Loving Like Jesus Even When You Have Nothing Left to Give

From the sermon preached on June 7, 2026

Loving like Jesus means loving at the same degree Jesus loved you (unconditional love that went to the cross while you were still walking away). That kind of love does not come from willpower or good intentions; it comes from staying connected to the source of love itself. If you have ever tried to keep loving someone when the well ran dry, this is where John 13 begins to make sense.

The night before he died, Jesus washed his disciples' feet and then gave them a command. Not a suggestion, not an aspiration. A command. In John 13:34, Jesus said, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another." The Greek word behind "just as" is kathos (according to, in proportion to, in the same degree). Jesus was not saying "try your best" or "love reasonably." He was saying: love to the exact extent that I loved you.

That is either the most impossible thing anyone has ever asked, or it is a promise dressed up as a command.

Sacrificial love is not the kind that shows up when it is convenient. Jesus, hours before his arrest, got on his knees in front of men he knew would abandon him and washed the road off their feet. He was not performing humility. He was demonstrating the shape of the love he was about to ask them to carry. A good boss, Jesus pointed out, is the kind who will get in the dirt with you when the work demands it. Jesus was that kind. Sacrificial love glorifies God precisely because no one watching can explain it from the outside. It looks like something that requires a source beyond the person doing it, and that is exactly the point.

This love does not keep score. It does not wait for the other person to earn it back. It looks at someone who has wronged you and, rather than wanting them to hurt the way you hurt, wants their record cleared. That is an uncomfortable picture. Most of us would rather settle accounts. But the command stands, and it is grounded in something prior: God was glorified when Jesus died for people who were still ignoring, and even rejecting him. Your sacrificial love, offered toward someone who does not deserve it, carries that same weight in the world around you.

Loving your enemies is the first of three concrete practices the sermon draws from this passage. Jesus did not say love your enemies when you have recovered from what they did. He said love them to the same degree he loved you, and he loved you while you were still in the middle of wronging him.

That reframe is worth sitting with. Loving your enemies does not mean pretending the wound was not real. It does not mean agreeing that what they did was acceptable or putting yourself back in harm's way. It means choosing not to wait for them to pay before you release them from the debt. "Instead of wanting payment," the sermon put it plainly, "instead of wanting to settle the score, instead of wanting them to hurt like we hurt, that means instead wanting their record to be made clean."

Think about that inside a family. Inside a marriage that has gone cold. Inside a friendship that cracked years ago and nobody talks about anymore. In Iroquois and Newton counties, people tend to carry those things quietly. They don't make scenes. They just go to work, come home, and carry it. Loving your enemies (which sometimes means loving the person sitting across the kitchen table from you) is not about having enough grit to push through the feeling. It is about recognizing that Jesus asked you to do something he already modeled. He was insulted, abandoned, and killed by people he was dying for. The love he is asking from you has a shape he already wore.

The actionable step here is small and honest: think of one person who has been annoying you or at odds with you lately, write their name down, and ask how you could bless them this week.

Abiding in Christ is the third movement in this passage, and it is the one that makes the other two possible. Jesus is explicit in John 15 that the command to love like he loved is inseparable from staying connected to him the way a branch stays connected to a vine. When a branch gets blown off a tree, it does not die immediately. It looks fine for a little while. Then it goes brittle. Then it is useless. That is the picture Jesus drew.

Abiding in Christ does not mean feeling spiritually energized at all times. The Greek word meno behind "abide" means to remain, to stay, to endure. To exist permanently in, unseparably united. It is not a description of a feeling. It is a description of a posture. You stay under the lamp even when you cannot feel the warmth. You stay under the umbrella even when the rain feels like too much. The love of God does not stop shining because you stepped away from it, but you stop benefiting from it when you do.

One of the most striking illustrations from this passage came not from a battlefield but from a concentration camp. A professor was offered freedom by the camp's leaders, who wanted to use his knowledge for their own purposes. He could have walked out. Instead, he looked at his students who would die without him and said: I will remain. He stayed. He died with them. That is abiding in Christ translated into human terms. It is the kind of love that says, "I'm with you to the end," not because it feels heroic, but because the source of that love never moved.

Abiding in Christ means keeping his commandments, not as a way to earn his love, but because that is where his love is shining. Staying in his Word, carving out time in his presence, staying connected to his people.

The honest actionable step here: before the week is out, find fifteen minutes in a quiet room, open John 13 through 15, and read it all the way through as one continuous letter from someone who was about to give his life for you.

John 13:34 is the anchor: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another." The word "new" here is not new in the sense that the command to love was invented on this night. It is new in the degree. The bar is now set at the cross.

There are people in communities like Watseka, Ashkum, Gilman, Milford, and Cissna Park in Iroquois County, and across Newton County into Kentland and Goodland, who already know what it feels like to love past the point of having anything left. A marriage they are holding together by sheer will. A kid they have not stopped praying for even though that kid stopped coming home. A friendship that cost them more than anyone around them knows. If that is you, Trinity Church has campuses in Ashkum, Goodland, and Watseka where people gather who are asking the same hard questions about love and staying and running dry. You would not be the first person to walk in carrying something that has never been said out loud.

You were commanded to love like Jesus loved you. Not approximately. Not when it is manageable. To that same degree, in that same proportion, toward the people in your actual life.

That is either impossible on your own, or it is an invitation to stay close enough to the source that it becomes possible. John 15 does not separate the command from the connection. Neither should we. The love Jesus is describing is not a willpower achievement. It is what flows out of a branch that has stayed on the vine long enough.

If you are ready to be around other people asking these same questions, all three campuses, Ashkum, Goodland, and Watseka, would be glad to have you. Plan your visit below to find service times and what to expect.

If you would rather send a quiet message first or submit a prayer request without committing to anything, you can do that too. Connect here and someone will get back to you.