John 13:35Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Thus, passing over in silence the miracles they were to perform, He sets love as their distinguishing mark. Why so? Because it especially marks holy people, since it is the foundation of every virtue. By it above all we are all saved. This, He says, is what marks the disciple. Then all will praise you, when they see that you imitate My love.

What then? Do miracles not show this much better? No. "Many will say, Lord, did we not cast out demons in Your name?" (Mt 7:22). Again, when the apostles rejoiced that the demons were subject to them, He said, "Do not rejoice that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven" (Lk 10:20).

True, miracles brought the world to Christ, but only because love preceded them. If there had been no love, there would have been no miracles. Love immediately made the apostles good and noble men, so that all had one heart and one soul. If they had been at odds among themselves, everything would have perished.

But this was not said to them alone. It was also said to all who would believe in Him. Even now nothing else so scandalizes the Gentiles as the absence of love. You will say that they also reproach us because miracles do not occur. Yes, but not so much.

In what did the apostles show love? Do you see that Peter and John are inseparable from one another, and enter the temple together? Do you see that Paul also is animated by love toward them? Do you still doubt? If they acquired other virtues, much more did they have love, which is the mother of good things.

Love grows from a virtuous soul. Where vice is, this plant withers. It is said, "Because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold" (Mt 24:12). Nor are Gentiles converted so much by miracles as by life. Nothing orders life so well as love.

Those who performed signs the Gentiles often called deceivers. But they cannot reproach a pure life. Therefore, while the preaching had not yet spread, miracles were rightly an object of wonder. But now we must awaken wonder by our life.

Indeed, nothing so scandalizes as vice, and rightly so. When a Gentile sees that one who has been commanded to love even enemies practices greed, plunders, incites enmity, and treats his own people like wild beasts, he will call our words empty ravings. When he sees a Christian trembling at death, how will he accept words about immortality? When he sees that we love power and serve other passions as slaves, he will cling all the more to his own teaching, thinking nothing great of us.

We, truly we, are responsible for the Gentiles remaining in error. They have long since condemned their own teaching, and they look upon ours with respect. But our life holds them back from conversion. To philosophize in words is easy. Many among them have done this. But they demand proof from deeds.

You will say, let them consider our men of old. But they do not believe this at all. They want to see people living now. "Show us faith from your works," they say. Yet there are no works. On the contrary, they see that we tear our neighbor apart worse than beasts, and therefore they call us the plague of the world.

This is what holds the Gentiles back, and does not allow them to join us. Therefore we shall be punished for them also, not only because we do evil, but also because through us the name of God is blasphemed. How long shall we be attached to wealth, luxury, and other passions?

Let us finally depart from them. Hear what the prophet says of certain senseless men: "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die" (Is 22:13). Yet of people now even this cannot be said. Many now seize for themselves the possessions of all. For this the prophet rebukes them, saying, "As though you alone were settled upon the earth" (Is 5:8).

Therefore I fear lest something evil happen, and lest we draw upon ourselves some punishment from God. So that this may not happen, let us exercise ourselves in every virtue, that we may attain the good things to come, by the grace and love for mankind of our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him and with Him, to the Father with the Holy Spirit be glory, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Love is the head, root, source, and mother of all good things. Without it all the rest brings us no benefit. It is the sign of the Lord's disciples, the distinctive property of the servants of God, the mark of the apostles.

"By this all will know," Jesus Christ says, "that you are My disciples." Tell me, what does "by this" mean? Is it by raising the dead, cleansing lepers, or casting out demons? No, He says. Passing over all these in silence, He adds, "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

Such works are gifts of grace from above alone, but love is a virtue that also depends on human zeal. A valiant man is usually distinguished not so much by gifts sent from above as by the merits of his own labors. Therefore Christ says that His disciples are known not by signs, but by love.

When love is present, the one who has acquired it lacks no part of philosophy, but possesses virtue whole, complete, and full. Likewise, without it he is deprived of all good things. Therefore Paul praises and exalts it. Or rather, however much he says, he can never fully express its dignity.

What can be compared with love, which contains the prophets and the whole law, and without which neither faith, nor knowledge, nor the understanding of mysteries, nor martyrdom itself, nor anything else can save the one who has attained all these? "And though I give my body to be burned," says the Apostle, "but have not love, it profits me nothing" (1 Cor 13:3).

Again, elsewhere, explaining that love is greater than all and is the head of all good things, he said, "Love never fails. Whether prophecies, they will cease. Whether tongues, they will be stilled. Whether knowledge, it will pass away. These three remain: faith, hope, love. But the greatest of these is love" (1 Cor 13:8, 13).

Yet I think someone may perhaps raise this objection. Why is love the sign of discipleship with Christ, and the form of all virtues in Him, when it is acquired not through training, labor, and diligence, as in man, but belongs by nature to His own nature? For this is a particular property of the divine nature. It belongs to it properly and truly, and is beyond all wonder.

Yes, my friend, this is very justly said. I must add an explanation concerning it. The fruit of the supreme Essence is that which belongs to it particularly and properly. Yet the one who investigates may easily see that every form of virtue is the fulfillment of love. Everything reckoned as the doing of good belongs to love and is directed toward it.

Therefore the chief and first commandment in the law is to love the Lord God with all the soul, with all the heart, and with all the mind. The second, kindred and near to it, is love for one's neighbor, which contains the whole fullness of the law (Mk 12:30).

So also the divine Paul, summing up all the commandments in love, writes in the Epistle: "For the commandments, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not swear, and if there is any other commandment, are summed up in this word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law" (Rom 13:9-10).

That love contains within its own bounds the form of all virtues, and holds good things as though in its bosom, this same most wise Paul again confirms. He says, "Love does not exalt itself, is not puffed up, does not behave disgracefully, does not seek its own," and what follows (1 Cor 13:4-5). But it would take much time to express in words the whole measure of love.

Nevertheless, to those who have resolved to choose love for themselves I say this. If it is to become known everywhere that they have become disciples of Christ, it is fitting and necessary for them to be adorned with the crown of love. They must bear love for one another upon themselves as a kind of banner of this discipleship. For this reason I shall also speak briefly about this.

If one of us practices the craft of bronze-working or weaving, must he not, beyond all doubt, be the disciple of some bronze-worker or weaver? Is it not the same with one who knows the carpenter's craft? Will he not say that he can perform his craft so well because he had a carpenter as teacher of the craft?

On the same ground, I think, those who possess the full power of divine love within themselves will acknowledge without hesitation that they are disciples of love, or of Christ, who possesses the highest love. For He so loved the world that He laid down even His own soul for it, and endured the cruelty of Jewish wickedness.

He Himself will testify to this when He says to His disciples, "Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his soul for his friends" (Jn 15:13). And since "God is love" (1 Jn 4:16), according to the word of John, He is the Son of Love, that is, of the One who exists by nature and is the only true God. He Himself also is love.

He possesses this property or dignity not as something expressed only in words, and adorned by rhetorical splendor. By His deeds and the events themselves, He showed Himself to be the true fruit of the essence of His Begetter.

Indeed, we must by no means think that the Essence supreme over all essences receives good things into itself. Nor shall we call the form of all good things acquired in it, as it is in us. Nor is it to be thought of as one thing in another, as, for example, knowledge of something in a man.

A man is not himself knowledge. Rather, he receives knowledge. But the All-Good itself, as it must be understood by us, is properly, as we affirm, the divine and ineffable Nature itself. It has every kind of virtue within itself as a kind of spring, and pours it forth from itself.

Therefore He must most fittingly be the fruit of love. Being love, as is the Father whose Son He is, He must be imprinted upon our souls especially through love. In virtuous men He inscribes, as a sign of kinship with Him, steadfast abiding in love for one another.

Otherwise, if according to Paul's word Christ is our peace, since in Him all things have been joined, the lower with the higher, and through Him we have been reconciled to God the Father, though in the beginning we had made a great defection by turning aside to evil, then what follows? Once divided into two peoples, Gentiles and Israel, we have been created in Him into one new man. For the middle wall of partition has been broken down, and the power of enmity abolished, when the evangelical teachings caused the law to fall silent (Eph 2:14-15).

How, then, could those be acknowledged as disciples of peace who have no peace among themselves? What else could separation from love be, if not the birth of war, the overthrow of peace, and the appearance of every kind of double-mindedness? Just as all the good things of peace are preserved for us in the unbreakable bond of love, so, I think, when love is cut off, the evil of enmity rushes in.

What follows from this? Injuries appear, disputes, jealousy, anger, wrath, provocations, slanders, envy, and every kind of evil. If, then, all virtue is summed up and fulfilled in the form and image of love, let none of us be high-minded because of abstinence from food, sleeping on the ground, or any other ascetic labors, if he does not properly preserve love for his brother.

Such a man passes beyond the marked boundary of the course, like inexperienced charioteers in the races. He turns aside from the course, like a helmsman who has the ship's rudder, yet through ignorance does not keep to the appointed aim of the voyage.

Therefore he who dared to say, "Since you seek proof of Christ speaking in me," I mean the divine Paul (2 Cor 13:3), boasted not merely that he was striving, but that he was doing so according to the goal (Phil 3:14). Yes, to boast in bodily labors is, I think, to depart from the chief and most necessary goods. It is not to strive according to the goal.

Thus he knew that love lies upon all virtues like a crown. Zealous for it, he speaks beautifully: "If I spend all my possessions, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, I am nothing. If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal" (1 Cor 13:1, 3). Therefore the praise of love is the manifestation in us of the person and image of Christ the Savior.

O bride of Christ, fairest among women! O you who rise whitened and leaning upon your Beloved! For you are illumined by His light so that you yourself may shine. You lean on His help so that you may not fall.

How beautifully it is sung to you in the Song of Songs, as in a wedding hymn: "Since love is in your delights" (cf. Song 7:6 LXX). It does not permit your soul to perish with the ungodly. It pleads your cause, and, like death, it is strong and abides in your delights.

How wondrous is the kind of death for which it is not enough to have no sufferings, but which also abides in delights.

Yet we must end the discourse here. Another time we shall interpret what follows.

Although the Old Covenant had the commandment to love God above all things and one's neighbor as oneself, this commandment became new from the time when the Lord revealed in Himself the pattern of love that sacrifices itself for the salvation of the brethren.

It was to be the soul of the new society, the new Church. "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love among yourselves."

The Son of God, who became man and gave Himself over to death for His enemies, for sinful men, first revealed such love in Himself. Believers in Christ are called to the same love for their neighbors, and this love will constitute the essential property and mark of the followers of Jesus Christ.

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.

The followers of Christ must be distinguished by this and recognized by this sign: mutual love will animate all their actions and all their mutual relations. This love, not broken or weakened either by the passions of self-love or by the calamities of the world, will reveal in itself not human power, but the power of God, the breath of the spirit of grace, inaccessible to the children of the old law.

This is why Christ's commandment of love is a new commandment.

Divine Love, enliven in us by Your Spirit the love commanded by You. Amen.

"It is true," says Chrysostom, "that miracles brought the world to Christ, but this was because love preceded them."

The great, immeasurable love of God, expressed in the dread sacrifice of redemption, kindled in the hearts of believers that love which the law could not kindle. For before the coming of the Lord, man was only "kept under guard by the law" (Gal 3:23).

This continued until faith showed him that love is the fulfillment of the law (Rom 13:10; see also 1 John throughout). But love kindled in the human heart, according to his faith, by the grace of God, is the complete rebirth of the person.

Love becomes the person's nature and, by regenerating him, raises him from earth to heaven. But "grace and truth came through Jesus Christ," says the Theologian (Jn 1:17). Only His coming brought into the human soul the grace capable of kindling true love.

Therefore the commandment given by the Lord to His disciples, "that you love one another," was a new commandment. It turned into a real fact the thought that had until then been abstract, not understood by man and not fulfilled by him.

From then on, the ideal of this great commandment was to be the love with which the Lord loved His disciples and all humanity: "as I have loved you, that you also love one another."

This love, offering itself in sacrifice, had to stand before all the thoughts and all the feelings of the disciples. In His mercy and love, God became brother to man in the fleshly form.

As man, He gave His soul for man, His brother. That this sacrifice was accepted by God for humanity, because this man was the same God, was another and higher side of the mystery. But as man He laid down His soul for us.

Therefore the Lord Himself points to Himself in Jn 15:13: "Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Earlier He had also said, "The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many" (Mt 20:28; Mk 10:45).

Those who confessed Christ and were called Christians were distinguished in the pagan world not only by miracles, but most of all by mutual love. Tertullian indicates this in his Apology of Christianity, section 39.

By this especially they drew the attention of the pagans, who did not understand these brotherly relations among the members of the Church of Christ, relations devoid of all egoism.

But this was natural if one compares the order of life in pagan society with the principles that guided Christian communities. The pagans thought exclusively about earthly interests, and conflict of interests aroused hostility and quarrels.

The chief attention of the Apostles was directed toward uprooting disputes among believers over material goods. See Jas 4:1; 1 Cor 6:6-8, and elsewhere.

Christians of the first centuries, however, cared little for earthly needs. These concerns did not hinder them from striving toward heaven and fulfilling from the soul the Lord's commandment of love.

On the basis of this commandment, when they supplied a needy brother with what was necessary for earthly life, they chiefly strove to nourish and educate him spiritually. They accustomed him to disdain earth and flesh.

They strove, through love, to act upon his inner and eternal self and to raise it into the higher, spiritual world. This love of souls became, according to the Lord's word, the banner of Christians: "By this all will know that you are My disciples."

Love for God and neighbor became in the world not only a banner, but also a dread power. Faith in the Lord and love for Him are inseparable, as Saint John the Theologian indicates.

He pronounces great and solemn words that refer to faith, but necessarily include the love inseparable from it: "And this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith" (1 Jn 5:4). See verses 1 through 5, where faith is not separated from love.