Title: Ang Kagandahan ng Kanyang Pag-ibig

Text: John 13:34-35

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one
another. 
By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Introduction:
One of our greatest needs as human beings is to be loved. We all need love. We need to know that we are important
to somebody, that somebody truly cares about us, wants us, and accepts us unconditionally. When we doubt that we
are loved, we may develop unacceptable behavior patterns to compensate for it.

Where is the love?

Searching for true love…

Where love is uber-commercialized.
Romanticized love in secular. . .

Need: To look and gaze upon the beauty of God’s love. The real source of true love.
Need to appreciate the deepness, vastness and magnificence of God’s unconditional love.

Our objective in this morning is not only to feel love… (emotionally) but to fully satisfy in ourselves and lead us to
worship the God of love in a rightly manner…
Our love for one another and for those outside would grow and deepen. But this will happen only as we are
rooted—that is, as we believe—more and more deeply in the love of Christ for us. And that belief comes by seeing
the depth of Christ's love for us revealed in his Word.

Main Idea:

Background: Upper room discourse.

Processing Question: Paano natin makikita ang kagandahan ng Pag-ibig ng Diyos?

Text:
I. Ang Kagandahan ng Kanyang Pag-ibig na nagmumula sa Kanyang Katangian.
 “just as I have loved you”

Definition of God’s love

Grudem- “God’s love means that God eternally gives of himself to others.”
This definition understands love as self-giving for the benefit of others. This attribute of God shows that it is part
of his nature to give of himself in order to bring about blessing or good for others. John tells us that “God is love” (1
John 4:8). We see evidence that this attribute of God was active even before creation among the members of the
Trinity. Jesus speaks to his Father of “my glory which you have given me in your love for me before the foundation of
the world” (John 17:24), thus indicating that there was love and a giving of honor from the Father to the Son from all
eternity. It continues at the present time, for we read, “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his
hand” (John 3:35). This love is also reciprocal, for Jesus says, “I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the
world may know that I love the Father” (John 14:31). The love between the Father and the Son also presumably
characterizes their relationship with the Holy Spirit, even though it is not explicitly mentioned. This eternal love of the
Father for the Son, the Son for the Father, and of both for the Holy Spirit makes heaven a world of love and joy
because each person of the Trinity seeks to bring joy and happiness to the other two.
The self-giving that characterizes the Trinity finds clear expression in God’s relationship to mankind, and
especially to sinful men. “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the
propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10, author’s translation). Paul writes, “God shows his love for us in that while we
were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). John also writes, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only
Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Paul also speaks of “the Son of
God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20), thus showing an awareness of the directly personal
application of Christ’s love to individual sinners. It should cause us great joy to know that it is the purpose of God the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to give of themselves to us to bring us true joy and happiness. It is God’s nature to act
that way toward those upon whom he has set his love, and he will continue to act that way toward us for all eternity.
Let’s remember, Christ’s death is the ultimate picture of God’s love to us.

Focusing on the Depth of Christ's Love for Us

1. First, we know the depth of someone's love for us by what it costs him: if he sacrifices his life for us, it assures us of
deeper love than if he only sacrifices a few bruises. So we will see the depth of Christ's love by the greatness of what
it cost him.
2. Second, we know the depth of someone's love for us by how little we deserve it. If we have treated him well all our
life, and have done all that he expects of us, then when he loves us, it will not prove as much love as it would if he
loved us when we had offended him, and shunned him, and disdained him. The more undeserving we are, the more
amazing and deep is his love for us. So we will see the depth of Christ's love in relation to how undeserving are the
objects of his love (Romans 5:5–8).
3. Third, we know the depth of someone's love for us by the greatness of the benefits we receive in being loved. If we
are helped to pass an exam, we will feel loved in one way. If we are helped to get a job, we will feel loved another
way. If we are helped to escape from an oppressive captivity and given freedom for the rest of our life, we will feel
loved another way. And if we are rescued from eternal torment and given a place in the presence of God with
fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore, we will know a depth of love that surpasses all others (1 John 3:1–3). So
we will see the depth of Christ's love by the greatness of the benefits we receive in being loved by him.
4. Fourth, we know the depth of someone's love for us by the freedom with which they love us. If a person does good
things for us because someone is making him, when he doesn't really want to, then we don't think the love is very
deep. Love is deep in proportion to its liberty. So we will see the depth of Christ's love for us in his freedom: "No one
takes my life from me; I lay it down of my own accord" (John 10:18).

We tend to abuse God’s love..

The wrong notion about love. . .
God’s Love= absolute freedom
God’s Love= unchanged lives
God’s love= Secret love

Characteristics of God’s unconditional love

1. God’s unconditional love that comes from His Holiness
Long ago, Augustine of Hippo pointed out that the desire of every human heart is to experience a love that is
transcendent. Regrettably for us today, however, I don’t think there’s any word in the English language that’s been
more stripped of the depth of its meaning than the word love. Due to the shallow romanticism of secular culture, we
tend to view the love of God in the same way popular music, art, and literature view love. Yet the Bible says God’s
love is far different—and greater.
First John 4:7-11 gives us this classic statement with respect to the love of God:
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows
God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love…. In this is love, not that we have loved
God, but that he loved us and sent his only Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also
ought to love one another.”
Here the Apostle grounds his admonition for Christians to love one another in the very character of God. “Love is
from God,” he tells us. What he means is that Christian love comes from God Himself. This love is not natural to fallen
humanity. It originates in God and is a divine gift to His people. When we are transformed by the power of the Holy
Spirit, we are given a capacity for this supernatural love that has God as its source and foundation. When John says
that “whoever loves has been born of God and knows God,” he is not teaching that every human being who loves
another is therefore born of God. The kind of love of which he speaks comes only from regeneration. Without the
Holy Spirit’s transformation of the human heart, no one has this capacity for love. No unregenerate person has this
kind of love, and no regenerate person lacks such love. Therefore, a person who does not have the ability to love in
the way John describes has not been born again. “Anyone who does not love [in this manner] does not know God.”
John does not stop there. Not only is love from God but God is love. Note that John does not use the word is as an
equals sign. We cannot reverse the subject and the predicate in God is love and say love is God. John is not making a
crass identification between love and God so that anyone who has a romantic feeling in his heart or any affection for
another person has thereby encountered God. When he says God is love, he’s using a bit of hyperbole. In other
words, love is such an intimate aspect or attribute of the character of God, that you can, in a manner of speaking, say
that He is love. Any view of Him that neglects to include within it this profound sense of divine love is a distortion of
who God is.
Whatever else God’s love is, it is holy. His love is therefore characterized by the qualities that define holiness—
transcendence and purity. First, God’s love is transcendent. It is set apart and different from everything we
experience in creation. Second, God’s love is pure. His love is absolutely flawless, having no selfishness, wickedness,
or sin mixed in with it. God’s love is not ordinary or profane. It is a majestic, sacred love that goes far beyond
anything creatures can manifest. No shadow of evil covers the brightness of the pure glory of the love of God.
The love of God is in a class by itself. It transcends our experience. Nevertheless, it is a love that He shares in part
with us and expects us to manifest to each other. He grants to His people—insofar as is possible given the Creator-
creature distinction—His holy love (Rom. 5:5).
This Holy love of God brought us Christ into the picture…
We are tempted to want one side of His character without the other. We want His love without His wrath, His
compassion without His judgment, His mercy without His righteousness. Indeed, the liberalism that has now brought
down the mainline denominations did this. It insisted that Christ’s death was only about God’s love and never about
His wrath. That meant that Christ’s death was only an example and never an atonement. The reality, of course, was
entirely different. God’s love provided in Christ’s death what God’s holiness required. Thus, Christ’s love took Him to
the place where He stood in our place of judgment. His death was an atonement, not just an example. We never
know God’s love except in its union with His holiness.

Application: God will use every loving means at His disposal to encourage our obedience. He does that because He
loves us. The writer to the Hebrews encouraged us not to regard God’s discipline lightly. It is the evidence of His love
for us (Hebrews 12:5-6). He knows that obedience to His Word will be for our greatest happiness, so He takes steps
to help us want to obey Him. If He did not love us, He would not care about our happiness.
 2. God’s unconditional love that redeems us
Our salvation is an expression of God’s love.
The greatest demonstration of God’s love was this gift of His Only Son.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have
eternal life," John 3:16.
“God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be
fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Rom 8:3-4)
Because of our sinful nature, we have no power to fulfill God’s law. God did not send Christ as a reward to the
obedient, but rather as a ransom for the defiant. But God’s love is shown through Christ who redeemed, or paid, the
price we owed for our rebellion. (Gal 3:13)

God’s redeeming love frees us from guilt and fear.

3. God’s unconditional love that justifies us

“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption
that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” (Rom 3:23-25)
God’s love is shown by justifying us (or declaring us innocent) by grace through faith in Christ. Christ is treated as if he
were the sinner, and the sinner is treated as if he were the righteous one. God now sees us through Christ’s
righteousness instead of through our sin.
God’s justifying love allows us to stand accepted before Him.

4. God’s unconditional love that sanctifies

“We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (Heb 10:10)
Still another way God also shows His love is by sanctifying, or setting us apart, for His purpose.
We’re sanctified in two ways: positionally and progressively.
We’re sanctified “positionally” when we come to Christ. In the Old Testament the priests would continually make
sacrifices because they never permanently paid for sin. But Christ offered Himself as the perfect sacrifice and has paid
for our sins once and for all. So we’ve sanctified, or set apart, to obtain salvation through Christ.
We’re also sanctified “progressively” throughout our Christian lives. Progressive sanctification isn’t about our
salvation — we’re saved by grace and not by works (Eph 2:8-9) — it’s about how we live after we’ve been saved.
Progressive sanctification is the process of dying to sin and living for Christ by becoming more like Him. It’s about
producing the fruits of the Spirit as opposed to producing the fruits of the flesh. (Gal 5:19-23)
God’s sanctifying love sets us apart for His special plans.

5. God’s unconditional love that serves- John 13

1. Jesus, Our Pattern: Living Out His Love
The basis of the first kind of newness (Jesus as our pattern) is found earlier in John 13. Look at what Jesus does at the
very beginning of this chapter to provide the example of what he means when he says, “Just as I have loved you, you
also are to love one another.” John 13:1 and following: Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that
his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved
them to the end. . . . [Jesus’ love for us is about to be demonstrated]. 4b He laid aside his outer garments, and taking
a towel, tied it around his waist. 5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to
wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. [This is Philippians 2:3, counting others more significant
than himself as he takes the role of a slave] . . . 12 When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and
resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? 13 You call me Teacher and Lord,
and you are right, for so I am. 14 If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one
another’s feet. 15 For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.

Application: One is that we lay aside status and rank and prestige and privilege and take the form of a servant—that’s
what Philippians 2:7 said, and that’s what Jesus does here. Verse 14: “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed
your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” By virtue of my status and rank and privilege as our Lord and
Teacher, I am not obliged to wash your feet. But I “count you as more significant than myself” and serve you.

The new commandment is that we look at this pattern, that we watch our Lord and Teacher and Savior do this, and
follow him in it. We live out the love that we see in Jesus.

Christian service is unique for three reasons. First, it is unique in its source. That source is our redemption in Christ.
Second, it is unique in its objective, which is to model, as far as is possible, Christ’s kind of servanthood. Third, it is
unique in its character, for it is motivated by God’s holy-love.

II. Ang Kagandahan ng Kanyang Pag-ibig na pinakikita ng Kanyang mga Alagad.

“you also are to love one another”
Our imitation of God’s love must also seen in our love for others. John makes this explicit: “Beloved, if God so
loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11). In fact, our love for others within the fellowship of
believers is so evidently an imitation of Christ that by it the world recognizes us as his: “By this all men will know that
you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35; cf. 15:13; Rom. 13:10; 1 Cor. 13:4–7; Heb. 10:24).
God himself gives us his love to enable us to love each other (John 17:26; Rom. 5:5). Moreover, our love for our
enemies especially reflects God’s love (Matt. 5:43–48).

A. Jesus commanded us to love one another- “new commandment”

The verse that I want to focus on is John 13:34: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just
as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”
The question that has guided all my focus in this message is What’s new about the commandment to love each
other? “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.” I see two answers implied in this verse. The
key to the answers is found in the words in the second half of the verse: “. . . just as I have loved you, you also are to
love one another.” The newness of the command to love each other is found in the words “as I have loved you.”
I see two ways that the commandment to love each other is new in those words. First, the command is new
because it is a command to live out the love of Jesus. Second, the command is new because it is a command to live
on the love of Jesus. The words “as I have loved you” contain a pattern for our love for each other, and they contain a
power for our love for each other.
John 15:12, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you,” he says in verse 13, “Greater
love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus could not leave us with only a pattern
and only a power through union with him by faith.
The commandment to love each other is new because Jesus is the pattern and the power of that love. And he can be
those for us, even though we are sinners, because he removed the wrath of God by laying down his life for us.

B. Loving each other is a distinguishing mark of a disciple of Jesus Christ “all people will know that you are my
disciples”

If we believe in Jesus we will love one another.

Our Lord and savior commands us to love. He has the right to command us and he gives us this law to cure our
spiritual diseases and to prepare us for heaven.
Christian love is not just a sentimental feeling about others, nor is it dependent upon whether others love us. They
may not love us; We may not like them very much—that is to say that we may not have any mutual good feelings
toward them—but we are still called to love them. Agaph love may sometimes run against our natural inclinations.
When someone hurts us, our natural inclination is to hurt them. Agaph love says that we should love them and act
for their benefit. We should seek to do good to them, even though they may be seeking to do evil to us.
Notice that v35 talks about the reputation of our profession. “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye
have love one to another.” Agape love is the badge of the Christian. In all of the old western movies, the sheriff had
to wear his badge so that everyone would know he was the sheriff. The Christian’s badge is love. By this badge others
know them and they know themselves.
I can say that I believe in Jesus, but how do I know that it is not just words, how do I know that I am actually saved?
Do I have love. Do I love God, Do I love Jesus, Do I love others? That is how I know my status in Christ.
That is how others know us. Love is the color of a Christian. Love is the distinguishing characteristic of a disciple of
Christ. This is the one thing in which we are to surpass everyone else. To be a Christian, you do not have to be
smarter than other people. You do not have to be more beautiful or more charming, but you do have to be more
loving.
Loving others God’s way requires an intentional choice of our humble submission to God’s will; and it has been
my experience that when there’s full yieldingness, it doesn’t take long for a bumper crop of fruitfulness. God can
cleanse a heart and renew a spirit in an instant.
Loving others isn’t an option. It’s God’s second greatest commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt
22:39).

Coram Deo
True Christian love will unify believers, but this unity will not be a unity that denies the truth. Christian love and truth
are inseparable; thus, we do need to separate from those who have abandoned the fundamental tenets of the
Gospel. Unfortunately, we all too often seek any excuse beyond this to break away from other believers. All of us
ought to befriend fellow believers who affirm the fundamentals of the faith even if they are not from our
denomination or tradition.

Application
“I have given God countless reasons not to love me. None of them has been strong enough to change Him” – Paul
Washer

Challenges:

“What comes to our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us” (A. W. Tozer).
A vision of God’s holy love delivers us from caricatures of him, as John Stott reminds us.
“Here are ten couplets, in each of which two complementary truths about God are brought together, as if to remind
us that we must beware of speaking of one aspect of God’s character without remembering its counterpart” (The
Cross of Christ).