“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34, NIV 1984).

He was there to check his iron levels, a bit younger than I with a black, bushy beard. I asked him about the deep scratches on his arms.
“That’s from my dog,” he said.
“What kind of dog do you have?”
“A pit bull,” he said.
“I’d get another kind of dog,” I said, touching the scars on his arms.
“I had two dogs,” he continued.  “One of them gave his life for me. I was walking through the woods and nearly stepped on a copperhead. He would’ve struck me, but my blue heeler jumped out and took the bite right in his neck. My pit bull then attacked the snake, took a strike in the face, but killed the snake.”
“What happened to your heeler?”
“He disappeared in the woods for two days. I found him, but he died five days later. That dog died for me.”

Sometimes a dog may be more like Jesus than one who calls himself a Christian, sometimes more than I.

Jesus saved us from death by taking for us the serpent’s bite on the cross—most of us get that picture. What we don’t get as easily are His words, “…Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:12-13, NIV 1984).

Jesus was speaking these words to His disciples as He had just finished washing their feet. He was speaking as He was headed for the cross.

What part of loving one another like Jesus loves don’t we get?

For whom should we be giving ourselves as Jesus did?

A blue heeler loved my bushy bearded patient that way. What person or what people does Jesus want me to love, even if it costs me time or money or personal safety?

Oswald Chambers understood the Jesus kind of love: “Our Lord always preaches anti-self-realization; He is not after developing a man at all; He is after making a man exactly like Himself…the characteristic of the Son of God is not self-realization, but self-expenditure.”

Dear Father,
Let me love like Jesus.
Amen