Digital Only: Answers from an Apostle
What Does It Mean to Love Others as the Savior Loves Me?
Here are two thoughts about the Savior’s “new commandment.”
From an address given at a seminar for mission leaders on June 26, 2020
I have often thought of the concern Jesus must have felt as He knew that His mortal ministry was coming to an end and that the daily, ongoing operation of His very young Church would fall on the shoulders of a dozen very ordinary men who had been in the Church barely 36 months at best. Did they know enough? Had they understood any part of what He had tried so hard to teach them? Could they carry off this tremendous responsibility successfully?
What final lesson could He teach that would carry them through His physical absence? With a plea, indeed a commandment, that should pierce us today as much as it did then, the living Son of God summarized His entire ministry and their ultimate, ongoing responsibility in one concept—one grand, eternal principle:
“A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
“By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”
Two Thoughts on This New Commandment
May I offer two quick thoughts about this new commandment we have been given.
First, this ultimate Christian commandment to love sounds so simple. Jesus consciously chose one principle, one measuring rod for success that is very easily grasped, if not necessarily so easily lived.
A second thought focuses on the Savior calling this a “new commandment,” when I want to say, “But it isn’t new.”
Perhaps it helps to know that the Greek word used here for “new (kainen) implies freshness, or the opposite of outworn, rather than simply recent or different.” That fresh or untried meaning of this new commandment was that these disciples—and all the rest of us—were to love the way Jesus loved: “As I have loved you.” That was the new part, the distinctive part, of a very old law.
And something else was new as well. What the Savior, the Master Teacher, did was divide that one great commandment to love into two components. Yes, they were to love one another, but Christ taught that would be possible in the fullest degree only by loving God first. Thus, He could speak of the great commandment as the two great commandments, neither part of which would be complete without the other.
President Howard W. Hunter once taught: “The love of our neighbor springs from the love of God as its source.”
That insight is absolutely crucial—new, we might say—to understanding the two great commandments. Throughout His ministry, Christ constantly made clear His unbending loyalty, His total obedience, and His unique loving relationship to His Father. To love as Christ loved—“as I have loved you”—is to love the Father best of all, to obey Him to the end, and therein find the divine motivation to love our neighbors as ourselves. This was indeed a “new idea.”
What This Love Looks Like
Mormon gave what may well be the greatest extended statement ever made about this kind of love—about charity, he calls it, “the pure love of Christ”:
“Charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, … is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, … beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
“Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity, ye are nothing, for charity never faileth. Wherefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all. …
“But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him.”
Eliza R. Snow once reported an address given by the Prophet Joseph Smith in which he used those verses and their New Testament counterpart from 1 Corinthians 13 as his text. In that sermon Joseph said:
“You must enlarge your souls towards each other, if you would do like Jesus. … [You] must bear with each other’s failings, as an indulgent parent bears with the foibles of his children.
“… Let your hearts expand, let them be enlarged towards others; you must be long-suffering, and bear with the faults and errors of mankind. How precious are the souls of men!”
Joseph and Hyrum: Examples of Christlike Love
On the night before the Prophet Joseph Smith, his brother Hyrum Smith were slain—the night of June 26, 1844—Hyrum again opened the Book of Mormon, probably again to the 12th chapter of Ether, where he had read earlier. In that dark moment, in that dark place, he read of the saving grace of charity, even against those who might administer injustice, violence, and death.
That testimony, offered in that setting, read on the very eve of death, is one of the 10,000 reasons that I know the Book of Mormon is true. No one, not anyone, about to face their Maker would open a book of their own creation, seek eternal consolation in it, and quote from it as the last testament they would give in mortality. These men do not say what a joke they have played. They do not laugh about how many people they have fooled. No, with the Book of Mormon in their hands and an expression of charity on their lips, these two prepare to stand before the judgment seat of Christ.
Every element of this tragic experience cries “truth, truth, truth.” “The testators are now dead, and their testament is in force.” Their garments are unspotted still.
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Surely Joseph and Hyrum loved the Lord.
You may not be asked to lay down your lives as they did, but you can love the Savior as they did. Please open your hearts and feel the Lord’s love for you. Let Him whisper to you how to share that love with His children.