Loving One Another

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

LOVING ONE ANOTHER

John 13:31-38

31 When he was gone, Jesus said, "Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. 32 If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once. 33 "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. 34 "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."  36 Simon Peter asked him, "Lord, where are you going?" Jesus replied, "Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later."  37 Peter asked, "Lord, why can't I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you." 38 Then Jesus answered, "Will you really lay down your life for me? I tell you the truth, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times!

NIV

There is so much here in the words of Jesus regarding his glorification and that he is glorifying the Father in his obedience to the cross. But what he says to his disciples in respect to him only being with them only a little longer has a double meaning as well as the fact they cannot go where he is going. Did he mean the cross, the grave or to heaven? He did tell them they will follow him later. Some of them did find their way to a cross, and the grave. As far as their following him to heaven is a topic which has been debated. When we die, do we sleep as some scripture makes reference to, or do we leave the body to be in the presence of the Lord instantly upon the death of the body?

Dan 12:1-3

12:1 "At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people — everyone whose name is found written in the book — will be delivered. 2 Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.

NIV

1 Cor 15:50-53

50 I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53 For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.

NIV

Both of these scriptures would suggest that in fact, we do sleep in the dust until the last day, or what some say the rapture of the saints.

2 Cor 5:6-10

6 Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. 7 We live by faith, not by sight. 8 We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

NIV

Here Paul implies that when we leave the body we are with the Lord, however, the question is when are we away from the body? Is it immediately upon death, or is it when we are all awakened from our sleep? It seems this is sort of an unanswerable debate, however, the point is we will follow Jesus to rise to be in the presence of God. If we do sleep, it is just as it is as we sleep now. We have not the remembrance of the time we are asleep, in fact, we really cannot remember actually falling to sleep, we just do and at some moment later we are awake. We have no knowledge of our being asleep. So it matters not which the case is when we die the next thing we will know is that we are in the presence of God. In the meantime, we are to live in this body loving one another. That could be a topic of an entire book in order to do justice to how that looks for us to love one another. Yet that is the point of what Jesus is telling us. It seems much effort is applied to many of the commands, or what we think are the commands. Throughout time believers have made up lists of ways they think is following Jesus. The do’s and don’ts are their main concerns. No drinking, no smoking, no dancing, no movies, no roller rinks, no bars, no, no and more no’s. It is a little more difficult to enumerate the “do’s” for we have never heard their expression of the list. However, Jesus makes it clear the only do which covers all the other do’s is to love on another. If we love each other we would do no harm in any way whatsoever to each other, in fact, we would put the others needs ahead of our own. Maybe we need to work a little more on this loving. Let us leave this exchange about Peter willing to lay his life down for later because we have to focus right now on this loving. There seems to be more to do in this area of loving one another.