The period between Easter and Pentecost is referred to by some Christians as the Great Fifty Days. It is often a time for followers of Jesus to contemplate and practice how they might live to glorify God as Easter people in a community.

In four brief scripture verses, Jesus encrypted some hard to decipher messages about the glory of God with one new, yet simple and straightforward, commandment: “Love one another.” Jesus leaves specific instructions with the disciples and directs them to focus on who he is as the Son of Man and what they are to do when Jesus is no longer physically present with them. Most of them might now finally understand what Jesus is giving them as the seeds they would need to grow and blossom into true Christ followers. Some of them might not have given full weight to Jesus’ words until they experienced Judas’s kiss, Peter’s denials, and their own fear as they returned to the upper room after Jesus’ sacrificial act of love for them on the cross.

So, how much weight do we give to these last words of Jesus? It’s powerful to see how God ushered into history the command Jesus gave in this passage from John. It began as far back as the book of Leviticus. There, God gave as part of the law these words: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (19:18). Then, Jesus quoted those words as part of the Great Commandment: a combination of the Shema from Deuteronomy (to love God) and the command to love neighbor (see Mark 12:29-31). Finally, though, here in John’s Gospel, Jesus gives added emphasis and clarity to the commandment: “I give you a new commandment, love one another . . . just as I have loved you.” We are to love others the way Jesus did, the way he would, the way he will—if we are able to live out truly what he commands. After all, loving as Jesus loved is the true praise of God and the only way “everyone will know you are [Jesus’] disciples.”