Articles
“Love to the End”
“Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”
Throughout Jesus’ ministry he had been indicating to his followers that his “hour” had not yet come (Jn. 2:4; 7:6, 8, 30; 8:20). This climactic, divinely appointed “hour” was, of course, the hour of his death, the “hour” to which God’s redemptive efforts had been pointing since Genesis 3. This was the hour of the Son’s glorification (12:23), the hour for him to be “lifted up” to “draw all men” to himself (12:32), the hour of the clearest revelation of God to humanity.
Jesus would “depart out of this world” to return to the Father. John’s use of the word “world” refers to the mass of lost humanity (1:10), the very “world” the Father loved so much that he would ransom it with the life of his only Son (3:16-17; Mk. 10:45). God’s love for the world is manifest in his aim to draw the lost out of it and unto himself.
Those who are drawn out of the world become something new and distinct from the world. The world has its “own” and Jesus has his “own” (15:19). Those who belong to the world are those who hate and reject Jesus (15:18-25). Those who belong to Jesus are his disciples, the people of God, who would eventually be called his church. He prayed for our protection, unity, and future glory (17:9-26). For though he left the world and went to the Father, we who believe in Him must remain until the “hour” of our departure comes (2 Tim. 4:6).
Jesus had loved his own all along but in John 13, in these final moments of his life, John says, “He loved them to the end.”
There are a few different ways to understand John’s wording here. The ESV, NASB, RSV and NKJV all render John 13:1, “he loved them to the end.” If “to the end” [eis telos] is to be understood temporally, we might say, “He continued to love them to the very end of his life.” But “to the end” could also mean “utterly” or “to the uttermost,” hence the NIV’s paraphrase, “He showed them the full extent of his love.” His love, which was shown to them all along, would be perfected once he accomplished his Father’s will.
Either way, Jesus’ love for his own is such that it extends beyond the very limits of our imagination. In John 13, he exhibits his ultimate, self-sacrificing love by washing the feet of his disciples, which was really done in anticipation of his greatest act of love, his sacrificial death on the cross. “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” (Jn. 15:13)
Jesus loves us to the very end and to the uttermost. In the cross, we see the full extent of love and it cannot be calculated. God gives us the full measure of that fathomless love in his Son. We can never experience a more soul-satisfying love than what we have in Christ.
Grounded firmly in the rich soil of this love we could seek to explore its every dimension for 10,000 years and not exhaust it in the least. God’s love can be known but its infinite nature is such that it soutstrips our human imagination. “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Eph. 3:17-19)
Even though we can’t fully appreciate the depth of God’s love now we joyfully and gratefully try. May God help us to know his love and love him and others like Jesus, to the end and to the uttermost.
