John 15:9-17

⁹"As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Now remain in My love. ¹⁰If you obey My commands, you will remain in My love, just as I have obeyed My Father's commands and remain in His love. ¹¹I have told you this so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. ¹²My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. ¹⁴You are My friends if you do what I command. ¹⁵I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from My Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit - fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in My name. ¹⁷This is My command: Love each other.

Notice again as Jesus works in His teaching to show the progress our union with Him makes and the purpose for which it transpires. The progress of our union with Christ is many-fold: perseverance in suffering and persecution, God-ordained fruit, answered prayer, enhanced witness, experiencing the love of Christ, complete joy, and ultimately God’s glory, in which we get to share. Jesus uses this word “remain,” or, in some translations, “abide,” numerous times in this chapter. We need to be careful with it, because some use it to speak of a spiritual experience that only some achieve – a level of holiness and blessing and sanctification that is beyond the warfare and spiritual struggle where most of us are. Jesus clearly teaches that in this world, we are never beyond struggle. To abide in Jesus is to cling to His love and His word – even in these times of struggle that each of us face. And in clinging to His love and His word, we learn the method of perseverance and sanctification – obey His commands.

Do you get joy from obeying God’s commands? Jesus did! For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross. He knew what He was buying, and He did it with pure Selflessness. We should enjoy obeying – for His glory, never for our own; for we must always remember that apart from Jesus, we can do nothing. Augustine once prayed, “Lord, the good in me, You wrought; everything else is my fault.” And this is true. When we fend off an attack from Satan, it is by grace – for surely we are too weak to win on our own. But when we yield to the enemy, we prove our weakness and learn to be ever repenting to trust Christ alone. He’s the One who obeyed the Law on our behalf. Indeed, trusting Him alone, abiding in Him, remaining in Him, is the obedience required (Romans 1:5; 2 Corinthians 5:21). Lastly, the whole reason for Jesus to explain this to His disciples is that their joy might be complete. The Gospel of salvation by grace is indeed cause for great joy!

We certainly must strive to love God first (our priority), but it is impossible to love God without loving each other. Thus, the two objects of our love (God and others) are not prioritized by which happens first – loving each occurs simultaneously.

Once again, Jesus repeats His great commandment, to love even as He loved, a commandment that includes the whole law in its very essence (Romans 13:10). But, whereas the outward commandments of the law, written on stone, might be done in a superficial way by anyone, this commandment of Christ-like love is utterly impossible to the natural man. Anyone weighing his works against this standard will find them all as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6)! But Jesus does not leave them without comfort in this impossible task – instead, He reminds them that they did not choose Him, but Jesus chose them; and He is certainly able to do what we are unable to do. Yes, His commandments are too great for us. But we ought not despair, but rather be full of faith, first, because He has invincibly determined to produce good fruits in us who have believed (Ephesians 2:10), and second, because He has given us His Spirit to open our hearts to His unfailing love. Through our immersion in the Word of God, the Spirit will bring to our minds what Jesus has said and will begin to change us into that image revealed to us in the face of Jesus – and in this way, our joy will be complete (v11).

Our relationship with Jesus is so close that He calls us friends. “What a friend we have in Jesus!” But a question arises as Romans 5:8,10 declares that Jesus died for us while we were still sinners and God’s enemies. How can we be both friends and enemies simultaneously? Martin Luther never could wrap his brain around this mystery, declaring in Latin, “Simul justus et peccator” – at the same time, saint and sinner.

The second half of v15 is interesting too. Jesus says this: “Everything that I learned from My Father I have made known to you.” He’s saying that there is nothing we need to know in relation to the message of the gospel that has gone unsaid. Jesus has forwarded to His disciples every detail that the Father wanted Him to convey. We have all that we need; let us eat the food of Jesus and be satisfied (Mark 6:42). The second half of v16 again declares that Jesus’ disciples will receive whatever they ask in Jesus’ name, in accordance with their bearing of lasting fruit. Again, we think of Ephesians 2:10. It is God who gives growth (1 Corinthians 3:7). Thus we guard against pride in our labor on one hand and failure to pray diligently on the other hand. And finally, v17 calls specifically these disciples of Jesus, as ministers of the gospel, to love each other – working together for the building up of the Church, not multiple heaps, but one great mountain to the glory of God.