John 15:12-17

Hey, everybody. Thanks for being with us.

We finish out the week here in the Gospel of John.

Still working our way through the 15th chapter.

We'll find ourself here in verse 12 as we continue.

A section in which Jesus has been talking to the disciples.

Kind of in some ways more of the same, but some verses

that would probably be familiar, some verses that certainly stand out.

Let me read them quickly, and then we'll come back and discuss them.

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

No one has greater love than this to lay down one's life for one's friends.

You are my friends.

If you do what I command you.

I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know

what the master is doing.

But I have called you friends, because I've made known to

you everything that I've heard from my father.

You did not choose me, but I chose you.

And I appointed you to go and bear fruit.

Fruit that will last so that the father will give you whatever you ask in my name.

I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

I think

particularly here, verse 13, no one has greater love than this

has been important in the church.

It's probably a well known verse.

The idea of sacrifice and sacrificial

love that Jesus is highlighting here in.

In other ways, this is a kind of culmination of what Jesus has been saying.

And so it probably sounds familiar, you know, love one another.

That's my new commandment.

You know what I'm doing?

Because you know the father.

You know me and therefore know the father.

And then a restatement of the last passage we looked at this call to bear fruit in.

John here, adds Jesus adds in John fruit that will last,

a kind of a testament to the character and the quality of the fruit.

So not just here to bear fruit, but to bear good fruit.

And then Jesus finally concludes here, giving you these commands

that you may love one another because, particularly in this part of John, though

to some extent, Michael, through, I think the whole gospel,

John is never far away from the idea of love.

And we've we've spoken over the course of this last chapter.

So the active nature of love,

as John understands it, as Jesus portrays it, love is not here.

Some feeling.

Love is the production of fruit to to love.

Jesus is to love others.

To love Jesus is to live in such a way that you're connected to Jesus,

and that fruit is produced in and through your life.

But love is the the note that John is going to sound often.

Well, yeah.

And it connects to what many consider to be that most famous Bible passage.

Right?

John 316 For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

So when John focuses on the idea of Christian community

and the call and commandment to love within that community,

that's not John sort of extrapolating Christian moralism,

that's not John saying, well, this is the so what of the gospel?

Not that that's a literal connection to what God has already done.

God has love.

So therefore Christian community is a place where that love will be practiced.

And it's a joyful kind of love.

I think you're right to point out that it's a kind of practice,

committed kind of love here, not the kind of falling in love

or the kind of emotional giving away that we think of in our own culture.

And that being said, verse 11, these things that Jesus has said,

that is supposed to inculcate within us joy,

well, that leads directly into this commandment of love.

I think that's such a beautiful movement in the text that Christians might be

people filled with joy, which enables us to live out this commandment to love.

And and of course, that love is for people that we find easy to love, right?

Those people that we've chosen or the people that we find in a good season.

Yeah, yeah, love. We celebrate that naturally.

But the love that we have here's the commandment kind of love.

That this is the love that is found when we commit to one another,

when Christian community becomes a place where we practice

sacrificial kind of love, the very kind of love we see

Jesus living out in modeling in his life and ministry.

And I think it's it's amazing that we have Jesus here talking about

how the height of love is the willingness

to lay one's life down for one's friends.

In other words, Jesus is saying, I ask nothing

more of you than what I'm willing to do myself.

And we've already had in the the text Jesus saying,

you know, I'm soon going to be leaving you.

So there's nothing being hidden here.

This is absolutely 100% above board

Jesus saying, I'm going to believe in you,

but you're going to be able to find the way you're going to be on the way.

Don't you worry about that.

When I'm gone,

you're going to be filled with joy, and that joy is going to lead you to

the fullest.

And the greatest commandment, which is to love one another.

And when you love one another, then you're loving as as I, Jesus, have loved you.

I think there's this beautiful circuit that's happening here.

Jesus is connecting

all of these things along the way, and if we have the attention to see it,

the servant here, which we have named explicitly in verse 15,

the servant is no longer a servant because the servant is let in.

Behind the scenes, we get to see exactly what it looks like

to love as Jesus loves, because he's going to demonstrate it,

and then that's going to become the model by which all Christian communities

are expected to function, as long as they bear the name of Christ.

And I think it's important to slow down and unpack some of this.

If we jump in here in verse 13, no one has greater love than this.

So Jesus says something about the character of love that

what the kind of love that he is referencing here is a love

that gives itself for others, that lays down one's life for one's friends.

And then Jesus says, when you when you do that right, you are my friends.

If you do what I command you.

And we have to be careful there, because that can sound like moralism,

can sound like Jesus is saying, you're my friends as long as you measure up.

But the standard Jesus has given us for measure is already present here.

Love.

It's not legalism that it is.

You are my friends.

As you love one another, you elevate your status

from servant to insider by living a life of love.

Because the servant is is told what to do by the master.

The friend sets their course by what they love and by whom they love.

And so the disciples now are being called

to be people who live out a Christlike life,

not because they have to, but because they aspire

to be like their teacher, to live into the life.

The example that Jesus has given them.

I've made known these things to you.

You didn't choose me.

I chose you.

It's not your about your worth.

This is not about who you are.

This is about who I am.

And then finally again, go and bear fruit.

And this is always the fruit of love.

And again, John,

for John's tendency to

use ten words one, three will do.

John does us, I think, a great favor here

in building this kind of

onramp to his main ideas.

Love bear the fruit of love

and keep rooted in Christ, who is the vine.

That was the the last passages that we looked at.

And I'm giving you these commands.

I'm teaching you this when when Jesus says commands in John, he doesn't mean rules.

He means example.

I'm I'm giving you this instruction.

I'm teaching you these things that you may love one another. Why?

Because loving one another is both the requirement

and the witness of what it means to follow the son of God.

And so, I think John really does us a favor here, though a word he one

he he,

he never misses a chance to use more words than he probably needs to,

but he says some beautiful things.

I think I want to turn our attention here

to the specific wording we have in verse 15.

I think it's really interesting because I have made known to you

everything that I've heard from my father.

There's many layers of irony in this, because in the Gospel of John,

Jesus does consistently teach exactly what he's heard from the father.

And in fact, he said explicitly that everything Jesus does

points to the father.

It's a reflection of the father's grace and love and power.

But here it's fascinating, this idea that he's made knowing everything.

And yet we know as the reader that the disciples have not comprehended

all of it.

We know that they don't understand all of it.

And I think there's something very powerful in that, because Christians

do over the years of faith, I think we come to have this expectation

that we should have it all figured out that if well, if I've been a Christian

for this many years, shouldn't I know the answers to this question?

Or shouldn't I feel confident talking to someone about this thing?

I think what's very clear is Jesus here has been teaching the disciples.

He's been making known the father, but ultimately the grace

comes in the next verse, verse 16, you did not choose me,

but I chose you, that at the end of the day,

Jesus is the one who reveals he's also the one who chooses.

And I think there's a great grace and comfort in that, that

when we have been shown the thing, but yet we don't understand it.

The point isn't that we need to get it through our thick skulls

and get an A on the test.

That's not how the kingdom works.

We if we are able to accept the grace of Jesus Christ to say

he has chosen me, he he's called me to be on the way with him.

If we can come to that point in our life, then that's all that we need.

Yes, further understanding will come.

Yes, living into the commandment of love

will be practiced and will be bore out into our life and experience.

But make no mistake about it, there's a kind of irony here

of Jesus saying, yeah, I've revealed to you the thing

and our awareness of the disciples that they haven't got it all figured out.

They don't understand the depth of that revelation.

And that's okay.

Jesus is going to carry them on every step of their journey, and that's enough.

And I think that's a beautiful

grace woven into a text which we could turn into legalism.

We could say either Christians love to this level or we kick them out.

And I just don't think that's the spirit of the text.

That's not what's coursing behind what Paul is sharing in Jesus's words here.

Well, I appreciate that John gives us that

path, that the idea is not

are we Christian enough?

Are we good enough that the the measuring stick here is clearly

does the way that we live and the way that we treat others

reflect the kind of love we see in Jesus Christ?

For for John, that is the standard.

Not how many times you go to church, not your theology on some issue,

not not whether you messed up ten times or 20 times,

those things aren't unimportant.

But ultimately, for John and the Jesus portrayed

in the Gospel of John, it is about whether

our lives reflect

the goodness,

the love, the sacrifice,

and the dedication

to to God's holiness that we see in Christ.

We are to imitate that.

And that's the point.

That's the purpose, and that's the path.

I think it would be easy

for us to read words like this and to trivialize them.

To be honest with you, I think, you know, verse 12 is very well known.

Love one another as I have loved you. Oh,

we can easily turn that

into placemats or greeting cards.

But realistically, the kind of love that Jesus calls the church to in Christians,

to Clint is always, by definition, a costly love.

It demands something of us.

And John follows that no one has greater love

than to lay down one's life for one's friends.

And so I think we have to recognize the call

that we've been given is a call that asks everything of us.

When Jesus says that the servant isn't greater than the master, Jesus means that

in the most literal, functional life lived sense,

Jesus means that we give up everything

for the sake of relationship and communion with other people.

And that's not a reflection of guilt.

It's not a reflection of coercive ness.

It's not a reflection of taking one's individuality and stripping that away.

It's a self-giving vulnerability that comes when we've determined

that we're willing to be open to give to another. Why?

Because that's what has already been done for us.

Jesus makes a new path.

He creates for us a doorway where others before him

simply saw another turn on the winding road.

And I think the question of faith is ultimately

will we live out this kind of command?

Because make no mistake about it,

Christian love is often not going to feel comfortable.

It's not going to feel, even in some cases, appropriate.

It's not about feeling.

It's about the commandment we've been given to love our neighbor.

And I think that Jesus, when he gives this teaching,

he sets on one hand

in front of us a concrete vision of what it means to be the church.

Now, on the other hand,

if you stick with us in the study, when we come back to the next passage,

it's going to contrast Christian community from the world in which we live.

And it's supposed to look radically different.

And I think that Jesus is showing us and a teaching like this,

how we get to that difference.

And it's not because we have, you know, measuring sticks that we we sort of

hold people to.

It's rather that it flows out of the reality of Christ living in us.

And the Christlike character

is the one that will demonstrate itself in self-giving love.

We said this about the Gospel of John.

There are no surprises Jesus, when he says these things, knows

where love is taking him, his love of God,

his love of the disciples, his love of humanity.

He knows where that's delivering him, which is the cross.

And so there's no sense in which Jesus doesn't

understand the cost of living this way.

He's well aware at this point.

He's already predicted it to the disciples,

and yet he commits himself to it and and calls others to the same commitment.

We certainly hope that that commitment and call still comes to us today.

Glad that you've been are willing to spend some time with us

if this video has been interesting, challenging for you,

give it a like it helps others find it and certainly subscribe

so you can stick with us on studies like this. Just to remember.

For those of you who are joining us for the study component,

we're going to be off next Monday and we will be back on Tuesday.

I look forward to studying with you then. Thanks, everybody.