As Christ nears the hour of his death, he gives these few brief statements in the upper room:

When [Judas] was gone, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.
“My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:31-35).

A little odd, huh? We know what event he means; we know he is speaking of the crucifixion, so why on earth does he talk about the most horrific, humiliating experience in human history as “glorifying?” Because this is the moment when Christ hung upon a cross as a substitute for you and me, absorbing the wrath of God in our place.
The single greatest act of grace the universe will ever know, the act for which God wants the most praise and attention, is the moment he kindly, lovingly, and sacrificially offered himself so that we might be cleansed of sin.

That is why Christ can refer to his brutal death as something glorious. This moment is huge; not just for the world, it’s huge for God. We should pay close attention to what he’s saying.

Christ brings up these really intense ideas, says he’s about to go somewhere they cannot follow, and then says, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

“Love” – that might be easy if we could define the word love by our own whims, but we cannot. Christ says we must love AS HE LOVED, and that’s a tall order. Not only does this mean we must love by washing feet and serving, it means we must imitate and emulate the love he showed when he died on the cross. But do we care about others enough to sacrifice that much? To experience so much humility? So much pain?

Can I love someone so much that I would do exactly what Christ did? By that, I mean, could I bear the wrath of God in place of someone else? Can I love them that much?

I’m reminded of the instance in Romans, where Paul writes of his love for Israel, saying “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel” (Romans 9:2-4).

Paul essentially says, “I love these people so much, I have so great a burden for the lost, that I wish I, myself, could go to hell, losing my salvation, if that meant they could have it.”

If Christ says, “Love as I have loved,” I think Paul is moving in the right direction.

Detail two: Loving one another marks the Christian. This is how the world knows we are his disciples. That means Jesus is including “the world” in the measurement of a Christian. How scary is that? Jesus turns to the world, to the non-believer, and says, “This will be your job, your task, and I entrust this to you – you shall judge whether anyone is a Christian on the basis of his or her love for fellow Christians. That is how you will know.”

Ouch…

Would you pass that test? Do you have brothers and sisters you despise? Maybe you even have good reason to. But here’s my advice: Love every Christian… no matter the cost.