Love Like Jesus
by Jamie Steach
““A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
(John 13:34 NIV)”
It shouldn’t be news to us that God is love, or that Jesus wants us to love each other. After all, it was Jesus Himself that told us the two greatest commandments are to love God with everything you have, and to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:36-40). But, in accordance with the new command cited above, what does it really look like to love like Jesus? I think this is a really important question for us to ask ourselves, and to answer, as we face the calling of being Jesus’s followers in our world today, especially in light of current events in our country. We have witnessed gross injustice and sin, and in the wake of this (and everything that came before it) we are understandably seeing a nation cry out in anger and pain. The call to love as Jesus has loved is a command; it’s not a suggestion or nice ideal. It is something Jesus expects us to not just do, but to live, and to live out in the same way He did. So, how did Jesus love?
1) He listened to cries for help and responded to them:
“40 A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
41 Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” 42 Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.
(Mark 1:40-42 NIV)”
A couple weeks ago we looked at the woman from Mark 5 and the state of being ceremonially unclean according to the Law of Moses. I bring this up as a reminder that according to Leviticus 13-14, this man would be considered ceremonially unclean. Beyond that, however, other people would likely view this man as stricken or marked by God because of his leprosy. He would be ostracized both for his uncleanness and for his supposed judgement from God. But Jesus was not afraid to be near this man, or even to touch him. Jesus didn’t have to touch this man to heal him. He chose to touch this man to heal him. He chose to see the man and not his condition. And it was His compassion, His love for this man that drove Him to it. This man comes pleading, but the first thing he says is “If you are willing”. Jesus is willing to go to places that others aren’t, and He is willing to associate with people who others aren’t. He was not afraid of engaging and connecting with this man. So to love like Jesus in this example, we have to be willing to hear the pleas of those around us and let our compassion be greater than any fear for our own cleanness or comfort. We need to be willing to associate ourselves with those who others won’t give a second thought, to reach out and touch them as Jesus would.
2) Jesus lived love as an action:
29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
(Luke 10:29-37 NIV)
I’ve been hearing this passage referenced a lot lately, so I figured I’d use it as well. Immediately preceding this parable, an expert in the law has questioned Jesus on how to inherit eternal life, and they have come to the conclusion of loving God with everything and loving your neighbor (the greatest commandments according to Jesus, as cited earlier). But this teacher wants to justify himself, and clearly has the wrong perspective of loving your neighbor. When he asks “Who is my neighbor?”, it certainly seems like he is looking for a free pass to only have to love certain people. Maybe he wants Jesus to tell him that he only has to love his neighbor who looks like him, or holds the same social standing as him, or has the same righteousness as him. Jesus is quick to offer us the illustration we know as the “good Samaritan”.
Before I really get into the story, I want to highlight something interesting. I grew up going to Sunday School, and the good Samaritan is a story that is often taught, but the cultural implication of this story is almost NEVER discussed (at least with kids). I think many of us who grow up hearing this story also grow up with this idea that a good Samaritan is the title of someone who does good deeds for others. I remember this idea being so perpetuated that I’ve actually heard people use the phrase “way to be a good Samaritan!”. But it’s the cultural reality of this story that makes Jesus’s point more powerful.
A Samaritan is someone who is of mixed Jewish and Gentile descent. The Jews are Israelites (the term “Jew” comes from Judah/Judea), and the Gentiles are anyone who is not Jewish. The racial identity of the Samaritans was a point of tremendous prejudice from the Jews, who saw Samaritans in their very existence as an unclean people. In fact, in Jesus’s time, if a Jew had to travel from Nazareth in the north to Jerusalem in the south, the fastest and most direct route was through Samaria but a Jew would never take that route. Instead, they would take the much longer route to go around Samaria because Jews did not associate with Samaritans whatsoever. Except for Jesus (see John 4). But the point for this parable is that the hero of this story isn’t who it’s supposed to be. There are three principal characters in this parable: a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan. A priest, for obvious reasons, would be an important religious leader of the time. His task is to serve God in the temple and live his life in service to God. A Levite has a very similar position, as his task would also be to minister at the temple, but with different responsibilities than the priest. Both of these men are Jews, and both of them are the people who are supposed to be leading and teaching God’s people. They are seen as the most righteous in their culture. One of them surely is supposed to be the hero of this story. But neither of them is. Instead, they see a man naked, bleeding, abused, and half beaten to death on the side of the road, and they move to the other side. They distance themselves as far as they can from someone who desperately needs their help, and they silently go on their way, leaving this man to die alone. These are the two who are supposed to be serving God on earth, who are supposed to be guarding and living by God’s law, and instead they turn a blind eye to suffering. It would be these two people that this teacher looking to justify himself would likely identify with. As a teacher of the law, he may even be a Levite himself. But when we look for the one who is truly righteous in this parable, it is neither of these two men.
Instead, the hero and the righteous man is a Samaritan. A horrible, dirty Samaritan, as the eyes of Jesus’s audience would see. The Samaritan saw this man’s need, and he did something about it. He went to him, bandaged and soothed his wounds, gave up his own comfort to walk instead of ride his donkey, and he even paid for this man to continue to be looked after. The Samaritan is the hero in the story because he did not ignore suffering when he saw it, unlike the other two. This would certainly be challenging for the teacher to hear, as Jesus is now confronting not only his resistance to love those who need it but also his perspective of who is righteous. The teacher has enough understanding to see that the one who has mercy was the one who acted as the man’s neighbor. This reminds me of situations we can face in our own lives where we know what we should do, but because we don’t want to do it, we find ways to excuse ourselves out of it. We do this in school, where we try to justify doing the bare minimum for our assignments. We do it in our jobs where we complain “I don’t get paid enough for this”, and pretty much in general, we are people that like to look for the easy way out. We also try to justify ourselves when we don’t want to change. When our roommates or family confront us about things we do that make them upset, but instead of listening we justify why we should still be allowed to do these things, or why it isn’t our problem. When a mistake is always someone else’s fault, not ours. This man wanted to be told he was already good, that he didn’t need to change anything. But Jesus’s response was clear: you cannot excuse yourself out of taking action to love others. The question at hand here was how do I apply the command to love my neighbor as myself? The answer couldn’t be more plain: go and DO likewise. Go and take action, go and demonstrate your love for your neighbor by what you DO.
I think a couple writers in the New Testament would agree:
“17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
(1 John 3:17-18 NIV)”
“15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
(James 2:15-17 NIV)”
By these passages, if we do not go and do likewise, showing love by our actions, then, in fact, we have no love in us and our faith is dead. To love like Jesus is to do something when we see our neighbor is in need.
3) Jesus went to His death as His ultimate act of love:
12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
(John 15:12-13 NIV)
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
(Romans 5:8 NIV)
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.
(1 John 3:16 NIV)
Jesus had every privilege and every right to come to Earth as a king, and demanded to be worshiped as God, because that’s exactly who He is. But He didn’t choose to do either of these things, He came to the Earth born into a poor family (Luke 2:22-24, Leviticus 12:8), chose to be a servant to those around Him, and ultimately the Author of Life chose to die at the hand of His creation (Philippians 2). Jesus taught that the ultimate act of love was to lay down your life for someone else, and then He went and laid down His life for the world. Why? He chose to die so that we could live. He chose to die to take our burden of sin from the world and give us the joy of His righteousness (Romans 6). The cross is our greatest source of hope in this world, and it was meant to bring about a new way of living. Righteousness is all about right relationships, and our new way of living should be to live in right relationship with God and others. Part of how we do this is to go and also lay down our lives for others. But we probably aren’t going to be faced with a situation that demands us to die for someone else very often, so how do we live this out? There are more ways to lay our lives down for others than to just literally die for someone else. The heart of this action is sacrifice; how can we sacrifice something of ourselves for others? A sacrifice requires a cost to ourselves, what will that cost be? One thing could be taking a good, hard look at our privilege and how we’re using it. Some of us (probably most of us) are in a place where we benefit from the oppression of others. Are we willing to dive in and really understand the extent of our privilege, and then fight to give that privilege up, to have it be eliminated, for the benefit of others? To fight for the righteousness and justice of people being able to live in right relationships with each other on Earth? We can lay down our lives in this way.
Ultimately the message of the cross is one of rebirth and revival. The purpose of why we would lay down our lives for someone else is exactly the same reason Jesus did: so that we can bring someone else to new life. The world needs rebirth at a large scale, and it’s a rebirth that only Jesus can offer. The cross is where sin is destroyed, and all of the evils in this world are the result of sin. The cross is where we are changed and become compelled by the love of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:14). The cross enables us to love deep enough that we are moved to act for lasting change, and not just for the eternity of people’s souls but for this world, too. The world needs the light of Jesus and we can become that by laying down our lives for others and bringing this world to the foot of the cross. Do you remember what it was like when you first encountered the cross? When you first experienced the promise of new life in Jesus? I do. I was discouraged and broken from the world, and from the world’s way of life. I had spent myself chasing acceptance and belonging the world’s way while also wondering why God seemed to always feel outside of my grasp. When I finally was truly brought to the foot of the cross, it was amazing, and I was filled with relief and longing. I could truly see and experience the promises of God for the first time, and I was convinced that this world was no longer enough for me. I didn’t want anything but the life that was found in Jesus. When the cross transforms our lives, everything we are and everything we want changes. Love that will conquer and transform this world here and now is possible, but it’s only possible through the cross of Christ.
I think there are a lot of cases where the Word of God will speak for itself as long as we make sure we are listening. So let’s collectively ask ourselves, when it comes to loving like Jesus, are we listening to the Word? Are we seeing and really understanding the call to action? Are we feeling compelled by the cross? Jesus engaged with the pain and cries for help around Him, even to the point of giving His life, and we must do the same! I will be the first to admit that I am no expert, and I am trying to educate myself how to better serve this hurting world even as I write this article. I am simply a disciple who feels convicted by the Spirit of God to follow the example of Jesus in action. But, that being said, I think there are a few places we can start! First, do not be deaf or blind to the pain of this world. Be willing to pay attention and be informed, and listen with empathy, because Jesus is certainly attentive to the same cries for help. Lean into what is going on in your community, and look for ways you can serve needs there. Be willing to invest in relationships with those you encounter along the way. Second, volunteer in ways that you find your community is needing, even if it means establishing something new. There are always places that we can serve if we get out and look. Third, be willing to put in the work to educate yourself about prejudice, injustice, and oppression. Jesus very clearly took a stand against these things in whatever form they appeared. To follow this example, we need to be educated and equipped enough to first confront any prejudice in ourselves that we brought from the world, and second be willing to challenge all forms of prejudice in the world around us. Everything Jesus did on this Earth was meant to be an example we could learn from, including how to speak out for the oppressed. If we are to truly live as the light in this world (Matthew 5:14-16), then we must be willing to engage and go where others won’t. We must be willing to take action, to go and actually DO likewise.