Holy Week: Journey With JesusSample

A New Commandment

MAUNDY THURSDAY - Today is the day that the Church commemorates Jesus' Last Supper with his disciples. Maundy comes from the Latin root where we get our word mandate. At this meal, Jesus issues a new mandate:

“So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”(John 13:34, NLT)

Jesus gives them a new commandment.He takes the original commandment—love your neighbor as yourself—and adds a new twist. We are to no longer just love our neighbor, but now we are to love each other. Who is that? Well, that would be everybody. It would be our family, our friends, and our church community. The people who look like us and act like us.

But each other would also include the people who don’t look like us. It’s the black, the white, the Hispanic, the Asian, the Jew, the Hindu, the Muslim, the secularist, the humanist, and the atheist. It’s the straight, the gay, the transgendered, the poor, the homeless, and the imprisoned. It’s everyone. It’s the person that voted for the other party and the person that refuses to vote for anybody.

Jesus’ new commandment is to love each other, but not simply “as yourself,” but “as I have loved you.” We must learn to love others—the ones we like and the ones we don’t—the way that Jesus loves us. He said it is this willingness to love rightly that will prove to the world that we are followers of Jesus.