Meet My New Non-Sexual Man Crush...

Meet my new non-sexual man crush: Cyril of Alexandria.  As I have been preparing to teach and preach from the Gospel of John, Cyril has been extremely helpful.  Take for instance this passage from his commentary on John 13:31-35:

…He [Jesus] is about to ascend into heaven, lays down the law of love as a foundation and corner-stone of all that is good, meaning by love not that which was in accordance with, but that which transcended, the Mosaic Law. Therefore He says: A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another. “But tell me now,” some one may say, “why He has called this commandment new, when He had said to former generations by the voice of Moses: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy mind, (Luke 10:27) and thy neighbor as thyself. (Deut. 6:5)

For see, while setting love to God in its fitting place, in the forefront of and in preeminence to all other affections, He has there introduced in the very next place our mutual love, and has joined with our love to God love to each other, implying that in no other way would love to God rightly exist, except it were accompanied by the love which is due to our neighbor. For we all are brethren one of another. For instance, the very wise John, most excellent alike in knowledge and in teaching, says: He that loveth his brother loveth God. (1 John 4:21) How then cometh a new commandment by Christ, although the very same had been declared by the ancient laws?” But notice, I pray you, the justifying clause; look at the illustration used. He does more than say: A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another; He plainly signifies the novelty involved in His command, and the extent by which the love that He enjoins surpasses that old idea of mutual love, by straightway adding the words: Even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

We must investigate therefore the question how the Christ loved us, in order to understand clearly the full force of the words used. For then we shall indeed perceive, and that very easily, the novel character and the changed nature of the commandment now given. We know that, being in the form of God, He counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. (Phil. 2:6-8) And again: though He was rich, yet He became poor, (2 Cor. 8:9) as Paul elsewhere testifies to us. Dost thou see the novelty of His love towards us? For whereas the Law enjoined the necessity of loving our brethren as ourselves, our Lord Jesus the Christ on the other hand loved us far more than He loved Himself. Else He would never have descended to our humiliation from His original exaltation in the form of God and on an equality with God the Father, nor would He have undergone for our sakes the exceeding bitterness of His death in the flesh, nor have submitted to buffetings from the Jews, to shame, to derision, and all His other sufferings: speaking briefly, so as not to protract our argument to endless length by enumerating everything in detail. Nay, He would never have become poor from being rich, if He had not loved us very exceedingly more than Himself. Marvelous then indeed was the extent of His love. ¹

Loving others the same way that Jesus has loved us is a pretty radical thing.  I'm not sure why this passage doesn’t get as much attention as Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s version of the “Greatest Commandment” passage which states that we need to love God with all we have and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  John doesn't include that particular story, but it seems to be that loving others as Christ has loved us is a whole lot harder than loving our neighbors as ourselves.  As Cyril points out, the call in this passage is to love others more than we love ourselves, for this is what Jesus did.

At the end of the day, I'm not sure I really know what it means to love my neighbor as myself.  I'm not sure how I'm supposed to love others more than myself.  But I'm committed to learning how.  And I need your help in doing it. 

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¹ Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel According to S. John, Volume 2, 217-18 (London: Walter Smith, 1885).