The pattern characteristic of Christ’s love was service. “I am among you as one that serves.” Selfishness likes to be served, love likes to serve; that is one characteristic of Christ’s love.
Another is, that it is a companionable love. How free the Lord was going in and out among them, sympathizing with them, when they had no sympathy with Him!
Another, that it was above all the evil that it met with. We have not to go with the evil, but rise above it with patience, as Christ did, because our love, as His, has its spring from a source which is not dependent upon the thing that it loves, and which is above all the things that hinder. It goes on and abides, because its spring is in God.
Another characteristic of Christ’s love is that it is thoughtful and considerate of us, and consequently adapts itself in the way of love to my condition, because it is entirely above it.
Another, that it esteems others better than self. Christ could go and take up these poor wretched disciples as those who had been faithful to Him, and say, I will give you a share in My kingdom. He picks up every heart by the good He can say of it, lays it open to receive rebuke.
Another, is the anxiety of love. In this world, where evil is, we cannot have love without anxiety. The heart yearning in love is drawn out in anxiety; an anxiety that looks to the Lord, and finds an answer there.
The measure and extent of the love of Christ was the total giving up of Himself to die for us. If I want to have a love that will do for a world of evil, it is the giving up of self for everybody, a love that is above the evil.
“Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end” (John 13:1).