Learning How to Love Like Jesus? Start from Zero.

Any disciple of Jesus knows that he or she must have this one goal in mind: to love others the way he has loved us. We see the importance of this goal in the following scriptures:

“A new command I give you, love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”¹

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”²

“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.”³

Expressing the love of Jesus to others around us, then, is at the core of our Christian existence.

But there are problems I see in myself and other believers when it comes to the subject of loving like Jesus.

For example, we may think that loving the “easy-to-love” people around us – say our wonderful wife and kids – qualifies us as experts in the love of Jesus, all the while failing to apply it to the truly difficult people we meet in life. Like thinking we have already arrived at the cross country race finish line when we have only reached the top of the first hill, we can celebrate our love for the “easy-to-love” people in our lives while our love for cranky church members, tough bosses and irritating neighbors is non-existent.

We may also think that knowing a lot about the love of Jesus qualifies us as experts in his love. We know the scripture passages about the love of Jesus, we sing choruses about the love of Jesus, we read stories about the love of Jesus, and we talk about the love of Jesus. I know I’ve done all of these things my entire life. But none of these things, as good as they are, is actually loving like Jesus Christ.

Another problem is that loving like Jesus is foreign to our human nature. We are fallen, selfish and self-centered people. Through faith in Jesus, we have become a new creation. But we still have a flesh that wars against our new nature. In the process, we can substitute a watered down version of Christ’s love for the real thing.

So taking all of these issues into consideration, I have a suggestion when it comes to the issue of loving others with the love of Jesus: take the mental position of a beginning student who knows nothing about how to love like Jesus and view everyone who comes into your life as a part of God’s training in this very new reality.

Like a paraplegic going through sometimes painful therapy to learn how to walk again, God brings sometimes painful people into our lives to create in us the love of Jesus. In this sense, then, the love of Jesus isn’t just something we’re giving them, but also something God is using them to create in us.

This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.

1. John 13:34, New International Version
2. Ephesians 5:25, ibid.
3. 1 John 3:16, ibid.