Submitted by Pastor Julie Sanders, Tarkio & Westboro United Methodist Churches

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34-35

Jesus said, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Have you ever wondered why Jesus added the part ‘as I have loved you’? Because the world doesn’t teach the same kind of love that Jesus taught. The world we live in offers a very limited, restricted and narrow kind of love. A kind of conditional love that says, “I can love you as my neighbor, if you look like me, act like me, dress like me, talk like me, eat like me and think like me. If you are pretty close to how I think you should be; I can love you. But if not, if you don’t fit in this mold – I will have to tell you that you don’t fit in.”

There is no virtue in loving someone who is just like us. Anyone can do that – even non-believers. There is no virtue in loving someone with whom we agree. That is almost like loving ourselves. Jesus said, “If you love only those who love you, what good is that?” When Jesus said, “Love your enemy” he wasn’t talking about a conditional, limited kind of love. Jesus had something different in mind. He loved everybody, He accepted everybody. He included everybody. He reached out graciously and intentionally to those who were down on their luck, to those who were hurting, to those who were poor and needy, to those who were in trouble, to those who were sick, or afflicted and to those who were labeled as outcasts and He drew them into His circle of love. And then He said to His followers, “Look! This is the way I want you to love. Love one another, as I have loved you.”

This out of the box concept of love can be difficult – because it calls us past our comfort zones. It calls us past the familiar and into places that we must completely trust Jesus. Yet, these are the places that growth happens – for both us and those we are reaching out to. When we step outside of ourselves and step into Christ, we begin to become what Christ calls us to be; Him in the world. Can you imagine if that was the goal of every Christian? First, can you imagine the difference it would make in our own walk if we learned to allow Christ to shape us instead of being shaped by the world? Second, can you imagine the impact Christians would have in the world, if we were loving the way Christ loved? It would be transformational. My hope for you is that you find at least one person to reach out to who is out of your comfort zone.