Wednesday in the Word...John 15:12-17...love one another

What a picture!  So many expressions to interpret.  Our passage today calls upon us to have a kind of love that demands a one of a kind example, Jesus Christ.  It also calls upon us to love before being loved.  Who is going to love first when it comes to you and those God has placed around you?

Our Wednesday in the Word covers John chapter 15 and verses 12 through 17.  Jesus used the analogy of a vine previously.  He is the vine; we are the branches; and God is the vinedresser.  We have Jesus' joy within us as we love him evident by our obedience to His commandments.  We are branches who are being pruned by God to be even more like His Son.

v.12 - "This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you."

Jesus starts and ends this paragraph of thought with the same command to love one another.  This first giving of this command has the qualifier or the example to lay our love up against.  Are we loving one another just as Jesus has loved us?  When we describe what love is do we base it upon Jesus' example rather than our own description or the world's counterfeits of love?

Jesus has said this before.  John chapter 13 and verse 34 says,

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another."

Later the Apostle John will say it again in 2 John and verses 5 and 6 which say,

"Now I ask you, lady, not as though I were writing to you a new commandment, but the one which we have had from the beginning, that we love one another.  And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments.  This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it."

Obedience to God's commands and love are tied together again but we don't earn God's love through our obedience.  Rather, our obedience is our response to His love to us.  It is logical for us to love Him back by being obedient to His words because He first loved us by being obedient to His Father's plan which provided for our salvation.

v.13 - "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends."

Jesus laid down His life for His friends.  The question is, "Are you one of His friends?"  The Apostle John will come back to this later with the other John chapter 3 and verse 16 but it is in the book of 1 John which reads,

We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

This laying down of one's life is tied to the message of salvation.  There have been many who have laid down their lives for the cause of salvation.  Many have been burned at the stake so that we could have the Bible in our own language.  Christians must be willing to do what Jesus did for others for the cause of an unswerving witness.  It sounds radical but if called upon would you not renounce Jesus so others, your friends, would see your full and totally surrendered commitment?

v.14, 15 - "You are My friends if you do what I command you.  No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you."

Jesus calls us something different.  He doesn't call us slaves but He calls us His friends.  The slave is just following orders but the friend is following with knowledge of what is going on at a different level.  The reason we respond this way is not just a blind order to follow but because God has given us the understanding of His love for us and for others.  The order we have from God is backed up with an understanding of His plan and our part in it.  

Abraham was called the friend of God in 2 Chronicles chapter 20 and verse 7.

Did You not, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before Your people Israel and give it to the descendants of Abraham Your friend forever?

In the New Testament James chapter 2 and verse 23 says,

and so the Scripture was fulfilled which says, "And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness," and he was called the friend of God.

Lastly, from Isaiah chapter 41 and verse 8 it says,

But you, Israel, My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, descendant of Abraham My friend,

I have given you all these passages about a friend of God who is named who obeyed what God had said but another element is important to remember that Jesus brings up in the next verses.  Before we puff out our chests that we are a friend of God because of anything we have done, Jesus goes on to say,

v.16 - "You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you."

God chose Israel.  Isaiah chapter 45 and verse 4 says,

For the sake of Jacob My servant, and Israel My chosen one, I have also called you by your name; I have given you a title of honor though you have not known Me.

Amos chapter 3 and verse 2 says,

You only have I chosen among all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.

God choice was not based on any of Israel's merits.  Deuteronomy chapter 7 and verses 7 and 8 says,

The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

Again stressed by God that it is not what we bring to the table, we find in Deuteronomy chapter 9 and verses 4 through 6 which read,

Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them out before you, 'Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,' but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you.  It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Know, then, it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stubborn people.

God chose angels to be forever holy found in 1 Timothy chapter 5 and verse 21, which reads,

I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of His chosen angels, to maintain these principles without bias, doing nothing in a spirit of partiality.

Jesus wants His disciples and us to know that our obedience to His commands was preceded by a love by Him directed to us who would go forth and bear fruit.  The ones who would lay down their lives for others like He did for us.  He choose us to live this type of life that He is describing.  His followers would dare to ask for the "whatevers."  When is the last time that you asked for the "whatever" that only God could make happen?  I think many times our prayers are so small to what our great God can do.

v.17 - "This I command you, that you love one another."

And Jesus ends with the way He started.  It is a command that is needed to be said over and over.  We do okay loving God but when it comes to that horizontal love with each other, we struggle.  We make excuses and rationalizations to why we can keep from truly loving that brother or sister in Christ.  Maybe we don't get back to loving because we know it will mean some repenting, confessing, and forgiving.  Can I get in the practice of what God has done for me?  God loved me before I loved Him.  Can I love others before they love me?  It is this kind of love that bears fruit for the glory of God.

Heavenly Father, what a love You have for us.  What a love You command us to show onto each other.  May we clear the path so we can love like You have loved us.  Amen.

Pastor Adam