Will Kynes, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Biblical Studies, Samford University
A Life of Loyalty
John 13:21–27; 31–35
What is your highest allegiance? You may know how you want to answer that question, but you won’t really know until that allegiance is tested. Until you must sacrifice other loves in your loyalty to that higher end, you will not know what is supreme in your heart.
Stories of followers of Christ making the ultimate sacrifice sparkle like diamonds mined from the crushing pressure of darkness throughout Church history. Young women fed to lions; old men burned at the stake. Each forces us to ask, “Would I do the same?”
Shusaku Endo’s novel “Silence” is a powerful extended meditation on that question, set in the 17th century persecution of Christians in Japan. John 13 provides another opportunity to reflect on this most important of questions.
Look for betrayal in your own life. (21–27)
When Jesus tells His disciples that one of them will betray Him, they “stared at one another, at a loss to know which of them He meant” (v. 22 NIV).We all live in that moment. Could we betray our loyalty to Jesus?
The disciples’ concern here, and their behavior later as they all abandoned their Savior at His moment of greatest need, suggests we all have some Judas in us.
Live for God’s glory even as Jesus did. (31–33)
And yet, through the Father’s love, Christ’s accomplishment and the Spirit’s work within us, we all can have even more Jesus.
In another surprising turn in John’s narrative, when Judas leaves to betray Jesus to the authorities — at the moment He concretely begins His inexorable march toward humiliating crucifixion — Jesus declares, “Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in Him.”
The “Christ hymn” in Philippians 2 helps us understand this paradoxical passage. Paul writes, “He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross!” (v. 8). But as a result “God exalted him to the highest place” (v. 9).
Paul calls followers of Christ to “have the same mindset as Christ Jesus” (v. 5), to humble themselves as He did by setting aside their benefits, even their lives, to glorify the father.
Love for others puts your loyalty to God on display. (34–35)
Paul encourages believers to follow Christ’s example by having “the same love” to “in humility value others [allelous] above yourselves” (Phil. 2:2–3). This Greek word “allelous,” or “one another,” is used more than 100 times in the New Testament. Our love for one another is a vital means for emulating Jesus, not Judas.
As Jesus heads to the cross, He gives His disciples a new command: “Love one another [allelous].” When they love as He has loved them, they will demonstrate their loyalty as His disciples.
An unremarkable cross design on the stones of Broad Street in Oxford, England, marks the spot where two former bishops, 70-year-old Hugh Latimer and the significantly younger Nicholas Ridley, were burned at the stake in 1555 for their Protestant beliefs. As the flames were kindled, Latimer purportedly said to his fellow martyr, “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as I trust shall never be put out.”
Courageously facing death, Latimer demonstrated ultimate loyalty to his Savior. At the same time, he lovingly encouraged a fellow disciple. When we face challenges to our faith, we need others who can do the same. This is the great gift of the Church — the primary place in which we obey and profit from the “one another” commands in Scripture.
In Latimer and Ridley’s devoted self-sacrifice, God’s glory blazed in that Oxford street. How can you fan that flame?
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