Article July 7, 1945 Issue

"As I have loved you"

ROSE L. KEMPTHORNE

"A New commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another" (John 13:34). These arresting words of Jesus were given to his disciples after he, their Lord and Master, had humbly stooped to wash their feet at his last supper with them before his crucifixion. This "new commandment" evidently meant more than human love and solicitude for each other, for they were to love "as I have loved you."

In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, reveals the nature of the Master's love. There she writes (p. 54): "Through the magnitude of his human life, he demonstrated the divine Life. Out of the amplitude of his pure affection, he defined Love." Through the promised Comforter, Christian Science, today's disciples of the Christ are learning how to follow their Way-shower both humanly and divinely. They are proving, through Christlike living, even in the valley of human experience, that man is not a sinning, fearing, ailing, corporeal being, but the loved and loving son of God. Only thus do they fulfill their Way-shower's command to love "as I have loved you."

Students of Christian Science, realizing their need to express more love, patience, and forgiveness, often despairingly ask themselves or another how they can love one who seems most unlovable. Let them assure themselves that they are not required to love, nor indeed can they truly love, sinful, selfish, unlovely mortals. But they are required to reject this false concept of man and replace it with the understanding that the real man is sinless and selfless, loving, lovely, and lovable. This is the man whom they must love and see in human experience. Many sacrifices of self—self-will, self-love, pride, hurt, resentment, and so on—may be needed before one can under all circumstances lovingly greet his brother as the son of God.

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