How to Love Like Jesus

Healing That Does Not Depend on Performance

The man at Bethesda did not heal himself. He did not improve enough to qualify. Jesus came to him, spoke, and the man stood up. The healing began with Christ’s ability, not the man’s.

That gives us a useful picture of grace. When Christ revealed Himself to us, we were not walking in a way that could make us right with God. We needed a healing we could not produce. In Christ, we received it. We can now stand before the Father knowing that we are loved and accepted because of what Jesus accomplished.

Then comes the statement that troubles people: “Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” The question is not whether Jesus said it. The question is what He meant by it.

What Did Jesus Mean by “Sin No More”?

Jesus spoke those words before the cross, before His once-for-all sacrifice had put away sin, and before the New Covenant had been fully established. The people around Him still lived under the Mosaic covenant with its commands and repeated sacrifices. Jesus knew what was coming even though they did not yet see it.

Hebrews 9:26 says that Christ appeared “to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” Ephesians 1:13 says that those who believe are sealed with the Holy Spirit. The endless cycle of trying to deal with sin through law and sacrifice was coming to its end in Him.

That is why I do not hear “sin no more” as Jesus telling this healed man to become behaviorally perfect so he could stay healed. This would leave only one sin that needed a miraculous eternal healing: unbelief. Christ is the healing. Turning away from Him is not improvement; it is rejecting the only One who can give life.

John himself later writes, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). John can call believers away from sin without pretending that the Christian life rests on flawless behavior. The answer to our failure is still Jesus.

Learning How to Love Like Jesus

Jesus gave His disciples a new commandment: “that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34). That is not a small command. He did not tell them to be somewhat nicer, to improve their score, or to do the best they could. He pointed to His own love.

So how do we love like Jesus? Not by turning His love into a checklist. We learn His love by receiving it, knowing it, and allowing it to renew the way we think. Romans 12:2 speaks of the renewing of the mind. That renewal reaches deeper than the random thoughts that pass through our heads. It changes the inner place from which we live.

This is where abiding belongs, but it does not need to become the subject of this study. We have already worked through what it means to abide in Christ. Here the point is simple: the branch does not produce fruit by trying harder to be a branch. Jesus said, “Abide in me, and I in you” (John 15:4). His life supplies the fruit.

First John 4:19 says it plainly: “We love because he first loved us.” The order matters. His love comes first. The more clearly we know the love of the Lord, the more freely that love can move through us.

That does not make us helpless or passive. Second Peter 1:3 says that His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness. We have not been abandoned with a command and no ability. We have been given life, the Spirit, truth, and everything necessary to walk in what God has supplied. Everything pertaining to life and godliness is already ours.

The burden is light because the source is not us. The world around us can make faith difficult because we tend to live by what we see, and the people around us may not see what we see. But dependence on Christ itself is not another crushing burden.

We hear “God is love” all the time, but we should know what that means from Christ Himself instead of living on secondhand teaching. The apostles hung on His words. We should know His words too. Do not put yourself at the mercy of a church, teacher, or pulpit for all of your learning. Know Christ for yourself in Scripture. He is not a carrot-on-a-stick Christ who keeps you reaching for acceptance. He is the Christ who heals now and forever and who does not count your sins against you (Romans 4:8).

When Love Becomes Another Religious Standard

This is where Christian teaching can go badly wrong. We say salvation is by grace, and then we quietly rebuild a system of standards around the Christian life. One church says you have to prove that you are a disciple. Another says you have to maintain fellowship. Another says you have to love like Jesus. The wording changes, but the formula can remain the same: Christ is the standard, you are measured against Him, and when you fall short you must somehow repair the relationship.

That is not freedom. It takes something beautiful and turns it into another law.

I know what that kind of teaching can do because I lived under it. I could bounce between feeling not good enough, becoming self-righteous when I thought I was doing better, and remaining ignorant of what life in Christ actually meant. I was stuck. If the men at the pulpit were the standard, I would never be as good as they appeared to be. Why even try?

The change came when I began to see the hypocrisy in a system that teaches a standard its teachers cannot keep. My heart had been made right with God, but my thinking needed serious renewal. Renewing Your Mind in Christ develops that problem more fully.

Put Your Name Into 1 Corinthians 13

Paul says that love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful.

If we put our own name in the place of “love” and use the passage as a test of whether we are right with God, the result is immediate condemnation. We fail. Everyone fails. That is the problem with making Christ’s love the entrance exam for fellowship, discipleship, or acceptance.

The answer cannot be “love more” or “do the best you can.” Jesus did not lower the command until it became manageable. He called us to a perfect love. If perfection is the requirement we must produce to remain right with God, the teacher and the listener are condemned by the same standard.

If the men at the pulpit judge themselves by the standard they teach, they are not disciples, they are not in fellowship, they do not love the Lord, and they are not worthy of leading. They are wretched hypocrites. It is them that need to repent and be saved. And this is not because of their behavior. It is because of what they believe: they have made themselves the standard while teaching a standard they themselves cannot keep.

That is why Christian legalism is so damaging. It can sound serious about holiness while placing our confidence back in ourselves. The result is pride when we think we are doing well, fear when we think we are failing, and hypocrisy when we teach a standard we cannot keep.

A “feel good” sermon with a strong call to action will never teach anyone to depend on Christ. It is spiritually useless. A “feel bad” sermon of punishing guilt is no better. Jesus taught love, not rules, and there was no gauge attached because He is the producer, not you.

First John 2:2 gives us the foundation that this system keeps disturbing: Jesus “is the propitiation for our sins.” There is no added category called positional propitiation or future-only propitiation. Christ fully satisfied the wrath of God on our behalf. Throw away any doctrine that tells you God’s wrath is still involved in our Christian lives. We do not need gospel additives. We need the pure blood of Christ.

Jesus did not just love us positionally. Positional sanctification is conditional sanctification. We are not called to love one another conditionally. We are called to love like Jesus, without condition or bias. If we make that love a goal or a standard that establishes our standing, we ruin the whole thing.

Love is not the price we pay to keep what grace gave us. Love is the fruit of the life we received.

Depend Like Jesus

If Jesus is our example, we should pay attention not only to what He did but to how He lived. In John 5:19 He says that the Son can do nothing of His own accord, but only what He sees the Father doing. In verse 30 He says, “I can do nothing on my own.”

Jesus was not modeling spiritual independence. He was modeling dependence.

That changes the question. Instead of asking, “How hard do I have to work to love like Jesus?” we can ask, “Where did Jesus Himself look for His life and power?” He looked to the Father. In the same way, we look to Christ.

In order to love like Jesus, we have to depend like Jesus.

The fear of punishment does not produce this love. Repeatedly trying to get forgiven does not produce it. Measuring ourselves against the people around us does not produce it. Those things keep our eyes on ourselves.

Christ’s love is far above any condition we can meet. If you want to work hard and struggle, keep trying to get right with God. If you want supernatural love, be right with God and depend on His power. The Spirit does not give us power so that we can become independent. He gives us life so that we can depend and respond.

That is why obedience itself can be understood as fruit rather than strain. How to Be Obedient to God follows the same line: faith and dependence come first, and obedience grows from there.

Our identity is never “not good enough.” If we make our identity in Christ inadequate, we have made Christ inadequate. Our dependency has been misplaced. It is not our love that we are trusting. It is the love of Christ.

Love Fulfills the Law

Paul closes 1 Corinthians 13 by saying, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Just before that chapter he told the Corinthians to desire the higher gifts and promised to show them “a still more excellent way” (1 Corinthians 12:31).

The miraculous sign gifts belonged to the transition into the New Covenant age and came to their end in AD 70, but faith, hope, and love remain. The greatest of these is love.

Do you desire that love? You already have Christ within you. Ask the Lord to produce His love in your life. Pray for it. Depend on Him for it. Let His love guide you freely instead of putting yourself back under a standard you were never able to carry.

Galatians 5:23 says there is no law against love. Romans 13:10 says that love is the fulfillment of the law. That means love is not another law of its own. We do not need a religious system that tries to enforce what only Christ can produce.

This is also why we should not wait for some future heavenly state to enjoy the benefits of salvation. We are already saved. We are already reconciled. We already have the Spirit. We already have everything we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). The Christian life begins from what God has supplied, not from what we are still trying to earn.

So do not abide in your love performance. Abide in Christ. Do not be transformed by guilt and pressure. Be transformed by the love of God. Do not use love to put yourself or someone else back into bondage.

The intellect of man will never defeat or surpass the love of Christ. It was never meant to.

If you want to love like Jesus, know His love more. Depend on His life more. Trust what He has already accomplished. We love because He first loved us.