WHAT IS LOVE? It’s obviously one of John’s favorite subjects. In 1 John alone, a relatively short letter, he uses the Greek noun agape 18 times, and the related verb agapao 28 times. That’s a lot of love. He writes about God’s love for us, our love for God, and our love for one another as believers. He also ties them all together: we love God because God loves us, and one of the key ways we show that we love God is by loving one another.

In teaching such things, once again, John draws from the words of Jesus in the Upper Room:

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other. (John 15:9-17)

Twice, Jesus commands his disciples to love one another. But this isn’t the command of an angry parent barking at his kids that they need to stop fighting and get along. Everything he says is spoken against the backdrop of the relationship he’s already had with them, a history of patient and loving mentorship.

Earlier that evening, after he washed their feet, he told them that he did this to give them an example of humble service. But here, he’s not just saying that they should follow his loving example. As the branch of a grapevine must abide in the main trunk in order to bear fruit, so too must the disciples abide in Jesus’ love if they are to obey his command.

And importantly, he calls them his friends. It’s not because he enjoys hanging out with them. Nor are they signed up to get status updates on his social media feeds. He calls them friends, not servants, because he’s elevating them to the position of taking over his mission. They are to go forth and bear fruit, and part of that fruitfulness is love.

There’s no greater love than laying down your life for your friends, Jesus says. Thinking pastorally about his own community, John takes Jesus’ words one step further:

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. (1 John 3:16-18, NIV)

John isn’t exactly “defining” love. It’s more like what people say about everything from art to pornography: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” You want to know what real love is? John seems to ask. Just look at the cross. That’s love. And dear children, if we’re going to abide in that love, then guess what: we need to follow his example.

Wait: is John saying that every believer has to be crucified?

Of course not. Remember what Jesus said in Luke 9:23: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” He’s not saying, “Go get crucified every morning.” The cross of Jesus was his embodiment of the ethic of loving sacrifice, done to make salvation possible for all who believe. But we as believers save no one, nor are we called to crucifixion. Rather, we are commanded to take up the daily sacrifice of loving self-denial, contrary to the values and priorities of a world that sets itself against God.

John gets down to cases. Imagine that someone sees a brother or sister in need and has the means to meet that need, but fails to take pity and do something about it… The word “pity” here could actually be translated as “guts” or “innards,” suggesting a visceral emotional reaction. In colloquial English, we might say that the person saw the need but “closed their heart”; in The Message, Eugene Peterson translates that they “turn a cold shoulder and do nothing.”

What then? John brings the point home: “How can the love of God be in that person?” Given what he’s already said about being the children of God versus being children of the devil, it’s a loaded question.

Love isn’t an abstraction. Nor is it simply an emotion. I say “simply” because I don’t agree with those who say that Christian love isn’t an emotion; John’s use of the word “pity” here suggests that emotion is involved. But the evidence of God’s love abiding in a person must go beyond emotion, beyond words, to action. That action may not be a literal cross, but it will often involve some degree of self-denial, a giving of time, attention, money, or other resources that the world encourages us to hoard for ourselves. It may even involve an element of risk, as in the Good Samaritan’s embodiment of neighbor-love to the stranger dying by the roadside.

What is love? Philosophers and poets have struggled for centuries to define it, so don’t ask me to define it either. But John knows it when he sees it, and I suspect we do too.