In third grade I travelled through time.
Well, actually, I cheated time.
My small rural elementary school in Cloudcroft, NM had no bells or buzzers to notify teachers of the end of the school day. Each classroom had one clock and the teacher dismissed students when it read 3 PM.
My desk in third grade was right next to the clock which hung on the wall. That meant I could hear every tick of every second of every minute of every hour of the long school day. I couldn’t wait for the clock to reach 3 PM because that would mean instruction had finally reached its limit.
So, one day, I fast-forwarded time. It was about 2:15 PM. I stealthily reached up while the teacher was distracted and moved the clock’s hands until they read 2:59 PM. One minute later, we were dismissed–none more joyfully than me.
Everything has a time limit. School. The cake baking in the oven. A career. And we are often merry or mournful when that limit is hit. Everything has a time limit.
But not love.
John nears the end of his story of Jesus with this often overlooked phrase:
“he loved them to the end.” (Jn. 13:1 ESV)
The greek word “telos,” translated “end,” can refer to at least three things. Let’s explore all three.
First, telos can refer to time. With that meaning, John’s saying that Jesus’ love had no time limit. Jesus’ love did not skip out the door at 3 PM. Jesus loved all the way to the end–the end of the time he had on the earth. There would be no second, minute or hour when Jesus would look up and say, “That’s it. Time’s up. Love’s done. I’ve got nothing left.”
This is John’s commentary on the duration of Jesus’ love. Jesus’ love had no term limits. Douglas Webster says that this is John pointing to the “limitless nature” of Jesus’ love. Jesus was all in when it came to love. Love was always on the clock.
What about you? If you checked the duration of your love, how would it match up with Jesus’? How long does your love last, especially for those who may be different from you? Or difficult to you? Does your love have a short shelf-life? Does it expire quickly? Or does your love endure, lingering long after other people or institutions have given up? To be all in is to love to the end.
I realized recently, with regret, that my love is often severely time-limited. When someone I know enters a crisis, I’ll call, text, email and visit. But only for a few days–weeks if I’m really on my game. Eventually my calls stop. My texts and emails cease. My visits dry up. Meanwhile, the person remains caught in crisis or at least feeling its adverse aftershocks. This is even more the case when the person who is the object of love is difficult. My love rarely lasts long.
But Jesus … he loved to the end.
Second, this word “end” also refers to type. Most people are only willing to love certain types of people in certain types of ways. We preference and privilege some and are biased and prejudiced against others. Miroslav Volf writes about this type of halfway love in his book Exclusion and Embrace. Using the Serbian/ Croat conflict as a case study, Volf, who grew up in Croatia, shows that the inclination toward exclusion rather than toward embrace is present in most cultures, including the Christian culture. He cities H. Richard Neibuhr who wrote this stinging indictment of the church:
“The color line has been drawn so incisively by the church itself that its proclamation of the gospel of the brotherhood of Jew and Greek, of bond and free, of white and black has sometimes the sad sound of irony, and sometimes falls upon the ear as unconscious hypocrisy.”
Volf argues that the church rarely rises any higher than the surrounding culture, finding itself filled with racism, sexism, ageism and other forms of prejudice, just like the rest of the culture:
“Our coziness with the surrounding culture has made us so blind to many of its evils that, instead of calling them into question, we offer our own versions of them–in God’s name and with a good conscience.”
Jemar Tisby in The Color of Compromise writes about how the church has sadly practiced limited love especially when it comes to race:
“The failure of many Christians in the South and across the nation to decisively oppose the racism in their families, communities, and even in their own churches provided fertile soil for the seeds of hatred to grow.”
These are hard words likely to generate defensiveness or outright denial among some of us reading them. But their truth demands to be heard. Those of us who follow Jesus tend to love in limited ways. We show love to some types of people and not to others, in some types of ways and not others.
And this is why John summarizes Jesus’ posture with these words: “he loved them to the end” (Jn. 13:1). It’s not just a commentary on the duration of Jesus’ love. It’s a commentary on the degree of Jesus’ love. It’s not just illuminating the lack of time-limits on Jesus’ love but the lack of type-limits on Jesus’ love. The Greek word telos, translated “end,” can mean “utmost.” It points to the types of people Jesus loved and the types of love with which he loved them.
The phrase is ultimately an arrow pointing us directly to the cross. Adrienne von Speyr was a Swiss Catholic physician, writer and theologian. She wrote this of John’s summary:
“The hour of the return to the Father is near. The Lord is thinking, however, not of that, but of accomplishing the highest and most definitive act possible in the time remaining to him on earth, of realizing the uttermost love … he will prove this love to them to its uttermost end, the Cross.”
Jesus loves to the end–that is, to a degree, of a type, that rests at the end of a spectrum. It is a love beyond any other type of love. On the cross Jesus would love all people–Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female–in a way that had never been seen befoe.
Paul points to this in his letter to the Ephesians:
“For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. He did this by ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations. He made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating in himself one new people from the two groups. Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death.” (Eph. 2:14-16 NLT)
Paul isn’t just describing hostility that exists outside the people of God. He’s describing something that was alive within God’s own community. In Jesus’ day, the temple in Jerusalem was constructed on an elevated platform. Around it was the Court of the Priests. East of this was the Court of Israel, and further east the Court of the Women. These three courts—for the priests, the lay men and the lay women–were all on the same elevation as the temple. That is, if you were of Jewish race and ethnicity, you were on the same level as God. You had access to God.
Then, from this level you descended five steps to a walled platform, and on the other side of the wall fourteen more steps to another wall, beyond which was the Court of the Gentiles. This was the only space where Gentiles were allowed. From any part of it the Gentiles could look up and view the temple and Jews worshipping near it, but they were not allowed to approach it. They were literally on a lower level than the Jews, even as they worshipped.
They were cut off from the temple and the Jewish worshippers not just by the steps but also by the surrounding wall, which was a stone barricade, on which were displayed notices. During the last hundred years or so some of those notices have been discovered. One is a white limestone slab which says this:
“No foreigner may enter within the barrier and enclosure round the temple. Anyone who is caught doing so will have himself to blame for his ensuing death.”
Within the worshipping community of God was a physical wall warning that if you were not of the right racial or ethnic identity, your life had such little value that you could be killed if you tried to worship with others.
And Paul is saying that one of the key aspects of Jesus’ work on the cross was to abolish this hostility and to enact and embody reconciliation.
How did Jesus do this? Athanasius was one of the earliest Christian writers. He reflects on this:
“Therefore it was fitting for the Lord to stretch out his hands, that with the one he might draw the ancient people and with the other those from the Gentiles, and join both together in himself.”
On the cross, Jesus stretched out with one hand and brought to himself all those of Jewish race and ethnicity. And then, Jesus stretched out with the other hand and brought to himself all those of every other racial and ethnic identity. Jesus included both as recipients of his sacrifice. He demonstrated how much he values both. Jesus’ inclusive love made possible the ending of hostility between them.
Jesus’ love had no time limits, and no type limits. He practiced a love in which all were in. There was nothing halfway about his love.
What about you? As you consider the degree of your love, how does it measure up to Jesus’? Is your love poured out generously on people who are similar to you in color or class or creed but released in small quantities for others? Is there no end to who you will love and how you will love them? Or does someone’s sexual orientation or place or birth or physical/ mental capabilities throttle your love?
There’s a third meaning to the Greek word telos or end. It can refer to duration. It can refer to degree. But it can also refer to direction. Paul Nadim Tarazi, a Palestinian scholar, proposes that telos in Jn. 13 points to Jesus’ goal or purpose. Jesus loved to the end–to the completion of a purpose or goal, to the finish line of a path he’d been walking on his entire life. A love without limits, a love that refused to be extended halfway was Jesus’ end, his goal, the direction of his entire life. If anything contributed to this end, Jesus did it, no matter the cost. If anything detracted from this end, he refused it, no matter the cost. The goal of Jesus’ life was to not love halfway but to be all in so that all could also be in.
What is your goal? If someone looked at your life, what would they say your purpose is? If they only focused our “spiritual life” what might they identify as your primary priority? Learning more about the Bible? Growing a large church? Serving as a watchdog, barking at others who believe or live differently than you do? Is the direction of your life and everything within it pointed in this one way–to be all in?
Jesus loved to the end. May we do the same.
