Yohanes 15:12

15:12 My commandment is this – to love one another just as I have loved you. ¹ 

Yohanes 14:21-22

14:21 The person who has my commandments and obeys ²  them is the one who loves me. ³  The one ⁴  who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will reveal ⁵  myself to him.”

14:22 “Lord,” Judas (not Judas Iscariot) ⁶  said, ⁷  “what has happened that you are going to reveal ⁸  yourself to us and not to the world?”

Yohanes 14:24

14:24 The person who does not love me does not obey ⁹  my words. And the word ¹⁰  you hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me.

[15:12]  ¹ sn Now the reference to the commandments (plural) in 15:10 have been reduced to a singular commandment: The disciples are to love one another, just as Jesus has loved them. This is the ‘new commandment’ of John 13:34, and it is repeated in 15:17. The disciples’ love for one another is compared to Jesus’ love for them. How has Jesus shown his love for the disciples? This was illustrated in 13:1-20 in the washing of the disciples’ feet, introduced by the statement in 13:1 that Jesus loved them “to the end.” In context this constitutes a reference to Jesus’ self-sacrificial death on the cross on their behalf; the love they are to have for one another is so great that it must include a self-sacrificial willingness to die for one another if necessary. This is exactly what Jesus is discussing here, because he introduces the theme of his sacrificial death in the following verse. In John 10:18 and 14:31 Jesus spoke of his death on the cross as a commandment he had received from his Father, which also links the idea of commandment and love as they are linked here. One final note: It is not just the degree or intensity of the disciples’ love for one another that Jesus is referring to when he introduces by comparison his own death on the cross (that they must love one another enough to die for one another) but the very means of expressing that love: It is to express itself in self-sacrifice for one another, sacrifice up to the point of death, which is what Jesus himself did on the cross (cf. 1 John 3:16).

[14:21]  ² tn Or “keeps.”

[14:21]  ³ tn Grk “obeys them, that one is the one who loves me.”

[14:21]  ⁴ tn Grk “And the one.” Here the conjunction καί (kai) has not been translated to improve the English style.

[14:21]  ⁵ tn Or “will disclose.”

[14:22]  ⁶ tn Grk “(not Iscariot).” The proper noun (Judas) has been repeated for clarity and smoothness in English style.

[14:22]  sn This is a parenthetical comment by the author.

[14:22]  ⁷ tn Grk “said to him.”

[14:22]  ⁸ tn Or “disclose.”

[14:22]  sn The disciples still expected at this point that Jesus, as Messiah, was going to reveal his identity as such to the world (cf. 7:4).

[14:24]  ⁹ tn Or “does not keep.”

[14:24]  ¹⁰ tn Or “the message.”