What Does John 15:12 Mean?

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

John 15:12 · 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

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

THE KEY

The love you give is measured by the love you have already received.

THE MEANING

Love between you and another takes its measure from the love already shown to you. That received love is present now as the pattern for love moving between you. The commandment holds both together: you are loved, and that love is shared.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

This undoes the belief that you must generate love from nothing before you can offer it.

THE ROOT

ἀγαπᾶτε

agapate agapaō

GROWS FROM

ἀγαπ-

agap-

To love or hold dear.

The verb for “love one another” belongs to the same word family as the verb for “I have loved you.” The sentence joins received love and shared love in one continuous movement.

ALSO GROWS

agapē: Love

ἀγάπη

The noun shares the same stem, linking the act of loving with love itself.

agapētos: Beloved, dear

ἀγαπητός

This related word names the one held dear, connecting love with being loved.

THE PATTERN

Love flows outward from what is first given, taking that received love as its measure.

You shall not avenge, nor hold a grudge against the children of your people; but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.

Leviticus 19:18 · SDVLove for another is measured by a love already familiar to the one giving it.

But God sets his own love beside us, in that while we were still missing the mark, the Anointed One died for us.

Romans 5:8 · SDVLove reaches the reader first, before it becomes something shared outwardly.

We love him, for he first loved us.

1 John 4:19 · SDVThe verse makes explicit that love begins in what has already been received.

THE THREAD

We love him, for he first loved us.

1 John 4:19 · SDV

The verbs translated “love” share the Greek stem ⁨ἀγαπ-⁩ (agap-, love or hold dear). John names the same movement at work here: love already given becomes love that moves outward.

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