The Christian Life
"By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another."
John 13:35
Every movement chooses a badge. Something visible that says who belongs — a uniform, a symbol, a form of words, a set of practices. It matters what a movement picks, because whatever it chooses tells you what it thinks it is.
The Lord Jesus Christ chose a badge for His people on the last night of His life, and it was not the one most of us would have chosen for Him.
He gave it hours before the cross, in an upper room, to men who would shortly abandon Him.
"A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." (John 13:34-35)
Notice first what He calls it: a new commandment. That is a strange word to use, since the command to love one's neighbour was already ancient — it stood in the law of Moses, and He Himself had quoted it.
So what is new? Not the duty, but the standard. The old command was love thy neighbour as thyself — a real measure, and a demanding one, since we look after ourselves rather thoroughly. The new command raises it beyond that: as I have loved you.
Consider what He was standing in when He said it. He had just washed the feet of men He knew would fail Him — including the one who had already arranged to sell Him, and the one who would deny Him with oaths before morning. Within hours He would die for them.
That is the measure. Not love them as much as you love yourself, but love them as I have loved you — which is to say, at cost, without being deserved, and without waiting to be reciprocated.
Now weigh the second half of the sentence, because it is astonishing.
By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples. He is naming the identifying mark, the thing by which outsiders will recognise His people. And He might have chosen several others.
He could have said: by your correct doctrine. Doctrine matters enormously, and this site exists largely to set it out plainly. But sound doctrine can be held by a hard man, and often is.
He could have said: by your zeal. But zeal without love has burned people at stakes.
He could have said: by your numbers, your buildings, your influence, your morality. He said none of these.
He chose the one thing that cannot be produced by effort, cannot be faked over time, and cannot be manufactured by organisation. Anyone can learn a doctrinal statement in a week. Nobody can pretend to love difficult people for thirty years.
And notice who is doing the recognising: all men. The world is not asked to assess our theology, which it is not equipped to do. It is asked to look at how we treat each other — and it does, constantly, and it draws conclusions.
The apostle Paul takes this further than most of us are comfortable with, in a passage read at weddings but written to a quarrelling church.
"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)
Read the list of things he is willing to write off. Eloquence beyond human. Prophecy. Understanding of all mysteries. Faith that moves mountains. Total generosity — everything given away. Martyrdom itself.
Every one of those would make a man famous in any church in the world. And the verdict on all of them, without love, is: I am nothing, and it profiteth me nothing.
Notice the progression too. He does not say the gifts become less valuable. He says the man becomes nothing — sounding brass, noise without meaning. And then, in the last case, that even the ultimate sacrifice yields him no profit whatever.
That is a solemn arithmetic. A life of impressive religious achievement can total exactly zero.
Having said what it outweighs, Scripture then defines it — and the definition is remarkable for what it does not contain.
"Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)
There is not one word about feeling in the entire list. Every item is either something love does or something it refuses to do. Which means love, biblically, is not primarily an emotion — it is a way of behaving toward a person, and it can therefore be commanded.
Take a few of them slowly.
Suffereth long — it is patient specifically with people who are trying, and it does not run out on schedule.
Seeketh not her own — the heart of the whole thing. Love is not asking what it gets. Almost every failure of love traces back to this clause.
Is not easily provoked — it does not have a short fuse and is not perpetually on alert for slights.
Thinketh no evil — the phrase means it does not keep a ledger of wrongs. It is an accounting term: love does not maintain the record. Many people who would never strike anyone maintain a very exact set of books.
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth — which quietly rules out the small satisfaction we feel when someone we dislike is caught out.
Believeth all things, hopeth all things — not gullibility, but a disposition to put the best available construction on what is unclear, rather than the worst.
Three counterfeits need naming, because each is confidently mistaken for the real thing.
It is not sentimentality. Warm feelings toward humanity in general cost nothing and change nothing. Real love is measured by what it does about a particular person who is difficult.
It is not agreement. Our age treats love and endorsement as identical, so that to disagree is by definition to hate. But no parent has ever believed this about a child, and no friend has believed it about a friend. Love that cannot say a hard thing is not love; it is cowardice with good manners.
It is not mere niceness. Niceness avoids trouble; love walks toward it. Niceness is pleasant to everyone at a distance. Love turns up when someone is in a mess that will take months to clear.
Which is why love and truth must be held together, never traded off. Truth without love wounds people with accurate facts. Love without truth watches them go over a cliff politely. Scripture never permits either.
Now the sharpest sentence in Scripture on this subject, and it allows no evasion.
"If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" (1 John 4:20)
The logic is inescapable, and it is deliberately humiliating. Loving God is easy to claim because God is invisible. Nobody can check it. He never interrupts us, never irritates us, never leaves a message unanswered, never says the thing that annoys.
Your brother is visible. He has habits that grate, opinions you find foolish, and a way of telling stories that takes too long. If love does not survive contact with him, then whatever we have been calling love for God is a claim about a Person we have never had to be inconvenienced by.
Scripture calls the man who makes that claim a liar. Not mistaken. Not immature. A liar.
And it presses the same point positively:
"Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." (1 John 4:7-8)
At this point an honest reader may feel crushed rather than helped. If that is the standard, who has ever met it?
Which is why the order in Scripture matters enormously:
"We love him, because he first loved us." (1 John 4:19)
Love in a Christian is not produced by resolving to be more loving. It is a response. It is derivative. It comes from having been loved first, at cost, while entirely undeserving — and it grows in exact proportion to how deeply that is grasped.
This explains something that puzzles many people. The most loving Christians are rarely those trying hardest to be loving. They are usually those most astonished at having been forgiven. A man who thinks he was a fairly decent case will be a fairly decent lover of others. A man who knows what he was rescued from finds it much harder to despise anybody.
So the practical route to loving people better is not chiefly to grit the teeth. It is to go back to the cross and look again at what was done there for you.
There is a particular difficulty in the command, and Scripture does not hide it.
The Lord Jesus Christ did not say love those you get along with. He put His command in the context of a group of men who had spent three years arguing about which of them was greatest, and who included a tax collector and a political zealot — men who in ordinary life would have been enemies.
A church is not a club of the like-minded. It is a family, and families are assembled without consultation. You will find yourself bound to people whose temperament grates on you, whose politics you find naive, whose manner is tiresome. That is not a defect in the arrangement; it is the arrangement. Anyone can love a congregation of people exactly like himself, and it proves nothing whatever.
And the same holds beyond the church. He extended it to enemies, to persecutors, to the neighbour in the parable who belonged to a despised group and who turned out to be the only one who stopped.
Practical counsel, since most people wanting to love better are stuck at exactly this point.
Act first; the feeling usually follows. Since biblical love is chiefly behaviour, you can begin without waiting. Do the concrete thing — the visit, the message, the practical help — and you will find, surprisingly often, that affection catches up with action. It very rarely works the other way round.
Pray for the person by name. It is nearly impossible to keep despising someone you are genuinely asking God to bless. This is not a technique; it is simply what happens.
Look for what God is doing in them. Sustained irritation usually means we have been cataloguing faults. Deliberately look for the evidences of grace instead — they are there.
Deal with the ledger. If love keeps no record of wrongs, then somewhere there is a record to be destroyed. Most cooled affection is a filing problem.
And remember who else is being borne with. You are somebody's difficult person. That thought, honestly held, softens a great deal.
Return to the reason He gave. By this shall all men know.
The world will not be argued into the kingdom by superior debate, though truth must be told plainly. What arrests people is a quality of love among Christians that has no natural explanation — people bound together who have nothing else in common, forgiving what would ordinarily end a friendship, caring for those who can do nothing for them.
That has always been the church's most persuasive evidence. It is also why division and coldness among believers do more damage to the gospel than any outside opposition ever has. When the badge is missing, the world concludes — reasonably — that there is nothing to it.
All of this rests on something already done, and it would be hopeless otherwise.
"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)
"But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)
"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." (John 1:12)
Until a person has been loved like that and knows it, love of the kind described in this article is not merely difficult — it is unavailable. It is not a human resource to be summoned. It is a received thing, passed on.
Before He gave the commandment, He knelt on the floor with a towel and washed twenty-four feet, including the feet of the man who had already agreed a price for Him.
Then He stood up and said: love one another as I have loved you.
He never asks for what He has not first done. And He has done it for you — which is the only reason the command is not cruelty, and the only place the strength to obey it has ever come from.
"We love him, because he first loved us."1 John 4:19
Our gracious heavenly Father, we come before Thy throne of grace through the precious name and perfect merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone has opened the way into Thy presence.
We thank Thee for Thy beloved Son, and for **Him** who washed the feet of the man who would betray **Him**. We praise Thee for Thy preserved Word, which declareth **"By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples"** (John 13:35), and which cannot be broken.
We confess before Thee that we have held sound doctrine with hard hearts. Forgive us, we pray, and cleanse us, for Thou art faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
We beseech Thee for every soul reading these words who is yet without Christ. Send forth Thy Holy Ghost to convince them of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; open their understanding; and draw them to Thy Son before this day is done.
Strengthen Thy people who read it. Comfort the discouraged, establish the wavering, and let none go away empty. And use this message to make every reader known by the one mark **Thy Son** chose, for Thy glory and not for ours.
We pray all of this to Thee, O God, our Holy and Heavenly Father, in the precious name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by the power and anointing of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Before you close this page, one question matters more than everything you have just read: if you died tonight, do you know where you would be?
You cannot be saved by joining a church, by being baptized, by giving money, or by living a decent life. Salvation is not a wage that is earned; it is a gift that is received. Every one of us has sinned, the wages of sin is death, and there is a real hell prepared for sin — but the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross in the sinner's place, was buried, and rose again the third day.
If you know yourself to be a sinner, and you are willing to turn from your sin and trust Him alone, then speak to God now. There are no magic words — but if these words are the cry of your heart, pray them and mean them:
Dear Holy and Almighty God, I come to Thee just as I am. I confess that I am a sinner. I have broken Thy law, I have gone my own way, and I deserve the judgment and the everlasting fire that my sin has earned. I cannot save myself, and I bring Thee nothing.
I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is Thy Son; that He loved me and died on the cross in my place, shedding His precious blood for my sins; that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day.
Here and now I turn from my sin, and I trust Him alone — not my works, not my religion, not my goodness — to save me. Lord Jesus, come into my heart, forgive my sin, and be my Saviour from this moment and for ever.
In the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ I pray. Amen.
1. Tell somebody today. "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Romans 10:9).
2. Begin reading the Bible. Start with the Gospel of John, then Acts, then Romans. Read a little every day. "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby" (1 Peter 2:2).
3. Talk to your Father every day. You may now come boldly, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. No appointment is needed and no man's permission.
4. Find a Bible-believing church and be baptized. Not to be saved — you already are — but in obedience, and as the public confession of what has happened to you.
5. Rest in this, and do not be shaken by your feelings. "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24). You will still sin; when you do, confess it and go on — "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).