If therefore there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of he same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father

I’ve never been easy about commands to love others. I’ve always thought it was a beautiful idea, but the supreme difficulty of it never encouraged me. Perhaps I am coming to it—maybe there is some affective engine I simply don’t grasp when it comes to love. No doubt, I am mightily, almost comprehensively selfish. Nevertheless, I’m not in despair of ever loving—of becoming more like Christ in this.

The idea of loving your neighbor is simple enough—in fact, it may be the most easily understood thing in the world. But actually doing it might be the most difficult thing in the world. And yet God calls us to do it. So I’m struck, not by what Paul calls us to do, here, but rather by what he uses to motivate us–at the beginning of the chapter.

He speaks in a sincere—or insincere—subjunctive mood, using “if,” when he knows very well the conditions are fulfilled. What are the conditions? Because there is encouragement in Christ, because there is consolation of love, because there is fellowship of the Spirit, because there is affection, and because there is compassion—we can make his joy complete; we can be of the same mind as him; we can maintain love; remain united and intent on one purpose. We can imitate God in the incarnation.

Paul offers no dry, painful stoicism. He offers a positive, affective reason for obeying God, deferring to other, denying our selves, taking our crosses, and ultimately dying to our selves. This encourages me. I believe it really happens that when we look to God and cast all our hope on him, staring at Christ’s work, and attend to the people around us—their struggles, their joys, their pain, their projects—I really think we can forget about ourselves, degree by degree, and come to love them. Moreover, I think we will find ourselves happy in doing so. It is one of the great ironies of life that only by forgetting about your happiness—forsaking it—do you really become happy. I’m not talking about conditional, circumstantial happiness—I’m talking about gladness, deep, perhaps unknowing, satisfaction. What else could it be to be in harmony with our good, strong, loving Father’s will–to retune to the songs of Eden?

That’s not to say that it won’t involve pain. To carry a cross is to embrace pain. But for the joy set before him, Jesus endured the cross. And I don’t think it was just some future, unrealized joy that motivated him. He wasn’t just dying for people he never met, for some abstract cause, for an ideal principal—he was dying for his friends. Do you think he wasn’t aching for the men and women with whom he’d spent every moment of the last three years, whom he—God himself—had come to call friends? Do you think his heart wasn’t broken for Peter, who plunged out of boats to be with him, who tried so hard and failed so often to love him, this friend of friends? Do you think his bones didn’t ache for love of his mother, whose heart he was breaking, for the disciple who would identify himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” whom he would charge with caring for his heart-pierced mom—his mother, from whom he’d come, bleeding and crying (surely he cried)?

Jesus loves you as much as he loved his contemporary friends. He died for you just as he died for them—because he needed you. Can you imagine someone willing to die that you might live? It happened for you. God did it for you.

May he stoke this love of his in our hearts.