A few years ago American Express quietly introduced its most exclusive new card. The Centurion Card is absolutely black, and is actually made out of titanium — the hardest known naturally occurring metal. In fact, when one of these titanium Centurion Card expires, the member has to send it back to American Express for recycling. The titanium can't be cut up or shredded. Besides, titanium is too valuable to be thrown away.

Jesus introduces and invokes a whole new mindset, heartset, soulset into the universe. Jesus established The Titanium Rule. Anyone figure out what it is? Here's a hint: you find it in his understatement in this morning's text that "it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher."

The titanium rule does not focus on "doing;" it focuses on "being" and on "loving." Jesus asks his followers to "Love one another as I have loved you." Love others as the Christ who hung on the cross for our sins loved us. Love others as the God who "so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son" loved us. Love others with a love that enables you to lay down your life for them. How did Jesus put it in his Farewell Discourse (John 13, 14, 15, 16, 17), when he introduced his "Great Commandment:" "Love one another as I have loved you."

And how has Jesus loved us? In that same Farewell Discourse defines how he has loved us: "Greater love has no one than this, than that he lay down his life for his friend."