Jn 15:9-17
[Jesus said to his disciples,] 9“As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. 10If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.
11“I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete. 12This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. 13No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. 16It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. 17This I command you: love one another.”
THE NEW COMMANDMENT: At the Last Supper, after washing the feet of his disciples, Jesus lays down a new commandment: that the disciples love one another. This is already a fundamental rule of life in the Old Testament. God commands: “You shall not bear hatred for your brother in your heart… You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lv 19:17). Love was also held as an ideal in pagan antiquity, whether in the general sense of philanthropy, or in the political sense of solidarity. Jesus himself says that pagans love their neighbors and those who do good to them (Mt 5:47).
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches the disciples to love their enemies: those who are outside their circle, those who are non-Israelites, even those who persecute them (Mt 5:43-47). In the Gospel, the focus is the disciples: that they love one another and what they, in their mutual relations, can and should mean to outsiders, to the world: “This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
The newness of the Christian love-commandment is thus seen in its degree or intensity and its scope that includes “nonfriends” or outsiders. It is also to be found in the context and spirit with which the commandment is given: intimacy, service, mutual knowledge, giving of life. These are the characteristics of the “new covenant” that is established at the Last Supper. These are the characteristics of the love of Jesus who is the measure of this love-commandment: “As I have loved you, so also you should love one another.” By their mutual love and service, the disciples evoke the image of Jesus in his self-sacrificial love for all, including sinners and outsiders.