John 13:31-38

John 13:31-35     The Context of the Last Meal (2) - The Hour has Come

Up to this point, the narrative had said very little about the relationship between Jesus and the disciples, and even less about the disciples’ relationships with each other. The Gospel would proceed to address both these issues explicitly, and at length.

The situation was about to change profoundly. Jesus would be killed, and the life of the historical Jesus would end. Equally importantly, he would rise from death, and his life as the Risen Lord would begin.

The Moment of Glory

31 Once Judas had departed,
Jesus said, "The Son of Man has now been glorified, 

The author had already indicated that Jesus knew that his hour had come [13:1]. Now Jesus explicitly made it known to the disciples.

In the context of the Gospel, glory is what can be seen externally of someone’s worth.  To glorify is to make that worth obvious. Jesus’ life had already revealed so much of his true and inner worth – his inner integrity and his unqualified love. Now people would really see how much he loved them. The purpose of the preceding chapters had been precisely to help readers to develop their sense of the true identity of Jesus and to believe in him. However, Jesus’ death and resurrection would reveal that identity most clearly. He would be truly glorified – he would be seen as the one who loved to the end [13:1]. Judas’s departure had set the wheels in motion for that deeper revelation.

… and in him God has also been glorified.
32 If God has been glorified in him,
God will also glorify him in himself,
and will glorify him immediately.

Jesus was the living expression of the heart of God, enabling the world to recognise the glory of Jesus as only son of his Father, full of love and truth [1:14]. The Father, too, would be seen as the one who loves.

In glorifying Jesus, the world would glorify God, whom Jesus revealed, and who was the source of Jesus’ glory. Now, with Judas’ betrayal, the process of Jesus’ complete glorification was under way. The empowering God would strengthen Jesus to live through his imminent ordeal of death with total integrity and love, and, in the process, save the world from its violence and destructiveness. God would then complement Jesus’ death with life to the full – to be expressed so beautifully by the Risen Jesus’ greeting to the failed disciples: Peace be with you [20:19,22,26]. Jesus would be clearly revealed as the Son of Man – the personal criterion that would ultimately expose true right and wrong, and who would reveal God as the God who forgives anyone ready to accept that forgiveness.

Effectively, what Jesus was saying was that, if the world would only care to listen, it would be able to know how much he loved it.

33 Young children, I am with you for a brief time.  
You will search for me.  
As before I said to the Jews,
'Where I am going, you are unable to come',
so I say the same thing now to you.

The address, young children, drew on the insight already sketched out in the Prologue: to those who believed in his name, he gave the power to become children of God. They were not born from mother or father, nor from human desire, nor from male desire, but from God [1:11-13]. The same Prologue had referred, also, to the rejection of Jesus by mainline Jews: He came into his own, and his own people did not accept him [1:10].


Young Children

Later in the Discourse, Jesus would call the disciples his “friends” [15:15]. He saw them as adults and invited them into an adult relationship with him. Adult relationships between equals open up depths that cannot be achieved in parent/child relationships.

The term, “young children”, may be heard by some today as paternalistic and even patronising. The words were the words of the Beloved Disciple who, perhaps, felt himself an older man surrounded by a community of younger disciples and sharing Jesus’ desire to reassure them. While the expression was his, he may have remembered similarly reassuring words originally uttered by Jesus to himself and the other historical disciples.

Jesus was neither paternalistic nor patronising. The greeting picked up the sense of trust between child and parent. At a time of deep distress, Jesus sought to strengthen and console the disciples. Even the diminutive, “young”, served only to emphasise the intimacy of the relationship.

In times of stress, adults often feel like abandoned and helpless children, and respond to words that are gentle and encouraging.


Restoring the World through Love

34 I give you a new commandment,
Love each other.  
Just as I loved you,
you must love each other.
35 Everyone will know that you are my disciples from this –
the love you have among yourselves.

The new commandment served simply to express directly what the foot-washing had done graphically: So if I your Lord and Master have washed your feet, then you too ought to wash each other’s feet.  I have set you an example that you should do what I have done to you [13:14-15]. 

That Jews love one another was not a new commandment. The book of Leviticus had clearly stated: You shall love your neighbour as yourself [Leviticus 19:18]. They were to love one another as fellow heirs to the one covenant between God and themselves. The commandment made no mention of loving foreigners.

This commandment was new because, for disciples of Jesus, there was a new basis for their mutual love. Jesus’ love for them was more than an example to copy or a standard to strive for. It was a living power into which they were drawn, and that he in turn drew from his Father: Just as the living Father sent me, and I am alive because of the Father, so too those who eat me will live because of me [6:57]. It was a life and energy that connected disciples to Jesus, and through and in him, to each other. Their love for each other was the concrete expression of their new life as disciples. The naturally spontaneous intimacy and strength of that love would distinguish them as disciples of Jesus who had loved them intimately to the end.

The commandment would be repeated later in the narrative [15:12]. It would be the only explicit commandment that Jesus would give to the disciples.


Focussed Love

The commandment focussed on love for “each other”. It made no mention of love for non-disciples, and of love for the world (which was the motivating force of the Father’s sending Jesus to the world [3:16]). Nor did it mention love for enemies.

It was an eminently practical commandment, clearly anchoring the disciples in the immediate challenge at hand. Given the ease with which persons can overlook the obvious and live in vague abstraction, those who are out of reach can unconsciously seem easier to love.

In its incomplete stages, love can be accompanied by other emotional energies and agendas originating in the self; motivations are mixed. However, all genuinely pure love calls for a death to self and involves struggle. 

The love that Jesus makes possible is a love that originates in the heart of God and is mediated through Jesus. As disciples open themselves to receive that love, it draws them into itself and transforms them, empowering them to love with the love of Jesus – “as I have loved you”. Such love is not an abstraction, but is directed to real people, and is exercised and nourished in real relationships.

As it grows through real relationships, it is empowered to extend outwards to others into a broader circle than that of fellow disciples. As love becomes ever purer, its reach is not determined by the objects of its love: fellow disciples, non-disciples or enemies, but by the transformed heart of the lover. Empowered by God, love becomes unconditional and indiscriminate, relentless and honest. As it extends outwards beyond the circle of intimacy, it takes on more the concrete shapes of respect and justice, without ceasing to be love.

In the modern world, generous individuals have given their time and their skills to promote the human development of others in many countries of the Third World. They have contributed much through their knowledge and expertise. However, the impact of people acting together in community can be quite different. Christian communities may not always be gifted with technical and academic skills. What they can give to oppressed and exploited people, however, is a sense of hope. They can show, by their being a genuinely loving community, that people can cooperate, that peace is possible and that love can give a human face to justice. In doing this, they reveal the face of God: "Everyone will know that you are my disciples from this – the love you have among yourselves.

The indispensable and confronting battlefield for genuine growth in love remains always the group of real people of one’s community. As Jesus’ fate would indicate, such love would call for continuing commitment even to friends who deny relationship and betray intimacy. History shows that disciples have regularly failed this one crucial commandment, allowing disputes about orthodoxy to take priority over the imperatives of love.


John 13:36-38     The Context of the Last Meal (3) - Peter’s Denial

36 Simon Peter said to Jesus,
"Lord, where are you going to?"
Jesus replied,
"Where I am going you cannot follow me just now,
but you will afterwards."

Peter asked the question that the Jews had asked earlier [8:22], and Jesus’ answer was substantially the same, but not quite. In Peter’s case, Jesus spoke of following (the call of every disciple); the relationship would remain. Moreover, the parting would be only temporary. Jesus’ mention of not just now indicated that the afterwards still remained open.

37 Peter said to him,
"Lord, Why can I not follow you now?
I will lay down my life for you." 

Peter used the phrase that Jesus had used earlier when speaking of himself as the good shepherd: The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep [10:11 and 17-18]. 

38 Jesus answered him,
"You will lay down your life for me?
I tell you quite clearly,
The rooster will not have crowed
before you will have denied me three times.

Peter seemed to realise that his following of Jesus could cost him his life. His response was immediate; it was sincere and his love for Jesus was strong. 

Jesus did not directly answer Peter’s question. (It would be addressed again in the reflection that was to follow.) Instead, he confronted Peter with his unrecognised and unowned weakness and his, as yet, incomplete mastery of self.

The section, which had begun with the mention of Judas’ betraying Jesus, ended with the prediction of Peter’s denying him. Such was the context in which Jesus had washed his disciples’ feet, and thereby, had symbolised his attitude of total service and of determined, intimate love for them, even to the point of lonely death and beyond.

Next >> John 14:1-15