The Hitchhiker’s Guide (14): Beyond ḥesed

I am giving you a new commandment, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, that you also love one another.  John 13:34 NASB

New – But this isn’t new at all, is it?  Leviticus 19:18—“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Yeshua even cites this passage as the equivalent of loving God.  So, how can he say he is giving them a “new” commandment?  We might be inclined to explain this by noting that his reference to the “new” covenant (Luke 22:20) is really a statement about the “renewed” covenant since the Hebrew word is ḥādaš, a “renewed” or “fresh” or “repaired” thing.  But that would be a guess since we don’t have his Hebrew statement.  What we have is a Greek translation, and in that translation the Greek is kainós.  “As distinct from néos, ‘new in time,’ kainós means ‘new in nature’ (with an implication of ‘better’).”^[1]  But how can Yeshua’s commandment be “better” than the one given in Leviticus?  “New in nature” has to mean fundamentally different, not just a fresh look.  So, what is fundamentally new here?

The answer, it seems to me, is in the qualifier “as I have loved you.”  The Levitical command asks that we love the neighbor in a way equal to the way we love ourselves.  It presupposes the foundation is self-care.  It assumes that caring for ourselves is the standard by which we are to measure our care for another.  But Yeshua says something deeper.  “As I have loved you” is about love beyond self-concern.  His life demonstrates what it means to love purely, not as a reciprocal of self-care but as an extension of God’s care.  The obligation of Leviticus is not set aside.  It is enhanced.  Now it is no longer duty, or even projected self-care.  Now it is an expression of divine concern.  Mesillat Yesharim touches on this idea in the discussion of saintliness (hasidut).  “A world characterized by hasidut, or ‘saintliness,’ as we have called it, is more correctly designated by the word loving-kindness (hesed), or simply, love.  Love is a desire for the other’s good in which reciprocity or mutuality is no longer a significant factor.  The self instead is engaged in service of the other as service to itself.”[2]

This is not to say that Yeshua’s love for his disciples serves him.  It is to say that Yeshua’s love serves the one he loves—the Father—and that love makes him who he is.  In other words, ḥesed  is no longer limited to connection, reciprocity, transitivity, and action.  It now includes identity.  If I am to love as Yeshua loved, my very existence, my being who I am, is tied to my relationship with another.  What’s new is not the actions toward another but rather the fact that my own identity is tied to those actions.  If I am going to be the extension of God’s love in this world, as Yeshua was and is, then I will have to set aside any self-concern when it comes to bearing the burden of another.  Each decision will need to be a garden decision.  “Not my will but Yours.”

Step 14: Love defines me.  Right?

Topical Index:  ḥesed, new, kainós, saintliness, identity, John 13:34

^[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (p. 388). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.

[2] Ira F. Stone, in Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Mesillat Yesharim: The Path of the Upright, p. 117.