Love One Another As I Have Loved

Love One Another As I Have Loved

Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth-century mystic, received her 'showings' (revelations) while near death at age thirty. The dominant theme of every revelation was love. Her most famous line — 'All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well' — was understood by her as a statement about divine love, not human optimism. She described everything God showed her as a manifestation of love. The new commandment of John 13:34 was, for Julian, the key to understanding both the cross and the resurrection: Christ's love is the pattern for all human love, and it will ultimately win.

Jesus calls this commandment 'new' not because love was absent from the Old Testament but because the standard has been elevated: 'as I have loved you.' The standard for Christian love is no longer 'love your neighbor as yourself' (Leviticus 19:18) but 'love one another as Christ has loved you.' Christ's love is self-giving, costly, cross-shaped. It loves the unlovely, serves the ungrateful, forgives the betrayer, and dies for the enemy. This is the new standard. The community that loves this way becomes the visible evidence of the kingdom: 'By this everyone will know that you are my disciples' (verse 35). Not your theology, not your buildings, not your programs — your love for one another. By this they will know.