John 13:34Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

How does He call this commandment new, when it existed in the Old Testament? He made it new by the very manner of it. Therefore He added: "As I have loved you." I, He says, did not repay a debt to you for your previous merits, but Myself began to love you. So you too must do good to your friends, even if you owe them nothing.

Do you see that the new commandment consists in loving one's neighbor freely, even if we owe him nothing? The Law said, "Love your friend," commanding love as though repaying a debt to the neighbor who first began to love.

For if we do not merely avoid imitating the manners of the Jews, but also do not exceed, and fully exceed, the righteousness under the law, I think we shall never attain the Kingdom of Heaven.

We do not assert that the Law of Moses was entirely useless and unnecessary. It communicated the good to us, though imperfectly. But it proves to be a guide toward learning the Gospel life.

By means of enigmas and figures, it introduces the image of true piety. It sketches, as it were, in our souls the shadow of instruction through Christ. Therefore He Himself said, "I tell you that every scribe instructed for the Kingdom of Heaven is like a rich man who brings out of his treasure things new and old" (Mt 13:52).

Following the words of Moses and receiving benefit from them in the soul is certainly no small and true wealth for a person. But when he also receives the beauty of Gospel instruction, he is adorned doubly, by knowledge of both the ancient and the new laws.

Therefore our Lord Jesus Christ shows that His commandment is better than the ancient one, and that the saving preaching was not yet accessible to those who lived under the law.

When He was about to ascend to heaven, He first lays down the law of love as a certain foundation and support of every good. Yet this is not love according to the law, but above the law.

Therefore He says, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another." But how, someone may ask, did He who said through Moses to those of old call this commandment new?

For He said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your understanding, and your neighbor as yourself" (Deut 6:5; Mk 12:30-31; Lk 10:27; cf. Mt 22:37-39).

Behold, having placed love for God, as is natural, above and before everything else, He joined to it love for one another. He combined love for us ourselves with love for God.

For love for God could not justly exist if the fitting love for neighbor did not follow it, since we are all brothers to one another. So also the all-wise John, knowing well and teaching others, says, "He who loves his brother loves God" (1 Jn 4:21).

Is Christ's commandment new in this way, though it had also been proclaimed by the ancient laws? But please observe the precision of the saying and look at the words that follow.

He was not content to say, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another." To show the newness of the saying, and that His love is far above that ancient love for one another, He immediately added, "As I have loved you, that you also love one another."

Therefore, to understand clearly the meaning of these words, we must examine how Christ loved us. Then we shall see, and very easily, the newness and difference of the commandment now given.

"Being in the form of God, He did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped. But He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross" (Phil 2:6-8).

And though He was rich, He became poor, as Paul again testified to us (2 Cor 8:9). Do you not see here the newness of His love for us? The law commanded us to love our brother as ourselves.

But our Lord Jesus Christ loved us more than Himself. For, being in the form and equality of God and the Father, He would not have descended to our lowliness, nor undergone so grievous a bodily death for us.

He would not have endured the blows of the Jews, shame, mockery, and all the rest. I will not prolong the discourse endlessly by listing in detail everything that happened to Him. Nor would He, being rich, have become poor, had He not loved us far more than Himself.

This is truly a strange, new measure of love. He commands us also to have this disposition, to place absolutely nothing above love for the brethren, neither glory nor wealth.

Without hesitation we must even go, if needed, to bodily death itself, so as to gain the salvation of our neighbor. This is what the blessed disciples of our Savior did, and those who followed in their steps.

They considered the salvation of others higher than their own life. They experienced every labor and were in extreme distress, so as to save the souls of those who were perishing.

So Paul says in one place, "I die daily" (1 Cor 15:31), and in another, "Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn?" (2 Cor 11:29).

Therefore the Savior commanded us to practice love beyond the law, as the root of the most perfect piety toward God. He knew that otherwise we would not receive approval from God.

Only by attaining the beauty of the love implanted by Him in us shall we remain in great and perfect goods.

It is that love concerning which the Lord, to distinguish it from carnal love, added, "as I have loved you." For husbands and wives love one another, parents and children love one another, and every other human necessity also joins people together.

This is to say nothing of the blameworthy and punishable love shown to each other by adulterers and adulteresses, the dissolute and prostitutes, and all others drawn together not by human necessity, but by the shameful deformity of human life.

Thus Christ gave us a new commandment, that we should love one another as He loved us. This love renews us, so that we become new people, heirs of the New Covenant, singers of a new song.

This love, beloved brethren, renewed even the ancients who were righteous then, the patriarchs and prophets, just as later it renewed the blessed Apostles. It now renews the nations.

From the whole human race, scattered throughout the whole circle of the earth, it gathers and forms a new people, the body of the new bride of the Son of God, the Only-begotten Bridegroom. Of her it is said in the Song of Songs, "Who is this coming up, made white?" (cf. Song 8:5 LXX).

She is made white, of course, because she is renewed. And by what, if not by the new commandment?

Through this, her members care for one another. If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. If one member is glorified, all the members rejoice with it (1 Cor 12:25-26).

For they hear and keep: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another." Not as the corrupt love one another, and not as people love one another merely because they are human beings.

Rather, they love one another because they are all gods and sons of the Most High (cf. Ps 81:6). Thus they are brothers of His Only-begotten Son, loving one another with that love by which He loved them.

He strives to bring them to that end where there will be sufficiency, where their desire will be satisfied with good things (cf. Ps 102:5). For then nothing will remain for them to desire, when God will be all in all (cf. 1 Cor 15:28).

Such an end has no end. No one dies there, and no one comes there except those who die to this age. This is not the death common to all, when the soul leaves the body.

It is the death of the elect, when, even while remaining in mortal flesh, the heart is directed toward the things above. Of such a death the Apostle said, "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God" (Col 3:3).

For the same reason, it seems, it is said, "Love is strong as death" (Song 8:6). Through this love it happens that, while we still abide in this corruptible body, we die to this age.

Our life is found hidden with Christ in God. More than that, this love itself is our death to the age and our life with God. For if death occurs when the soul leaves the body, how is it not death when our love leaves the world?

Therefore, "love is strong as death." And what is stronger than love, by which the world is overcome?

Thus, my brethren, do not think that in the Lord's words, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another," there is any rejection of the greater commandment. That commandment orders us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our understanding (cf. Mt 22:37).

For it seems that "that you love one another" was said in contrast to this commandment. It would be as though the commandment to love the Lord were spoken apart from this one: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

In truth, "on these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets" (Mt 22:39-40). Those who understand rightly will find both in each of the two commandments.

Indeed, the one who loves God cannot despise His commandment to love the neighbor. And the one who has loved his neighbor in a holy and spiritual way, what does he love in him if not God?

This is the love distinguished from every worldly love. To explain it, the Lord added, "as I have loved you." For what did He love in us, if not God?

Not because we possessed Him, but so that we might possess Him. Thus He might bring us, as I said a little earlier, to that place where God will be all in all (1 Cor 15:28).

For it is rightly said that a physician loves the sick. And what does he love in them except the health he wishes to restore to them? He certainly does not love the disease he comes to remove.

So let us also love one another, that, as far as we can, by showing love, we may move one another toward having God dwell within us. This love was given to us by Him who said, "As I have loved you, so you also love one another."

For He loved us in this way, so that we also might love one another. Through love He brought this about in us, that we might be joined together by mutual love. Thus, as members bound by such sweet bonds, we might become the Body of so great a Head.

Some explain this otherwise. The ancient commandment read: "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy" (Mt 5:43). But now the Savior commands us to love all, even enemies. He Himself loved all the disciples, so that He not only did not hate Judas, who plotted against Him, but was even troubled in spirit from deep distress and grief over his perdition.

If Jesus called it a new commandment, it was only because He now commanded them not only to love all, even enemies, and to do good to them, as had been said in the Sermon on the Mount. He commanded them even to sacrifice their own life, if this was necessary for the salvation of others, and to lay down their soul for them.

Nevertheless, the Lord calls this commandment of His new. By this He marks its special and truly new character among the disciples and followers of Christ. This character is expressed in the motives for love, in its degree, and in its scope.

Christian love for neighbors is not merely natural philanthropy, native to the human soul and possible even among pagans, since it is based on the law of conscience. Nor is it a prescription whose aim is only to restrain vengefulness, as in the Mosaic legislation (Lev 19:18). Rather, it is the free and voluntary love of Christians for one another in the name of Christ, in the name of Christ as Redeemer of all men, who are inseparably bound together by this redemption.

From this the ancient commandment of love for neighbors receives a new character, distinguishing it from every other. In this sense, precisely as Christian, it is truly a new commandment. For love of neighbors as love in the name of Christ the Savior appeared only in the Christian world. In the Christian world, only that love for neighbors is truly Christian which is shown in the name of Christ.

Corresponding to this, Christian love is distinguished by special purity, selflessness, and, so to speak, spirituality: "As I have loved you, so you also love one another," purely, holily, and selflessly. Only such love can reach an extraordinarily high degree and power, because it is founded on the infinitely exalted idea of universal redemption by Christ and of the spiritual unity of all in Christ, as brothers in one family of Christ, or as members of one spiritual body of Christ.

For this reason love of enemies is possible only here. It is not possible either in Judaism, compare Mt 5:43, or in paganism, because there it has no foundation. Only certain great Hebrew men who lived by faith in the coming Messiah sometimes attained the concept of love for enemies.

For all these reasons, the commandment of love given by the Lord is a new commandment. "As I have loved," and so forth. This does not properly indicate only the degree and strength of love, though these are not excluded. It indicates the very character of love, love for all in the name of the redemption of all by Christ, and not in the name of anything else.