“"Just As I Have Loved You"”

Sunday, April 20, 2025

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

(Genesis 2.15-17)

We don’t know all that God told Adam and Eve in the garden. His appearance after their sin, “walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (3.8), seems a major inconvenience, but not entirely an unprecedented development, as if he has graced his creations with his presence before. In fact, we could sum up his expectations of their relationship with him thus: walk with God.

But their sin brought a change. Following their expulsion from the garden, their children began to offer sacrifices. Again, we’re not told where they got this idea, but it’s reasonable to surmise that God had expressed some instruction to them, which we can sum up: bring God your best.

But things changed again, when Cain killed Abel and shattered the first household. Eve gave birth to another son, Seth, and during his lifetime, “people began to call upon the name of the Lord” (4.26).

This nebulous calling on God’s name lasted for quite some time, but rampant sin and corruption led to God’s decision to blot mankind out, leaving only Noah and his family to renew the human race. The next major change came, when God chose a family to be specially his, telling Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (12.1). This also came with promises, but the first instruction—go where God leads—is a good summary of the relationship he fostered with the patriarchs.

Of course, that was always a stepping stone on the way to a covenant with an entire nation. The record of his instructions—and his promises—to Israel is far more elaborate than anything he had told to his previous favorites. Yet despite the verbose nature of the covenant, it’s easier than ever to summarize how he expected his people to behave toward him.

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

(Deuteronomy 6.4-5)

In the previous few verses, Moses practically came right out and said that this summarized the whole list of God’s commandments; but we can distill it even further. He expected Israel to love God.

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But there has always been more to worry about than our relationship with God. Loving God impels us to treat his creation properly, but just as he slowly built up his expectations for how we should treat him, he also slowly revealed how we ought to treat each other.

We read of no direct instructions to Adam and Eve as to how they should get along, but the method and order of their creation suggested the proper course to Adam, who said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Ge 2.23). He saw Eve as his “helper” (v18) and was “one” with her (v24).

The change in their relationship with God coincided with a change in the relationship of man with man—partly because they’d been thrown out of Eden, and partly because the family expanded! Genesis 3 assigns new and unwelcome mutual responsibilities for man and woman; the next chapter uses Cain’s hatred to illustrate brothers’ duty to look out for each other’s best interests.

As time went on both humanity and sin multiplied. God gave new instructions for interpersonal relationships after the flood, in an attempt to start over with a clean slate.

“From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.

        Whoever sheds the blood of man,

                       by man shall his blood be shed,

        for God made man in his own image.”

(Genesis 9.5-6)

It’s not that no one had ever thought to settle a score before—that was the default, ever since Lamech proclaimed, “If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech’s is seventy-sevenfold” (Ge 4.24). In fact, in Noah’s time God was instituting a limit on vengeance, and sanctioning authorities’ use of violence to serve justice. This one is easy for us to summarize—stop killing each other.

But that’s a low bar to clear, and God never intended to leave it there. When he made his covenant with Israel, it came with two apex commandments. The first—love God—we’ve already examined. But when Jesus was asked by a lawyer, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” (Mt 22.36), he answered with the commandment just mentioned, then added: “And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (v39). This was a quotation from Leviticus 19.18, and summed up God’s expectations for how his people should treat one another.

But whereas the proper relationship with God was fully explained—even if not actually achieved—in the Law of Moses, there was another step remaining, for the proper relationship between human beings.

“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.”

(John 13.34)

This was always the goal, but it wasn’t clearly visible until Jesus became flesh, lived, and died by the principle of perfect love for others. Now, he tells his followers that it’s not really enough to love your neighbor as yourself. To truly follow Jesus, you must love others, as Jesus loves you.

Jeremy Nettles

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