John 15:12-17

FRANK UNION OF FRIENDS

Text 15:12-17

12

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

13

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

14

Ye are my friends, if ye do the things which I command you.

15

No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I heard from my Father I have made known unto you.

16

Ye did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.

17

These things I command you, that ye may love one another.

Queries

a.

May love be commanded (John 15:12; John 15:17)?

b.

When did Christ call the apostles, servants?

c.

How would their fruit abide (John 15:16)?

Paraphrase

My one basic precept and commandment is that you continue to love one another in the same kind of love, having the same motive and purpose, with which I have loved you. The world over, men recognize as the supreme evidence of love that a man will voluntarily give up his own life for the sake of his friends. You are My friends if you are willing to let your love for one another rise to such self-sacrifice and thus keep My precepts. You have not been treated as bondslaves. The bondslave is not taken into his master's confidence but simply receives orders and carries them out without knowing the master's plans or purposes. But I have treated you as My friends, for all the plans and purposes which I heard from My Father I have revealed to you. Furthermore, this friendship is of My choosing and development. Our friendship is not on the basis of mutuality and reciprocity, but on the basis of My divine sovereignty and love. I chose you and appointed you as My friends that you may go and produce results from your labors that will remain forever, and that whatever you need from the Father to glorify His name in your labors and carry out His will you know He will give it to you. What I have said to you about My calling you by My divine sovereignty and not from any merit on the part of any of youand what I have said to you concerning taking you into My confidence as friendsand what I have said to you about My ultimate love for you has all been said in order that you may keep on loving one another as brothers in Me.

Summary

To prompt the disciples to love one another Jesus tells them: (a) He willingly sacrifices His life for them; (b) He takes them into His confidence as His bosom friends; (c) He does both of these by His own divine election.

Comment

May love be commanded? Can love be ordered into existence? We are sure that it cannot. As one writer has said, The two ideas of commandment and love do not go well together. You cannot pump up love to order, and if you try you generally produce. sentimental hypocrisy, hollow and unreal. Nevertheless, we are able to direct our attention to things or persons outside ourselves and we are able to do battle against self-absorption and self-love. This ability of directing the conscious thoughts and feelings away from self which is under our control may also be commanded. Therefore, if we will concentrate on and give our attention to Jesus and to others, love will be motivated. Hence we will be following His command to love one another even in the same way He loved. He counted the being on equality with God a thing not to be grasped, but emptied Himself and took the form of a servant and became obedient unto a self-sacrificing death (Philippians 2:5-10). If we follow in His steps we shall be carrying out His commandment.

There is an air of completeness and all-sufficiency about this commandment (John 15:12). It seems as if Jesus were saying, This is all that you, as a group, will need to carry out My appointment. They needed no rank or complicated organization amongst them to bear fruit for Him; they needed only to love one another with the same kind of love, having the same motive and purpose, as the love which Jesus gave to them. It is to be a brotherly love that is unfeigned and fervent (1 Peter 1:22; 1 Peter 3:8; 1 John 2:14-18; 1 John 4:7-11). This love of the brethren is the mark by which the world discerns those who are the disciples of Jesus (John 13:34-35). It is still the one all-sufficient requisite for His disciples today. The church of the living Christ is more apt to bear abundant and abiding fruit today if its members love one another from the heart fervently, than it is through all the superstructure of world-wide ecclesiastical organization. Lack of brotherly love is the symptom of an even deeper evilhate for God (1 John 4:20-21), and how is a man to bear righteous fruit for the glory of God if he hates both God and his brother?

In John 15:13 Jesus states a principle that is generally accepted among all men as the ultimate love. Man has no greater gift to offer, no greater sacrifice to make for another than his very life. It is the most here deeper than mere sacrifice of the physical life. What Jesus desires is laying down of self upon the altar of love. A man may even give his body to be burned and have not love (1 Corinthians 13:3). One may even lay down his physical life from a self-glorifying, self-gratifying motive. The love of which Jesus speaks is a love which counts others better than self, which denies self even if the physical body remain alive.

Jesus takes another of the forms of mortal love, friendship (John 15:14-15), and glorifies and exalts it by exercising it to the divine degree. Jesus glorified the estate of family love when He taught, He that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is My brother and sister and mother (Mark 3:31-35). He glorified the estate of husband-wife love when He inspired the apostle to write the great dissertation on Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:22-32). But the important thing to notice here is the reciprocal nature of the friendship. First there is the divine condescension that Christ chooses to allow men to be His friends. Then there is the condition which men have to fulfill to come into this relationship of friendship-by-grace. We are His friends only on the condition that we do the things which He has commanded.

But what a friendship that is once the circle has been completed! There are no limitations in that friendship on His part. He sacrifices self (John 15:12-13). And we are taken into close fellowship with Him, we are made to become confidants of His. Those who believe and trust Jesus and keep His commandments find that their relationship to Him grows into one of friendship rather than the drudgery of slavish and unintelligent oppression. The slave is given orders and is never taken into the confidence of his master as to the master's purposes and plans. But Jesus tells His friends everything He can concerning the plans and purposes of the Father. There is much that all of His friends cannot understand (John 16:12), for His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8-11). But what we can understand He frankly and plainly tells us. And even in those things which He withholds (things which we think we would be better for knowing) He does so out of love. A friend exercises reticence as well as frankness, when reticence is to the loved one's profit. But, of that which we most certainly need to know, He is very frank to say, If it were not so, I would have told you!

And in elevating those who believe in Him from slaves to friends He also took off them the chains of their bondage to ignorance, sin and fear. His yoke is easy and the burden light (Matthew 11:25-30), but the weight of ignorance, guilt of sin and fear of death before He took us as friends was unbearable (Matthew 23:4; Acts 15:10; Hebrews 2:15).

Actually, the relationship of Master and slave is not broken when Jesus chooses us to be His friends. The slaves remain slaves of their own choice. They serve Him as freed men bringing themselves into slavery to Him of their own volition and love for Him (cf. Romans 1:1; 2 Peter 1:1; Jude 1:1).

John 15:16 makes it very plain that our relation to Him as friends is dependent first and foremost upon His divine willingness and grace. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:6; Romans 5:8). We were apprehended by Him (Philippians 3:12). We were divinely elected, but that was made eons ago potentially in Christ (Ephesians 1:3-14). Potentially all men are elected to be saved, but only In Christ. Man then must exercise his freedom to choose whether he desires this election or not by coming into Christ or remaining out of Him by obedience to His commandments (1 John 2:3-6; 1 John 2:27; 1 John 5:1-4, etc.). Even among these first disciples they were chosen by election but they themselves had to choose whether or not they wished that election. One (Judas Iscariot) refused the divine election. Even here they must go and bear fruit if they desire to make their calling and election sure (cf. 2 Peter 1:2-11). Yes, the Shepherd always seeks the lost sheep before the sheep seeks the Shepherd, but the sheep must hear and follow the voice of the Shepherd to realize the safety and bountifulness of the fold.

And so, the disciples were chosen and appointed (or commissioned) with special gifts of the Holy Spirit in order that they might go and bear fruit. They were to go and sow the precious seed of the Word and reap a harvest of souls. This harvest of souls and the establishment of the church of Christ on earth was to be an abiding monument to their faith in Christ. The church itself, upon its establishment, was to be henceforth eternal, made up of living stones. And so is the fruit of the labors of every evangelist and Bible teacher who has ever had any part in winning a soul to Christ or of strengthening a soul in Christ. They are laying up for themselves treasures in heaven which are eternal, they will receive an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, that fadeth not away.
And now, in summation, all that He had said to them of their election by graceHis taking them into His confidence as friendsabout His own self-sacrificing loveall this has been said to provoke them Because what they ask will be in His name, in accordance with His will and desires for man. When we make our wishes and desires Christ'S, and Christ's desires ours, we shall be satisfied.

Quiz

1.

How may we carry out the command to love one another?

2.

What must a man lay down to love ultimately?

3.

What is the condition on man's part in friendship with Christ?

4.

What are two differences between a slave and a friend according to the Scriptures?

5.

How are men elected by God? Is man involved in this divine election?

6.

May men today bear abiding fruit? How?

7.

How may we have whatsoever we ask in the Father's name?