"Love One Another"
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In this section of Scripture Jesus turns to the relationship we believers are to have with one another. The command to love one another acts as bookends to this section of John 15. It is hard to miss.
Keeping the Lord’s commandments mentioned in John 15:10
“If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.
is summed up in this one command for the disciples, followers of Jesus: “You love one another.” This is agape love, the love which is self-sacrificing on behalf of another. The comparative clause relates the “how” we are to love: “just as I [Jesus] have loved you [disciples].” We could trace this theme throughout the gospel accounts. It is the standard of the measure of love. As an example when Paul speaks of the type of love husbands are to have for their wives, he writes Eph. 5:25
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,
Jesus did not ask of His disciples more than He himself gave. Jesus has set the standard; He is the norm by which our love for each other is to be measured. There is none finer.
It is with that understanding of love, that Jesus pushes even higher—to love sacrificially. With the word “love” used 4 times in six verses, what does that look like with other believers, whom the Lord told us to love as He has loved us? Here are
1. We are to have sacrificial love for the brethren, 15:13.
1. We are to have sacrificial love for the brethren, 15:13.
This verse is one of the most dramatic verses of the new Testament.
In the first century, dying for others was considered heroic in Graeco-Roman stories, and a friendship to the death was considered a high moral value. Jewish ethics did not usually share this general Greek emphasis, although it emphasized dying for the Law of Moses if need be.
Biblical love is the decision to compassionately, righteously, responsibly, and sacrificially seek the well-being of another (15:12). You can love people whom you may not necessarily like because love is not dependent on your feelings. That’s why Jesus can command you to “love your enemies” (Matt 5:44). It’s true that love may include feelings of affection, and such feelings may develop over time. But it’s not driven by them. Love is driven by sacrifice for the welfare of others. And the greatest expression of love is to lay down one’s life for … friends (John 15:13). That’s the kind of love Jesus modeled for us.
Verse 13 is uncommon on the earthly plain we live in. But jesus elevated this love to a seemingly impossible standard. A man might give their life for that of a friend, but the type of love Jesus has for us—this divine love goes beyond even what we might do: Romans 5:8
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Jesus knowingly, willingly gave His life for His enemies.
2. We are to have an intimacy with the brethren, 15:14-15.
2. We are to have an intimacy with the brethren, 15:14-15.
In ancient literature, the main ideals of friendship included loyalty (sometimes to the death), equality, mutual sharing of all possessions (cf. 16:14–15), and an intimacy in which a friend could share everything in confidence. The Old Testament called two people friends of God: Abraham (2 Chron. 20:7) and Moses (Ex. 33:11).
“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?
Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses returned to the camp, his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.
Here is a condition for those whom Jesus calls His friends: if you do what I command you. Here again is that link of intimacy with God and obedience to the commands of the Son (Father).
There is a contrast here between a bondslave and a friend. A bondslave might be loved by a master and treated kindly, but he would never be regarded as an equal, nor given insight into the master’s mind. In fact, he would be expected to obey even if he did not know the reasons why. With this there is one distinction: both servants and masters withhold secrets from one another. Friends develop an openness and honesty that allows them to share secrets.
Jesus is speaking of His disciples (and us as believers) having a greater intimacy, but their is a distinction between Jesus and believers. Jesus calls the disciples friends, but they never call Him friend — Rabbi, Lord, Master but not friend. The disciples, on their end, have come to know their place, that they remain subordinate. Jesus made them His friends, but they are not Jesus’ equal. Under Jewish law, a slave could not inherit unless the will freed the slave or granted him “all” his master’s goods (including himself; m. Pe’ah 3:8). There would be no point in Jesus promising to share his words or future inheritance with the disciples unless they were friends and not slaves. [ZIBBC NT, Vol. 2A, p. 160]
Jesus did it differently. Jesus took His disciples into His confidence. He made known all things He heard from His Father. Jesus is the truest revealer of the Father, sharing with His own the secrets of heaven.
3. We are to desire to succeed for Christ with the brethren, 15:16.
3. We are to desire to succeed for Christ with the brethren, 15:16.
Jesus took the initiative. He did not wait for His disciples to appreciate Him and invite Him into their lives. He chose them and appointed them — He loved us first, 1 John 4:19
We love, because He first loved us.
Isreal was chosen and appointed by God, initially in Abraham Gen 18:18-19
since Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed?
“For I have chosen him, so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him.”
O seed of Abraham, His servant, O sons of Jacob, His chosen ones!
“Because He loved your fathers, therefore He chose their descendants after them. And He personally brought you from Egypt by His great power,
“For you are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
Jesus welcomed listeners, but He chose His core disciples. This was the opposite of the Jewish process, where disciples usually chose their rabbi.
When the Bible refers to God’s choice (or election) of people, it’s a choosing for service, not salvation. Jesus chose his disciples so that they would produce fruit that would be useful to his kingdom and reflect God’s character. He didn’t simply save them for heaven only; he appointed them to a mission on earth that would involve winning people to Christ and growing them in the faith.
Jesus love for His own would be the secret of their effectiveness. His choosing them was a special privilege. The remaining disciples who in a very short time would be timid and cowardly, were given confidence that they would be fruitful, that they would have success in the work they have been appointed to do. Jesus took them, and made them convincing witnesses. Immediate and permanent fruitage was His gracious gift to them, as well as the promise of answered prayer. Only the most powerful benefactor could offer such an invitation. We are to ask, not selfishly but to ask as one who represents another, namely the Lord Jesus Christ. When we are aligned in our hearts with the Lord and with the brethren as Christ’s representatives on earth to continue bearing fruit for Him, our prayers for God’s work will succeed.