Agape as the “new” commandment?

 In my last posting I wrote out agape versions of many NT passages. After letting 15 days go by, I read through all those quotes, and that was truly inspiring. Also, all of those verses -- taken together, in the sheer magnitude that the full spread of wisdom shows -- mean clearly that something entirely new was given there. So there is no way that the old, familiar word ‘love’ can be used there anymore. Some different meaning is conveyed there.

As I thought about them, I began to notice many different understandings developing. For example, I wondered about what happens when you put side by side the verses: Mt. 22:37-40; Lev. 19:18; Jn. 13:34-35 (of course, using ‘agape’ instead of ‘love’).

Jesus replied: "You must agapao the Lord your God with your whole heart, with your whole being, and with your whole mind." This is the first and the greatest commandment. And the second is like it: "you must agapao your neighbor as you agapao yourself." All the law and the Prophets depend on these two commands. ...  Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but agapao your neighbor as yourself.  ... "I give you a new commandment: Agapao each other. Just as I have agapan you, so you also must agapao each other. This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you agapao each other."

I began to imagine the 2 scenes: first of Jesus answering with 2 commandments when only one was called for; and then Jesus gathered with his disciples at the Last Supper, telling them to pay very close attention because he was giving them something new that they HAD to obey. I was then struck by a strange question.

If everyone would have recognized as coming from the Leviticus laws what Jesus called the “second that is like” the Great Commandment, then what did he mean when he told the Disciples that he was giving them a “new” commandment? In other words, if it was already in the ancient law, how could it be NEW? Wouldn’t ‘Doubting Thomas’ have raised his hand and asked, “What’s new about that?”

Well, of course that didn’t happen, and no one even thought it, because they all instantly recognized that it was new. So the problem rests with us. If we don’t see that it’s new, then we don’t understand what was ‘gospel’ about what Jesus was demonstrating and teaching. Now, of course, it’s much easier to begin to see the new when we leave the original word ‘agape’ there, instead of changing the whole meaning by sticking in our common English word ‘love.’

Jesus was doing something dramatically, and profoundly, new. Although, I’m not sure anyone else in the 1st Century could figure out exactly what it was all about. I think all they came to realize is that it had something to do with the spiritual phenomenon they came to call ‘agape.’

That’s about it.

And we sadly trivialize it in the 21st Century when we continue the grave mistake of using the common English word ‘love’ to try explaining it. And worse -- we suck out of it all the amazing, new power.

When we fully open ourselves to allow God’s agape to work in both our faith development and our relationships of our daily life, then we begin to understand how truly new and powerful was what Jesus brought to people’s lives and to history.