John 13:31-35 (NIV)
When he was gone, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.
“My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
With Judas gone into the night intent on leading the armed contingent from the high priest to the Garden of Gethsemane to arrest Jesus, God’s plan was now firmly set into motion, and Jesus was wholeheartedly committed to it.
There were still a couple of “exit ramps” that Jesus could take. He could avoid the garden campsite and stay somewhere else that night, resulting in Judas leading the mob to an empty camp. Or at the moment of betrayal He could call down legions of angels to rescue Him (Matthew 26:53-54).
But Jesus knew that the way to glorify the Father, and thus to have His own glory restored, was not to work around God’s plan, but to walk steadfastly through it. And that understanding kept Him steadfast at this time, through the time when dread threatened to upend everything in the garden, and all the way to the cross.
But no matter how steadfastly Jesus followed through on the Father’s plans for the next several days, He realized that the ensuing events were going to catch His followers completely off guard. When Judas showed up, they were going to feel as if the whole world had gone crazy, and that God had somehow lost control of everything.
So, one last time, Jesus tried to help them to see the outlines of God’s plan. He would only be with them a few hours longer, and then would be taken away from them to a place that they would be unable to follow. That included not merely His upcoming death, but many of the other places in between, including His trial before the Sanhedrin, all of His hearings before Pilate and King Herod, and his beating and humiliation with the Roman troops. During those times, His followers would run and go into hiding, leaving Him to face them all alone.
But in the meantime, Jesus reminded them of the one thing that would see them through not only the next several days, but through all that would happen to them in the future: love for each other. Not just brotherly love that was so liable to being tainted by fear and self-interest, but selfless agape loved, the same kind of love that Jesus had for each of them, and for all of them. Only agape love would hold them all together when circumstances conspired to tear them apart, and only true agape love would convince the rest of the world that they were truly followers of Jesus.
Father, it almost feels from reading this that Jesus was more worried about His followers and what could happen to them than He was for Himself. And that makes sense. He knew that He would be okay. But at the same time, He knew the doubts and fears that His followers had welling up in them even then, and wanted so badly to protect them from being overwhelmed by them between that night and His resurrection, when all things would become clear to them. It’s astounding to see that agape love in action, even in this. Lord, fill me with Your agape love, so that I, too, will be empowered to stand strong regardless of circumstances, and so that I will be clearly seen to belong to Jesus by all those around me.
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