48:17; Ezek. 36:23 and Rev. 2:13. Many splinter groups, like for instance the New Judaists, present all kinds of Names and threaten that no prayer will be answered that addresses God with a different name.
Back to John 17:6. The word name here points, according to the Old Testament tradition of Naming, to the attributes or characteristics of God, as R. C. Sproul’s famous book, The Character of God: Discovering the God Who Is, beautifully explained. Jesus made God’s character, law, will, plan, whatever, known to man. As Baker’s New Testament Commentary neatly states: “The Son is the Father’s Exegete.”
The Greek word phaneroō, which can be translated as manifest, means, according to the stripped-down meaning, “to shine forth”. John Courson’s Application Commentary – New Testament says of this word: “It doesn’t mean so much declaration as it does illustration.” When Jesus thus says: “I have manifested Your name,” He is NOT saying “I spoke about this in verbal terms,” but rather: “I demonstrated this through living it.”
With this stumbling block out of the way, we can return to our exploration of love as demonstrated by Jesus. John 17:26: “And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them,” could thus be translated as follows: “And I demonstrated and lived your character to them, so that the love with which You have loved me, can also be in them.” What is thus at issue here is that the disciple of Jesus gains “the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). In this light one has a better understanding of what is meant by 1 Thess. 4:9 – “But concerning brotherly love you have no need that I should write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.” This could only have taken place through Jesus. But what consolation this offers us! Jesus translated God’s love in a unique way of life, in the language of love He explained Himself, and we learnt through his example, in His words: “For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.”
Love is the greatest thing of all (1 Cor. 13:13). Even though Paul encourages us to move in spiritual gifts, he qualifies this by noting that we should first “pursue love …” (1 Cor. 14:1). Love is the first fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22). Truth must be pondered in love (Eph. 4:15), our faith only operates through love (Gal. 5:6), in all things we should be followers of God, as beloved children walk in love (Eph. 5:1-2; Rom. 14:15), the Body is only built in love (Eph. 4:16), we serve one another through love (Gal. 5:13), loves makes us “of one accord, of one mind” (Phil. 2:2). 1 Thess. 1:3 then fittingly speaks of “the labour of you love”. This is aptly summarised in Heb. 6:10: “For God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love which you have shown toward His name, in that you have ministered to the saints, and do minister.” If we have to take a break at this point, it is with the powerful encouragement of 2 Thess. 3:5: “Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God …”
- Selah: Do you realise the immense scope of the “royal law” of love?
- Read: 13-21
- Memorise: 19:7
- For a more in-depth understanding: Read one of the books mentioned above.
