“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
John 15:12-17
Christ commands that we love one another. And in a world that often equates love with feelings and emotions - Christ shows us the way of love. Enacting, embodying love in the way of self-denying, self-giving life and death. Choosing and choosing again even when the response is half-hearted compared to the weight of sacrifice. Christ does not ask something of his disciples he does not first show us how to accomplish it. Nor does he ask of his disciples something that we can accomplish in our strength. No, true love of the self-denying, self-giving life and death variety can only be accomplished through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.