What is the context?
This command comes during Jesus’ final meal with His disciples, after He washes their feet and Judas leaves. Jesus has just told them that He will soon depart. He now tells them how they are to live with one another when He is no longer present with them in the same way.
They are to love as He has loved them. The measure is the care they have received from Him, shown in His service and brought to its fullest expression in His coming death. Their relationship with Jesus is to become visible in their relationships with each other.
The command concerns love within the company of disciples. It does not cancel love for neighbors or enemies: Leviticus 19:18, 34 commands care for neighbor and foreigner, and Luke 6:27–36 records Jesus’ teaching to love enemies. Here He stresses the witness of a community learning His way of love.
How is this passage commonly understood?
Christians commonly understand this command as a defining mark of following Jesus: His followers are to love one another in a way shaped by His own love. The command is not an invitation to claim superiority over other people; it calls disciples to make His love visible in their life together.
Calling the command new does not mean that God had never required love before. Leviticus 19:18, 34 already commands love for the neighbor and the foreigner. Here Jesus makes His own love the pattern for the disciples. Calvin on verse 34 emphasizes the renewed force of a command that must remain before them; Wesley on verse 34 emphasizes loving to the degree and in the manner Jesus has loved. The Catholic Church’s Catechism, paragraphs 1823–1827, likewise describes Christ’s love as the source and pattern of Christian love. These explanations share the central point rather than presenting opposing commands.
Where does this fit in God's plan?
In John 15:9–13, Jesus connects the Father’s love for Him, His love for the disciples and their love for one another. He then speaks of the greatest love as laying down one’s life for one’s friends. Their care is a response to God’s love, not an attempt to invent it.
Jesus’ later prayer in John 17:20–23 also connects the unity of believers with the world recognizing that the Father sent Him. The command prepares His followers to bear that witness together.
What is our position?
Our studies What Is the True Church? and I Am a Disciple identify love for one another as a visible mark of belonging to Jesus. This means patient, forgiving, self-giving care in practice. A claim to follow Him is meant to be recognizable in how we treat people, not simply in the name we use for ourselves.