Sermon Tone Analysis

We've been looking at the Last Supper event and Jesus' final instructions to His disciples before they enter into this very traumatic period of His ministry with them when He is to be arrested, tried, and crucified.

He has been encouraging them how He wants them not only to respond in the next few days, but to respond throughout their ministry.

And the Holy Spirit records this portion of His instructions to them in the Gospel of John that we might learn how to respond to the traumas in life, to keep the main thing the main thing, in order to respond as Jesus would have us to respond.

And over and over again, what Christ chooses to do is to use Himself as the model, to use Himself as the example.

"I want you to act as I am acting.

I want you to be as I am," He will tell them.

And so too when we come to this portion in John 15, verses 12 through 16 today, He gives us these instructions on how to be imitators of God.

We all grow up imitating.

We imitate our parents.

We imitate a movie star.

We imitate our friends.

Imitation is a part of our development.

It's part of how we learn to respond and to react.

Sometimes we dismiss certain things we've imitated or we've tried.

When it comes to God's aspect, I fear that often we don't even try, that we see it as too lofty, too noble, and indeed it is, but over and again God tells us, "Be holy as I am holy.

Be like Me."

We have the mind of Christ Paul tells us.

And so we look to the life of Christ not just as something far beyond our ability to duplicate, but as something that we are to imitate.

Jesus looks at His disciples there in John 15, and in verse 12, He says, /"This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."/

His command to them is subsumed in this one statement.

All that He has told them to do, all of the different instructions, all of the modeling, all of the examples can be summed up right here!

"Love each other as I have loved you."

Now this does not dismiss the Great Commandment, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind, with all your soul, with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself, but the reality is if we love God with all of our soul, mind, with all of our strength, with all of our being, then we will obey God because we love Him so.

And to obey God means that we will love one another because /"This is My commandment,"/ Jesus says, /"that you love one another..."/ and notice He adds, /"...as I have loved you."/

He doesn't just want a kind of love that we might have for just normal things in life.

He wants a great love.

And in fact, He is telling the disciples that this is the greatest love.

"The love that I want you to have is the love that I have had for you, and it is the greatest love you can have."

And so in verse 13, He says, /"Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends."/

The love that Christ has is a love that exceeds any kind of human understanding of love.

A love that is the greatest and its greatest manifestation is that He will lay down His life for those whom He loves.

The word friends that is used in this verse and the word that is used throughout this passage comes from the Greek word phileo.

And phileo means love.

It means beloved.

And really, you could translate this, "No greater love has anyone than this than to lay down one's life for his beloved."

Jesus is telling His disciples that they are beloved.

They aren't just strangers.

Now Jesus dies for the world...John 3:16 tells us that...but in a very special way did He not die for you?

In a very special way did He not die for these disciples?

Is there a love that is any greater than a love that manifests itself in this way that He is even willing to do for them?

Why is that the greatest love?

Because it is for their benefit He is going to die.

Now when Jesus shares this, He is not saying, "If you love me the way that I love you...which is My command that you love one another as I have loved you...that you're going to die for one another necessarily."

Indeed there are those who die for those whom they love, but what He is really showing us is, "There is no greater love than the love I have for you, and it is this love I am commanding that you have."

Make no mistake about it.

The command of Christ is that we love one another with a great love.

He wants us to love one another not with the love that is tethered by requirements...if you treat me right, if you love me back.

No, there are no tethers to the love God has for us.

/"While we were yet sinners,"/ Romans tells us, /"Christ died for us."/

While we, in other words, were still His enemy, He died for us.

That is how much He loves us.

And so when He says to His disciples to love one another, it is a love without bars on it.

It is a love that is unexcelled.

It is the greatest love where we're willing to die, not based on what the other person can do for us, not based on what we think of the other person, but based on obeying the command of Christ.

So that is why in verse 12 He says, /"This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."/

And it's a love that is the greatest love I have for you.

In fact, He says, "No greater love can anyone have than this than to lay down one's life for His friends."

And then He goes on in verse 14, and He says, Jesus is not saying, "This is how you become My friend."

What He is saying here is, "This is the proof.

This is the characteristic of the friends of God."

This is what characterizes you as a believer, as one of the beloved, is that you do whatever He commands you to do, even if He commands you to love that unlovable person, even if He commands you to love one another.

/"You are My friends,"/ He says, /"if you do whatever I command you."/

We are called the friends of God if we are obedient to Him.

We are the friends of God if we love as Jesus loved, if there is no greater love than the love we can have for one another.

It doesn't diminish our love for God.

In fact, it enhances and proves our love for God when we're willing to love those who are around us whether they love us back or even, and especially if, they don't love us back.

That is the love Jesus says He commands all of us to do.

He says, /"You are My friends if you do whatever I command you."/

And then in the next verse, He says, /"No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you."/

You see, a servant obeys his master, but he doesn't know why he is doing what his master commands him to do.

He just does it because of that servant master relationship.

And did you know that in the days of Christ the students of the rabbi were called the servants of the rabbi?

And now Jesus is saying, "I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know what his master is doing, but now you do, for all that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you."

The reason they can be called the friends of Jesus, the friends of God, Jesus says, "Because I'm making My purpose known to you.

I'm making My will known to you.

You're not just serving Me and not knowing why You're serving Me."

Now people serve gods today just out of rote service with no idea or no expectation of what the god they serve might or might not do.

And that god might be a Christian god.

There are people who go to churches, and who serve as a servant blindly, without any idea of the will or the purpose of God in their life.

And they are religious servants and not the friends of God because God's desire is to make His will known, His purpose known.

Yes, He calls you to obey him in whatever He commands you to do, but He does so telling you His purpose in it.

He calls you to love one another, but He does so revealing His purpose in that.

It's not just to test you.

It's not just to see if you're willing to jump over this higher bar and this higher bar.

He does it because there is a purpose in it, and the purpose He is about to reveal yet again.

But His purpose is that others might know Him, that others might come to have a relationship with Him.

The difference between being a servant of a god and a friend of God is the knowledge of that God...the knowledge of what that God wants to do.

And our God has told us all He wants us to do.

He has told us the purpose behind His will and His actions in our lives.

So we don't serve a God blindly.

We don't just make sacrifices and offerings.

We don't try to appease a God, and we don't know whether He likes it or not.

We don't just come to church until our problems go away and then feel like, Well I've come to church enough.

We don't just keep giving money until our problems are solved, and then say, "Well maybe I gave enough."

We don't serve blindly!

God has revealed His will to us.

He has told us how to walk.

He has told us the direction He wants us to go, how He wants us to live, and most of all, how He wants us to love.

So He says, "I no longer call you servants because a servant doesn't know what his master is doing.

But I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.