1 John 3:16
We know love by this,
that He laid down His life for us;
and we ought to lay down our lives
for the brethren.
He has laid down His life for us, and we are guilty of laying down our lives for the brethren. “If I had not love, I would have been nothing,” the apostle Paul emphatically wrote in 1 Cor. 13.
Faith without love, towards God and the neighbour, does not exist. That is also the main theme of this letter of John.
All that the Lord wrote on the second table of His holy law, the disciple of Christ summarizes with: “Love the brethren.”
When he writes down the words of the day’s text, John sees it again: the Lord Jesus in Gethsemane. He came boldly to the soldiers and said, “If you seek me, let these go!”
He, the Good Shepherd laid down His life for the sheep. But at the same time John is reminded of that moment when the Master washed their feet and then said to His disciples: “If I, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”
Is our life a loving existence?
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