Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35).
I have heard people argue that Jesus’ observation is speaking of Christians’ love for other Christians.
In contrast, the revered theologian John Chrysostom (circa AD354-407), explained that the passage was to be seen as evangelistic – love being more persuasive than even miracles when he said that “miracles do not so much attract the heathen as the mode of life; and nothing so much causes a right life as love.”[1]
Matt Carter and Josh Wredberg agree with the evangelistic purpose of the love and explain that in the passage “Jesus says in effect, ‘My disciples will be distinct because of their love.’ People will see their love for one another and the only response they’ll be able to make is, ‘Wow, they must be followers of Jesus.’
Followers of Jesus will love others more than we love ourselves.”[2]
Even so, to be sure that Jesus was speaking of loving others, we simply have to look at Jesus’ words recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus says to Love God and to Love Neighbor (Matthew 22:37-40). Then, if there is any question about who is your neighbor, Jesus’ parable about the Good Samaritan teaches us that it is anybody in need – no matter who we are and who the person in need is – that person in need is our neighbor, and we are neighbors when we show mercy (Luke 10:29-37). Jesus’ command to love one’s neighbor is a restatement of the command in Leviticus (19:18) to love one’s neighbor as oneself.
Although I do not know if it was his inspiration, this command fits well within Martin Buber’s theme within his volume I Thou published in 1923. Buber argued that to experience and engage with God you have to experience and engage with the world from an “I Thou” perspective. In his work, Buber presented to reality that “thou” had been retained in English usage when speaking to God (see the King James Version of the Bible for Protestants and the Douay-Rheims Bible for Catholics) and indicated a giving of deference to God.
To have an “I Thou” relationship with the world is to give deference to the other; to be concerned for the needs of others; to place the welfare of the other before the concerns of yourself. When we do this, people will know we are Christians.
When, in contrast, we fight for our own advancement, the non-Christian calls our Christianity into question – AND, for good reason.
Returning to Chrysostom we read –
For nothing so raises respect in the heathen as virtue, nothing so offends them as vice. And with good reason. When one of them sees the greedy man, the plunderer, exhorting others to do the contrary, when he sees the man who was commanded to love even his enemies, treating his very kindred like brutes, he will say that the words are folly. … We, we are the cause of their remaining in their error. Their own doctrines they have long condemned, and in like manner they admire ours, but they are hindered by our mode of life. … For, “show me,” it saith, “thy faith by thy works” (James 2:18); but this is not the case; on the contrary, seeing us tear our neighbors worse than any wild beast, they call us the curse of the world.[3]
So who do you put first as you engage with the world around you?
And Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 27:37-40).
Buen Camino,
Fr Steve
Steven G Rindahl, DMin STM
[1] John Chrysostom, “Homilies on the Gospel of Saint John,” in Saint Chrysostom: Homilies on the Gospel of St. John and Epistle to the Hebrews, ed. Schaff, Philip, trans. G.T. Stupart, vol. 14, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church (New York, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1889), 75.2.
[2] Matt Carter and Josh Wredberg, Exalting Jesus in John, Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2017), 278.
[3] Chrysostom, “Homilies on John,” 75.2.