John 15:17

These things I command you, that ye love one another.

These things I command you, that ye love one another. Our Lord repeats here what He had said in , but He recurs to it here in order to give it fresh and affecting point. He is about to forewarn them of the certain hatred and persecution of the world, if they be His indeed. But before doing it, He enjoins on them anew the love of each other. It is as if He had said, 'And ye will have need of all the love ye can receive from one another, for outside your own pale ye have nothing to look for but enmity and opposition.' This, accordingly, is the subject of what follows.

The substance of these important verses has occurred more than once before. (See the notes at Matthew 10:34, and Remark 2 at the close of that section; and at , and Remark 4 at the end of that section.) But the reader will do well to mark the special light in which the subject is here presented.