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The union between Christ and His disciples has been set forth in the parable of the vine. We now turn to the union between the disciples, which is the consequences of their common union to the Lord. There are four things suggested.

I. THE OBLIGATION.

1. The two ideas of commandment and love do not go well together. You cannot pump up love to order, and if you try you generally produce sentimental hypocrisy, hollow and unreal. Still we can do a great deal for the cultivation and strengthening of any emotion. We can cast ourselves into the attitude which is favourable or unfavourable to it. We can look at the subjects which will create it or at those which will cheek it.

2. This is an obligation —

(1) Because He commands it. He puts Himself here in the position.

(2) Because such an attitude is the only fitting expression of the mutual relation of Christian men, through their common relation to the vine. However unlike any two Christian people are in character, culture, circumstances, the bond that knits those who have the same relations to Jesus Christ is far deeper, more real, and ought to be far closer, than the bond that knits them to the men or women to whom they are likest in all these other respects, and to whom they are unlike in this one central one. Let all secondary grounds of union and of separation be relegated to their proper subordinate place; and let us recognize this, that the children of one father are brethren. And do not let it be said, that "brethren" in the Church means a great deal less than brothers in the world.

II. THE SUFFICIENCY OF LOVE.

1. Our Lord has been speaking in a former verse about the keeping of His commandments. Now He gathers them all up into one: the all comprehensive simplification of duty — love.

2. If the heart be right all else will be right; and if there be a deficiency of love nothing will be right. You cannot help anybody except on condition of having an honest and benevolent regard towards him. You may pitch him benefits, and you will neither get nor deserve thanks for them; you may try to teach him, and your words will be hopeless and profitless. As we read Corinthians 13 — the lyric praise of charity — all kinds of blessing and sweetness and gladness come out of this.

3. And Jesus Christ, leaving the little flock of His followers in the world, gave them no other instruction for their mutual relationship? He did not talk to them about institutions and organizations, about orders of the ministry and sacraments, or Church polity. His one commandment was "Love one another," and that will make you wise. Love one another and you will shape yourselves into the right forms.

III. THE PATTERN OF LOVE. "As I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this," etc.

1. Christ sets Himself forward here, as He does in all aspects of human conduct and character, as being the realized ideal of them all. Reflect upon the strangeness of a man thus calmly saying to the whole world, "I am the embodiment of all that love ought to be." The pattern that He proposes is more august than appears at first sight. A verse or two before our Lord had said, "As the Father hath loved Me so I have loved you." Now He says, "Love one another as I have loved you."

2. But then our Lord here sets forth the very central point of His work, even His death upon the cross for us, as being the pattern to which our poor affection ought to aspire, and after which it must tend to be conformed. That is to say, the heart of the love that He commands is self-sacrifice, reaching to death if death be needful. And no man loves as Christ would have Him love who does not bear in his heart affection which has so conquered selfishness that, if need be, he is ready to die. It is a solemn obligation, which many well make us tremble, that is laid on us in these words, "As I have loved you." Calvary was less than twenty-four hours off, and He says to us, "That is your pattern!"

3. Remember, too, that the restriction which here seems to be cast around the flow of His love is not a restriction in reality, but rather a deepening of it. The "friends" for whom He dies are the same persons as the Apostle, in his sweet variation upon these words, has called by the opposite name when he says that He died for His "enemies." There is an old wild ballad that tells of how a knight found, coiling round a tree in a dismal forest, a loathly dragon breathing out poison; and how, undeterred by its hideousness and foulness, he cast his arms round it and kissed it on the mouth. Three times he did it undisgusted, and at the third the shape changed into a fair lady, and he won his bride. Christ "kisses with the kisses of His mouth" His enemies, and makes them His friends because He loves them. "If He had never died for His enemies," says one of the old fathers, "He would never have possessed His friends." And so He teaches us, that the way by which we are to meet even alienation and hostility is by pouring upon it the treasures of an unselfish, self-sacrificing affection which will conquer at the last.

IV. THE MOTIVE. "As I have loved you." The novelty of Christian morality lies here, that in its law there is a self-fulfilling force. We have not to look to one place for the knowledge of our duty, and somewhere else for the strength to do it, but both are given to us in the one thing, the gift of the dying Christ and His immortal love.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

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KJV: This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.

WEB: "This is my commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you.