Original Love

John 13. 1, 31-33, 34-35

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

During the supper when Judas had gone out, Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’

“Just as I have loved you…”

We love the way we have experienced love. For most of us, that would mean our parents formed our perceptions of what it means to love. Some had parents who were struggling with their own wounds and failures and didn’t show love very well or very consistently. Others had parents who showed love by being permissive and refusing to set boundaries. Some had parents who showed love by being critical and heavy handed. Others had parents who were emotionally healthy but still made their own mistakes in loving just because they were human.  In other words, we all have completely inadequate perceptions of what it means to be loved by Christ. It doesn’t matter how wonderful one’s parents are or were, human love can never form a complete basis for understanding of Christ’s love. Human love will always be inadequate.

Even when there are occasional experiences of wonderful unconditional love from another person, it is generally not quite enough to give anyone a true sense of Christ’s love for us because on a day-to-day basis, we all learn from the time we are infants that we gain approval by how we act. The whole world operates on merit and it’s not surprising that we often equate love with the approval we receive for doing good things.

“What an awesome child you are…you ate all your peas!”

“You shared your toy with your friend. That was wonderful.”

“You got straight A’s this term. I am so proud of you!”

 “You are a responsible and effective employee. We’re giving you a raise.”

“You did a superb job of running that committee. Thank you.”

There’s nothing wrong with praise and approval from parents, teachers, friends and employers but it does mean that in order to even begin to grasp the kind of love Jesus was talking about in this Gospel, we need to push ourselves beyond all the boundaries of what we’ve always thought and challenge our ultimate perceptions of what it means to be loved by Christ and to love just as he loves.

So, how did Jesus love his disciples? We could say, “unconditionally,” since if there was a way to fail or a wrong thought that could be expressed, those disciples found it. So, it’s a logical conclusion to think that unconditional love means loving someone ‘in spite of’ not ‘because of’. That’s moving closer but it’s still inadequate when trying to comprehend Christ’s love. Usually when we attempt to practice unconditional love in any situation it means that we have first made a judgment as to whether that person is deserving of being loved and then, finding he or she isn’t deserving, we decide to love them anyway. That’s better than love that’s based solely on merit but it’s still not Christ’s love.

Christ loves us with First Love or Original Love. Christ loved us before there was any such thing as sin and failure. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” (Ephesians 1: 3-6)

He knew you before the foundation of the world. He thought of you and spoke the Word that is you.  When you think of yourself, you might think of a few good and positive qualities but very quickly your mind will slide into all those failures, wounds and broken areas of your life. That is most often what you think of when you think, “I am…” You find it difficult to love what you see as yourself and so if you think you are accepting God’s unconditional love, it’s always an ‘in spite of’ love that you are accepting. It is so rare for the human mind, heart and spirit to conclude that any of us might be a whole that is far greater, far more wonderful and exceedingly more beautiful than the sum of the parts that we usually focus on.  And rarer still is it for us to consider that there may be a ‘me’ that is unblemished, full of grace, clothed in dignity, bestowed with priestly authority, love and compassion, a ‘me’ who looks an awful lot like Christ.

Jesus loved those disciples with Ancient Love, or Original Love.  He loved those men and women with the same love with which he loved them when he created them and knew them before the foundations of the world. It was not ‘in spite of’ love. It was deep love for the amazing reality of their True Selves – a reality so removed from their self perceptions that they had to stumble, fall and fail terribly in order to be able to finally grasp that, “We are God's work of art created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning God had meant us to live it." (Ephesians 2:10)

How, then, can you even begin to love others as Christ has loved you? There is only one way: by seriously and unceasingly searching for who you really are and recognizing that who you have been thinking you are is not you at all; it is a false front built up since you were an infant, a persona (Greek for ‘mask’) that you built up to protect yourself from danger and wounds but which has rarely protected you at all. This mask is where all your sins, wounds and failures reside. It is False Self. Christ came to earth, did all that he did, died and rose again so that you could be released from False Self, come home to who you really are and fully experience Original Love.

You cannot truly love unless you have experienced true love. Once you have experienced Christ's authentic love you will fall in love with the creation that is you. It is only then that you will know that everyone else was also created as incredible works of art and you will love others as Christ has loved you and as you love yourself.

This, brothers and sisters, is true redemption – to be brought back to the garden of the self that has been there since before the foundations of the world. Then and only then will you be able to love as Jesus loves.

It’s the whole point.