Jesus was summarizing simply the law.

“Love God,” he said.

“Love your neighbor.”

“Who do we have to love?” was the follow up. “Who counts as my neighbor?”

That’s the story of the good Samaritan. If you walk by someone in serious trouble, and you can help, and you don’t on account of being too focused on being good, you aren’t. Good, that is. Or loving.

Jesus got more specific when talking to the guys who followed him most closely. He gave them a command:

“Love one another.”

The way people would know the disciples were following Jesus, he explained, was that they would love each other.

When the Bible talks about love, different words in Greek are translated using the English word “love”. One of them, phileo, is like our word “bromance”. When a group of guys support each other, cheer for each other, play softball together, you could describe it as love. And that, it would seem, to make sense when talking to these guys.

But Jesus uses a different word. agape. [uh gop a (long A)]. It means “the dying for you kind of love I’m showing.”

When Jesus says “Love one another” he’s not saying, “Be nice to each other” or “be a great team” or “sleep with each other”. He’s saying, “Be like me.”

We say, “How in the world do I do that for this person I have nothing in common with?”

God says, “Exactly. You have nothing in common with him, other than me. And that is exactly enough. You can’t talk yourself into loving that person. You can’t say, ‘I bet I’ll get points if I love that person.’ You have to ask me to help.”

And he will.

God-changed communities are full of people who used to hate each other.