Introduction
    A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another, John 13:34-35.
   This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends, John 15:12-13. (English Standard Version used throughout, unless otherwise noted.)
   How many believers would be willing eat something they knew contained pork? How many would cheerfully go off to work on the Sabbath?
   Now for a hard question: How many would treat a brother or sister in the faith with anything less than the type of love we have already received from Yahshua? Probably, we all have in the past. But today is the day to change that!
   Yahshua commanded us to love one another in the way that He loved us. What an assignment! The love Yahshua commanded in John 13 and in John 15 demands far more than we usually confer in human relationships. But if we obey the commandment Yahshua has given here, we will need to understand just what He is asking of us.
   It’s been said that we can pick our friends but not our family. For example: A married couple may not, at one time, have liked each other enough to even consider marriage with the other. But what may have started out as, “I wouldn’t marry him or her, if he or she was the last person on earth” developed first as an acquaintance, afterward progressing into friendship and then perhaps marriage, which became an attractive idea to both the man and the woman.
   Becoming a member of an Assembly is a lot like a marriage. There are some members whom we might not pick as brothers and sisters. That’s alright though, because we aren’t required to pick members of the fellowship of believers. In fact, according to what Yahshua affirmed to His disciples, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you …” (John 15:16) … And in His Gethsemane prayer, He acknowledge that of those whom His Father had given Him, He’d lost none except that one (Judas), the son of perdition, to fulfill the prophecy (John 17:12). Moreover, the Apostle Paul confirmed Yahshua’s acknowledgment by saying that Yahweh has set the members, every one of them, in the Body, as it has pleased Him (1 Cor. 12:18).
   And so, even though we did not pick or choose these, our brethren, we are nevertheless commanded to love them as Yahshua loves them. What does that mean? A + in every way. Our love for the brethren must be pure in heart, intelligently directed to the highest goals, and so vigorous in application that it involves the entire soul.

Old Testament Love
    You shall love Yahweh your Elohim with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might, Deuteronomy 6:5. Yahshua declared this as the first and great commandment (Matt. 22:38) and then cited Leviticus 19:18, which reads, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself …”
   Yahshua said that upon these two commandments, hinged all the Law and the prophets (Matt. 22:40). How great a love it is when we can love someone else as much as we love ourselves! That means we forgive them readily, give them the things they need without them asking and without thought of repayment, and support them in many other ways.
   1 Corinthians 13 details many characteristics of this love. Who can love like that? What a challenge! Even this ancient command from the Torah seems to be more than we could ever naturally fulfill.
   But Yahshua fulfilled this kind of love in His life on earth. The evangels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are a record of This Man’s great love:
   In Matthew 9:36, when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Matthew 14:14 finds Him going forth, and seeing a great crowd, was moved with compassion toward them and healed their sick. In the 23rd chapter, he cries, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! Matthew 23:37.
   In His sermon on the mount (Matthew 5-7), He amplified one law after another and emphasized one’s heart attitude toward obeying these commandments. He said,

      • “Do not be angry,”
      • “Do not look at a woman to lust after her,”
      • “Do not stand up against someone who does you wrong,” and
      • “Love your enemies … do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which persecute you

   He employed those principles to govern His own life. They represented the way He actually lived, and died … imploring, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, Luke 23:34.

No Greater Love
    A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another, John 13:34-35.
   Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends, John 15:13.
   Perhaps we could paraphrase these words, “Dedicate your life completely to improving the relationship of the brethren with Yahweh because you love them so much. That is what I am doing and that is what I command you to do. That is how people with know you really are learning from Me.” It may be thought perhaps, that I may be taking liberty with this text, but I believe the Messiah would agree with this interpretation. After all, the law, the prophets, the writings … and certainly, the evangels, are all directed toward getting people clean, pure and without sin so that they may draw near to Yahweh. Such is the purpose of the Son, to present a ‘purified’ creation to the Father; His goal, the consummation of perfecting those things lacking in a people’s faith.
   Therefore, Yahshua did not give this commandment to “love one another as I have loved you” merely as a suggestion. Love motivated Him to give up His life for us (John 15:13) – not only in the sense that He died for us, but according to Isaiah 53, He was, for us, despised, disesteemed and rejected of men. A man of sorrows, He was acquainted with grief. He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him and with His stripes, we are healed. And all these He patiently endured, as a lamb brought to the slaughter and as a sheep, dumb before its shearers in order to bring all the brethren to the point where they could have a closer relationship with the Father.

So, How Do We Prove Our Love?
    As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full, John 15:9-11. Such love as Yahshua commanded, seems to depend on one thing: obedience to His commandments – whatever, He has commanded us to do … with the mind to do it 100%. As an incentive toward doing so, it will help to keep in mind that in so doing, we shall inherit a great position as kings and priests before Yahweh; as heirs, and joint heirs with Yahshua, as children of Almighty Yahweh, His Father and ours, too!

Yahshua’s Example: A Challenge to Us
    You call me Teacher and Master, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Master and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you, John 13:13-15.
   Having become our example, Yahshua set Himself apart for Yahweh’s purpose: And for them I set Myself apart, so that they too might be set apart in truth, John 17:19.
   Just as Yahshua had not come to be served and ministered to but instead, to serve and to minister, so likewise are we purposed to serve and to minister – even at an expense to ourselves, gladly spending and being spent; loving more abundantly though we should in return, be less loved (2 Cor. 12:15); bearing another’s burden, and so fulfilling the law of Messiah (Gal. 6:2); comforting the feebleminded and supporting the weak (1 Thess. 5:14).
   Yahshua prayed for those whom the Father had given Him, and also for us who would believe on Him through their word (John 17:20). Later, the Apostle Paul would, in a letter, tell Timothy, “and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2).
   These understood Yahshua’s teaching and passed it on, with instruction and encouragement. We might give ourselves to prayerful meditation upon what’s been provided by their writings. Looking to the Author and Finisher of faith, Yahshua, Who for the joy that was set before Him, endured execution on the tree, dismissing the shame, and assumed that seat at the right hand of the throne of Yahweh (Heb. 12:2). Consider Him Who endured such hostility of sinners against Himself; Who yet resisted and strove against sin, to the point of shedding blood, lest you be wearied and faint in your minds (Heb. 12:3-4).
   Yes, He left us an example, that we should become even as He: Executed with the Messiah, dying daily … nevertheless, the life that is lived in this flesh, lived by the faith of the Son of Elohim, Who loved me, and gave Himself for me (1 Cor. 15:31; Gal. 2:20).

Conclusion
    I pray, that from the treasures of His glory, that He will empower you with inner strength by His Spirit so that the Messiah may live in your hearts by faith. Also I pray that you will be rooted and founded in love, so that you, with all the saints, may be able to grasp the breadth, length, depth, and height of the Messiah’s love, and to know it even though it passes knowing, that you might be filled with all the fullness of Elohim (Eph. 3:16, 19) and though found in fashion as a man, humbling yourselves, walking in love as the Messiah loved us, by becoming obedient to the death of the self, as it is written:
   For you know the grace of our Master Yahshua the Messiah, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that through His poverty you might become rich. 2 Corinthians 8:9.
   As we have seen, obedience to Yahshua’s new commandment is not a light or easy thing to accomplish. It is difficult, but it is at the very heart of what it means to follow the Messiah. He said that others seeing our expressing this peculiar love is how they will know we follow Him. LOVE, the first and greatest of the nine Fruit of the Spirit. Yahshua has given us the example, and the New Testament writers have given us instruction and encouragement and Yahweh, has made us able through His Spirit to obey this new commandment given us (John 13:34).
   And so, now is the time to rededicate ourselves to obeying the master, following His example, and loving the brethren with all our heart and soul. Because He laid down His life for us, we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren (1 John 3:16). Let that grouchy old man die and go forward with the loving spirit of our Messiah. Finally, brethren, Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as Elohim in the Master forgave you, Ephesians 4:32.