Radically New Commandment
I read a book during my month off that I’m not sure yet if I’ve fully processed how radical it might be. The book is Love Revolution: Rediscovering the Lost Command of Jesus by Gaylord Enns, introduced to me through our gathering of John 17 fanatics in Kansas City in June. Here’s the central premise:
Old Covenant
When Jesus was asked to summarize the law in Matthew 22:37-40, his answer was summarizing the Old Covenant. “Love the Lord your God with everything, and love your neighbor as yourself” wasn’t new to Jesus. He quoted Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18.
New Covenant
The New Covenant, however, is radically different, though on the surface it’s similar enough to miss it. Enns suggests that the New Covenant is summarized in John 3:16 and John 13:34. (1 John 3:21-23 pairs these as well). For God so loved the world… (believe in Him/trust Him) and Love one another as I have loved you.
The radical difference
Here it is, according to Enns. The Old Covenant is rooted in our finite ability to love. The New Covenant is rooted in God’s infinite ability to love. Even as I’m writing this, I’m wondering if this doesn’t capture the essence of everything I’ve been experiencing over the last year or two. I can’t adequately articulate how transformative this journey has been… but I’ll try!
John 17 uniting can’t happen without John 15 abiding
If you’ve been reading this for awhile, you’ve undoubtedly seen that heading before. I keep chewing on this both in how I live (first of all) and what I share (way less important.) Like literally this morning - it’s what I prayed desperately when I went to bed, and woke up with my plea miraculously answered a couple hours ago. Jesus’ John 17 prayer for unity is simply Him praying what He taught in John 13 (and John 15) as the new commandment, by which the world would come to know (hence the fulfillment of the Great Commission.) All of that in one form or another was in the first book I wrote a whopping eleven years ago! I’m still trying to learn to practice what I preach!
The more recent language I’ve been wrestling with is in John 15, Jesus’ invitation/command to “abide in Me.” Just Saturday I noticed for the first time that in John 15:1-8, there are three different times where Jesus says some form of “you in Me, and I in you.” Jesus wants to abide in us just as surely as we abide in Him. The second book I wrote, If it was easy, Jesus wouldn’t have prayed it” attempted to wrestle with that reality. If we could do John 17 in our own strength, the command would have been sufficient. Jesus knew better, and said so in John 15:5: Apart from Me you can do nothing. Answering Jesus’ prayer will only happen in Jesus’ Holy Spirit power. On our own…not a chance.
Give up
So, attempting to package all of this together in less space than this next Sunday’s sermon, where I’m attempting to preach on it for the first time… The answer isn’t try harder, but surrender. Branches don’t strain to produce fruit - they simply abide. ALL the power, all the juice, all the everything comes from the vine.
All the daily ways we blow it in our own power have one purpose - drawing us back to Jesus. The Holy Spirit and the evil spirit start with the same raw data: “See what you did there? You blew it.” The evil spirit wants to condemn us so we give up or change the standards to something more… attainable. The Holy Spirit wants to convict us so we come running back to our Savior, whose Love is infinite, and whose blood covers us, heals us, and transforms us.
The radical nature of John 17 is that Jesus isn’t praying that we would love with the best version of ourselves. (How many times do we hear something like that these days? Be your best you, blah blah blah…) He’s praying that the love we have for one another would not just look like His love for us, but that it would actually be His love for us. Human love is great - it inspires movies, books, dreamy fantasies. But divine love… … … changes the world. And everything and everyone in it. Starting with me.
Let me know if this makes sense! If it doesn’t seem radical, I didn’t do it right!
