"As I Have Loved You"

This evening, I had a conversation about the commandment "As I have loved you, love one another," in which we discussed what it meant to love others as Jesus loves us. It was determined fairly quickly that we can't love others to the degree that Jesus loves us. It would be impossibly difficult for us to feel that infinite an amount of love. However, that doesn't mean that this commandment is impossible to keep. Even if we can't love others as much as Jesus loves us, we can still love them in the same manner as He loves us. So, then the question became "How does Jesus show His love for us, and how can we show our love for each other?"

As I was typing that, my fingers accidentally changed "does" into "doesn't," which I believe is appropriate. How doesn't Jesus show His love for us? He loves us in so many ways. He heals us, He teaches us, He strengthens us, He provides for us, He sacrificed Himself for us, He forgives us, He advocates for us, and I could go on. Jesus loves us in an uncountable number of ways.

When we consider all that He does for us, loving others as Jesus loves us simultaneously becomes both harder and easier. It's harder in that it would be difficult to love everyone in all of those ways. Thankfully, we don't have to. At least, not all at the same time. Jesus' love manifests as mercy at some times and as justice at others, and it manifests in healing some and comforting others. We don't have to love everyone in all ways at all times.

Given that, loving others "as I have loved you" becomes easy, if only because Jesus loved us in so many ways. We can love others by serving them, or being kind to them, or by being patient with them, or in any other way we can think of, and we'll still (probably) be loving them in one or more of the ways in which Jesus loves us. It still takes effort, of course. Love always does. But at least we can spend that effort in almost any loving way we see fit. There are many, many ways in which Jesus has shown His love for us. Thus, we have many, many options for how we can show our love for others.