What Does John 13:34 Mean?

A new command I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, so also you love one another.

John 13:34 · SDV

Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.

Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

THE KEY

The command’s measure is the love already given to you, now passed from one person to another.

THE MEANING

This verse gives love a shape you can recognize: it is the love Jesus has shown you. That love moves between people, as the repeated words “love one another” make clear.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

The belief that love must be earned before it can reach you is undone by the words “as I have loved you.”

THE ROOT

ἀγαπᾶτε

agapate

GROWS FROM

ἀγαπ-

agap-

The Greek word family carries the sense of loving or regarding with love.

The same verb family appears in “love one another” and “I have loved you.” The verse joins the love received and the love extended: one becomes the measure for the other.

ALSO GROWS

agapē: love

ἀγάπη

The related noun names the love that is given and received in the verse’s pattern.

agapētos: beloved

ἀγαπητός

This related word describes someone held in love, echoing the place from which love for another can flow.

THE PATTERN

Love moves outward by taking its measure from love first received or known.

So love the sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.

Deuteronomy 10:19 · SDVThe experience of having been a stranger becomes the measure for how the stranger is treated.

This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you.

John 15:12 · SDVJesus names the love he has shown as the pattern for love between people.

We love him, for he first loved us.

1 John 4:19 · SDVLove is shown as a response to love that has already reached us.

THE THREAD

Beloved, if God loved us in this way, we also owe one another love.

1 John 4:11 · SDV

The same Greek verb family links being loved with loving one another. This verse spells out the movement that John 13:34 compresses into “as I have loved you”: received love becomes the pattern carried outward.

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