Gene’s Daily Scriptural Postings

Loving to the End: John 13:1-17

Focus Passage: John 13:1-17 (NIV)

As John’s gospel shares about the last supper Jesus and His disciples experienced prior to His arrest and crucifixion, John opens the event with a very interesting phrase. At the end of verse 1, John tells us: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he [Jesus] loved them to the end.”

The first thing that happens next is that Jesus bends down and begins to wash the disciples’ feet. While this was not the extent of Jesus “loving His own to the end”, it was definitely a start. While Jesus had served His disciples in many ways up to this point, never before had He taken the role of the lowest servant who happened to have the responsibility of washing the feet of those who entered a home.

However, Jesus “loving the disciples to the end” doesn’t stop with simply washing the disciples feet. Pretty much everything that happens afterwards, from teaching the disciples, from promising them the Holy Spirit, from requesting their escape when the mob arrives, through all the torture all the way up to death on the cross, everything is an example of this one short phrase. Jesus loved “His own who were in the world to the end.”

When I read this line the first time, I realized something offensive: Jesus only says that He loves those who are His. Nothing in Jesus’ statement here implies that Jesus loved His enemies to the end. While there are other places in scripture that imply having love for those who you disagree with, we don’t see that here. However, if John uses the phrase “His own” to describe how Jesus is one of humankind, then we get the picture that Jesus loved all of humankind to the very end– which does sound like something in harmony with the rest of the Bible.

The other phrase that jumped out to me in this how this statement ends: Jesus “loved them to the end”. A quick reading of this verse makes me think that John wants us to focus in on how Jesus loved everyone through the entire experience of the cross, but is that what John means when he says “the end”.

I wonder if this subtle detail is a promise we can claim because Jesus did not end at the cross. While He died, he was only briefly in the tomb before God raised Him back to life. Because of this detail, I am inclined to believe that “the end” does not refer to the cross.

“The end” could mean the end of history, when God ultimately judges the world, but we run into the same challenge with this angle on this phrase: Those who God has saved and redeemed will be living for eternity, and that extends past the end of history.

The only angle that makes sense in my mind for this last phrase is that Jesus loves those who He has redeemed forever. No gap or break exists in His love for each of us who have accepted Him into our hearts. Jesus loved us through the betrayal, the rejection, the pain, the torture, and the cross and He chooses to love us (all of humankind) forever!

This thought was inspired by studying the Walking With Jesus “Reflective Bible Study” package. To discover insights like this in your own study time, click here and give Reflective Bible Study a try today!

Read this article on the web on it's official page: Loving to the End: John 13:1-17