My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command. ¹⁵ I no longer call you servants, because servants do not know their master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. ¹⁷ This is my command: Love each other.

—John 15:12-17 (TNIV)

Here Jesus tells us plainly what he expects Christian love to look like. It is sacrificial love, the kind that he demonstrated when he humbled himself and went to the cross on our behalf to give us our one and only chance to live with God forever. Most of us will never be called to give our lives for another. But we are to give ourselves in service to others, not based on their merit but because we are to do as our Lord commands. The love we offer others is never tied to the worth of the individual. If that were the case, he would not have suffered the cross for us because none of us are worthy of that.

No, Christian loves seeks to build up the other, seeks the best for the other. It is not indulgent or sappy. It is sacrificial enough to be able to speak the truth to others, a truth that is God’s, not our own concoction. It is a love that does not insist on having its own way all of the time. This does not mean we are to be someone’s doormat, that we can never say “no” to people. Rather, it means that in our interactions with others, we are to have their best interests at heart, we are to think about what is best for them. Sometimes this requires us to say “no” to them, or refuse to bless their sinful behavior.

Do you demonstrate this kind of love in your dealings with other Christians?