Maundy Thursday - Love on Display

“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.” —John 13:33-35

Maundy Thursday marks the beginning of the Triduum (i.e., the three days of Christ’s suffering). Each one of these days is significant in its own way. Maundy Thursday commemorates the institution of the New Covenant by Jesus in the upper room, along with His mandate to love one another. Good Friday remembers the crucifixion of Jesus and His substitutionary, atoning death on the cross. Holy Saturday is a quiet, solemn day of waiting and meditating on the suffering and death of Jesus with anticipation of celebrating His resurrection.

The word Maundy comes from the Latin word mandatum, meaning “mandate.” In the upper room (John 13-17), Jesus gave His disciples the new commandment (the new mandate) after washing their feet, “to love one another just as I have loved you.”

The menial task of foot washing, reserved for the lowest servants, provides a powerful parable of what Jesus would accomplish on the cross. By rising and setting aside His outer garments, washing His disciples’ feet, and rising again and putting back on His outer garments, He was portraying His incarnate humiliation (Christ taking on human form, born under the law, and undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross) and His exaltation (His entire heavenly ministry, spanning from His resurrection to the final judgment).

In the new commandment, Jesus gave His disciples—who would become the foundation stones of the new covenant Church—a mandate to love one another following His example. In the Old Testament law, God gave His people the command, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). So, what makes this command new? The “newness” of the “new commandment” is that Jesus fulfilled it in His sacrificial life and death on the cross, setting the supreme example of what it truly means to love and serve others.

The Church should not be identified by a building, a sign with clever sayings, or even a large wooden cross. Rather, God’s people should be identified by the quality of one member’s love for another. John writes: “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us, and His love is made complete in us [and, thus, men see Him]” (1 John 4:12).

How do we, then, as Christians, follow this command to love others the way Christ has loved us? This kind of love is only possible, “because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Romans 5:5). When Christians love one another as Jesus commanded, the world will know we are His disciples, and the love of God will be on display.

Father, thank you for the supreme example of self-sacrificial love seen in the Lord Jesus Christ. May we by the power of the Holy Spirit, at work in us, pour out our lives in obedience to Your commands. May we love one another as You have loved us. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Authored by Pastor Josh Whipple