Loving Like Jesus?

January 18, 2022

We loved you so much that we shared with you not only God’s Good News but our own lives, too. 1 Thessalonians 2:8 NLT

Having loved his own who were in the world, he [Jesus] now showed them the full extent of his love. John 13:1 NLT

You’ve heard it many times. Our responsibility as Jesus-followers is to love like Jesus did. But what does that mean? Jesus loved us so much He died a cruel horrific death for us. How in the world do we love like that?

His love for us was much more than the cross. The cross was the culmination of it, for sure. It not only paid the debt for our sins, but it enabled Him to conclusively show His power over life, death, and Satan by rising from the dead. But the magnificent work of Jesus Christ, the love He displayed was more. He left heaven, He didn’t do “love from a distance,” He inconvenienced Himself so far beyond our imagination that it is even ridiculous to call it inconvenienced. He left everything to come love us in our time and space. He shared His life with humans, eating what we eat, getting weary like we do, being wounded, rejected, hurt just like us. He enjoyed the highs and wept through the lows with us. He was fully present in our lives. He rejoices when we rejoice and weeps with us when we weep.

“The full extent of His love”—what a statement! How do we show the full extent of our love? Not on the wedding day when it’s all flowers and beauty. Not the day our children are born and they are so perfect we can’t even imagine how they could ever hurt us. The full extent is when we are tired, when we are disappointed, when our loved one’s needs are so great, when they don’t have what it takes on their own. We show the full extent of our love when we see the full extent of their weakness and we love them anyway.

Jesus knew—He knew—they were all going to betray Him and run away. He saw they were going to show how little their faith in Him truly was. He was going to be left to face the pain alone. But He washed their feet anyway. He loved them and served them anyway. In the face of their overwhelming weakness He showed them overwhelming love. Not love they deserved, not love they earned. Not love that was returned by good performance or any such thing. He loved them because He decided to love them, and He wanted them to have true life.

• That’s loving like Jesus. When you inconvenience yourself to share your life with others, when you see the full extent of their weakness and failure and you give them the full extent of your love anyway, that’s loving like Jesus. It still changes everything.