Maundy Thursday and the Christian call to love
Today, Christians celebrate Maundy Thursday, when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and then shared the Passover meal with them.
On that day, He said, "A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also must love one another" (John 13:34; cf. John 15:12).
And yet, how is this a new commandment. Is this not the "commandment we have heard from the beginning" (1 John 2:7; 1 John 3:11)? Is this not the key to the Jewish law (Lev. 19:18), the commandment that Jesus and his disciple Paul both say is the center of God's will for us (Matt. 22:39; Rom. 13:10; Gal. 5:14)?
Yes, it is the same commandment, in one sense. But Jesus gives us a perfect example, a deeper motive, and a stronger power to fulfill the commandment. He gives us a perfect example of love: His self-sacrificing death on the Cross so that we might be made righteous in Him (cf. Eph. 5:2). He gives us a deeper motive: Not merely to do unto others what we would have them do unto us (Matt. 7:12), but to do unto them as Jesus would have done unto them. He calls us to love people with the kind of self-sacrificial love that loves even our enemies so they may be restored to fellowship with God (Matt. 5:44; cf. Phil. 2:3-8; 2 Cor. 5:11-21).
And, finally, He gives us a stronger power, so we can love in a way that is not from ourselves. If we love others in our own strength, our motives will be mixed. We will love expecting them love in return, and we will be no different from the world (Matt. 5:46). But Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit so that we can love freely, without caring how others respond to our love (cf. John 14:15-31). And that is the sign that the Church is to give of Christ's presence, before a watching world (John 13:35).
Artwork: Ford Madox Brown, "Jesus Washing Peter's Feet" (1852-6), Photo © Tate, Licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), retrieved from https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/brown-jesus-washing-peters-feet-n01394