What is the significance of ἀγαπάω (I have loved) being aorist in John 15:12?

Question

What is the significance of ἀγαπάω (I have loved) being aorist in John 15:12?

Αὕτη ἐστὶν ἡ ἐντολὴ ἡ ἐμή, ἵνα ἀγαπᾶτε ἀλλήλους καθὼς ἠγάπησα ὑμᾶς. (John 15:12, NA27)

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15:12, ESV)

A first impulse is to see this as referring back to Jesus washing their feet in John 13:1-20, but the next verse points to Jesus’ crucifixion in the future.

”Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13, ESV)

Answer 1

Just to clarify for a moment, I think a better way of asking the question is "what is the significance of the aorist in 15:12?" Of course you are taking the question in that way but it could be misinterpreted to suggest that we think it should have been a different tense than the aorist. The Holy Spirit inspired His word and He carried John along to breath out the aorist tense in this passage. This is not even an issue of Textual criticism as there aren't any variants for this verse (at least according to the two apparatuses I have).

So what is the significance of the aorist tense in this passage?

Here are just a few points that might help to understand the significance of the aorist tense in this verse:

1. This comes in the midst of the upper room discourse. The last night before he goes to the cross. It is the last night when they are all together until after the resurrection.
2. As such, the purpose of much of the Upper Room discourse is to reassure and to prepare the disciples for what is to come next, not just the cross, but life after the cross.
3. One thing that would be very reassuring to the disciples is the fact that Jesus had shown His love to the disciples already and at the same time He was in the context reminding them that He would still love them. Kostenberger points not just to 15:13 as an illustration of His love for them. He points to 15:13-16 as a continuing illustration of the love that Jesus had/has for the disciples.
4. I would not limit the past aspect of His love for them to just 13:1-20 either. Certainly in the context of the gospels you can see how He links His love for them to His choosing them (15:16) which at the very least it goes back to the initial selection of them as the apostles. One can even argue that it goes back to His choosing them before the foundation of the earth but contextually I think it best to keep it within the confines of the gospel. He loved them the whole three years He was with them. When they quarreled with each other over who was greatest, He still loved them. when they failed to understand that it was necessary that He die, He still rebuked Peter but He still loved Him. After the resurrection He restores Peter in one of the most moving scenes in the New Testament (John 21:15-19). In that passage I have always taken Peter to have thought he was no longer going to be used by God because of his three betrayals so he went back to what he knew -- fishing. When they failed to understand what He told them he didn't rebuke them He would further clarify with them what was the significance of what He meant. All these point to His love for them from the moment He chose them. For three years He had shown them love for the Father and He had shown them His never ending love for them as well.
5. John 15:13 is not limiting His love for them to only the work of the cross. He is saying that it is the ultimate expression of His love, just as calling them friends and choosing them were lesser expressions of His love for them.
6. If Jesus had used the present tense the disciples might have missed the significance of everything that had happened over the whole three years. If it had been in the perfect tense then it would have missed the aspect of His continuing love for them or His love as a completed fact. That can't be the case because He still had to go to the cross. The aorist here points to what had already been accomplished and yet leaves room for the continuing love for the disciples.

Maybe more than you were looking for in this case but I hope this helps to clarify the significance of the aorist tense.

Answer 2

The footnote appended by NET Bible to John 15:12 may help:

¹sn Now the reference to the commandments (plural) in 15:10 have been reduced to a singular commandment: The disciples are to love one another, just as Jesus has loved them. This is the ‘new commandment’ of John 13:34, and it is repeated in 15:17. The disciples’ love for one another is compared to Jesus’ love for them. How has Jesus shown his love for the disciples? This was illustrated in 13:1-20 in the washing of the disciples’ feet, introduced by the statement in 13:1 that Jesus loved them “to the end.” In context this constitutes a reference to Jesus’ self-sacrificial death on the cross on their behalf; the love they are to have for one another is so great that it must include a self-sacrificial willingness to die for one another if necessary. This is exactly what Jesus is discussing here, because he introduces the theme of his sacrificial death in the following verse. In John 10:18 and 14:31 Jesus spoke of his death on the cross as a commandment he had received from his Father, which also links the idea of commandment and love as they are linked here. One final note: It is not just the degree or intensity of the disciples’ love for one another that Jesus is referring to when he introduces by comparison his own death on the cross (that they must love one another enough to die for one another) but the very means of expressing that love: It is to express itself in self-sacrifice for one another, sacrifice up to the point of death, which is what Jesus himself did on the cross (cf. 1 John 3:16).