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. This is one aspect of Christ's love.
Another is, that it is a companionable love. How free the Lord was in going in and out among men and women, sympathizing with them, even when they had no sympathy with Him! It is a divine love. His love was above all the evil that it met with. We do not have to go along with the evil, but can rise above it with patience, as Christ did, because our love, as His, is not dependent upon the thing that it loves. Because it is a divine love, it is above all the things that could 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 to our condition, because it is entirely above it.
Another is that it esteems others better than self. Christ could go and take up these poor, failing disciples as those who had been faithful to Him, and say, I will give you a share in My kingdom. Likewise, He encourages every heart by the good He can say of it. Yet in the process, the heart learns its own nothingness.
The measure and extent of the love of Christ was the total giving up of Himself to die for us. If I want to love as He did in a world of evil, it means the giving up of self for others; it is a love that is above the evil.