Or, How Far a Friend's Love Will Go
Scripture: John 15:12-17
Date: November 3, 2013
Speaker: Sean Higgins
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The great end of God in the universe is the display of His glory through the revelation of His love, announced, embodied, and shared with His people. This is all good news, and news given to us by grace. God did not purpose a planet full of minion slaves for Him to push around like so many pawns on a chess board. He does make us His slaves, but so much more. It is because He loves us and not because He wants to make our lives miserable. He joyifies—that is, He fills to full with His own joy—all His disciples who abide in Christ.
On the night that Jesus was betrayed He gathered up His disciples in order to entrust them with final instructions. This training began in chapter 13 and John opened the discussion with Jesus’ love for His own and that He would love them to the end. Everything since then and up to now in chapter 15 is the work of His love.
The image of vine and branches abiding continues the love theme, even as Jesus calls His guys to grasp that He loved them just as the Father loved Him; they they should abide in His love (John 15:9). If they could keep believing His love for them then they would obey His commands and be fruitful to the glory of the Father (15:8, 10). All of it, Jesus explained, was so that “my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (15:11).
In verses 12-17 Jesus weaves together commandments and love and fruit and sacrifice and abiding and ties if off with the influence that such a course of life will make. There is no greater fruit than can be found than here, and as we consider how far a friend’s love will go, the impact is greater than we know.
He’s told them this before, but it’s the sort of thing that is so old it’s easy to forget how new it is.
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. (John 15:12, ESV)
This statement functions in a few ways. It catches the idea of commandments from verse 10 and gives it a push. It also begins a paragraph bookended by almost the same statement, here in verse 12 and again in verse 17. And it also pulls the same thread from John 13:34-35.
If we condensed chapters 13-16, the parting imperative Jesus gives His guys is: LJAJ = love just as Jesus. It’s not that loving God isn’t important (that is the greatest command), but loving others is what love for God looks like on the ground. Jesus gave an example of how supreme love for the Father pays a demeaning cost as He washed their feet. He would show how painful the cost might be as He went to the cross the next day. Because Christ loved others, loving others proves genuine discipleship (13:35).
So does bearing much fruit (15:8). The connection with commands and keeping His commandments, now This is my command is too close for coincidence. Though command is singular in verse 12, it functions as a summary of all the commandments (plural) Jesus gave related to how we live with others. All obedient roads lead to love.
This means that when we abide in the Vine and when the Vinedresser prunes and when we bear more and much fruit, the fruit tastes a lot like love for others. The same life of love in the Vine that grows branches fills them with love that grows love for others. The more love for others, the more God is glorified.
We cannot obey this command apart from constant, conscious dependence on Jesus nor without constant, conscious believing that he loves us. We must abide in Him and abide in His love. When He wants us to have His joy, that isn’t less than the joy He has in loving us. Our experience of His joy won’t come in isolation from Him or others.
Jesus sets down a well-known standard of how far love will go.
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13–14, ESV)
If we could purchase a love tape-measure then we could not measure any longer or greater than this; nothing exceeds this extension. If we had a love scale, no love is heavier. Jesus says, Greater love has no one than this, the someone lay down his life for his friends . Friends translates a word referring to “loved ones,” φίλων. No one loves his loved ones greater than this.
He could have said it more direct: “If you abide in me you will sacrifice yourselves for love.” See the progression. Abide for fruit. Fruit includes love. Great loves means great sacrifice. The life of abiding is a life of laying down your life. The more a branch abides in the vine, the more the branch behaves like the vine. We know that the true Vine loved His own to death. So will His own love others to death.
Verse 13 establishes the general principle, and a couple clarifications should be added. First, we know that Jesus means Himself as the ultimate example but He does not say one word about His sacrifice here. It’s not that He hadn’t ever told them, but what degree of restraint did He show here? He was going to lay down His life tomorrow for His friends, as He calls them to do in the next verse. He trusted they would make the connection later.
Second, someone might argue that greater love would be to lay down one’s life for one’s enemies. But this is not a contradiction. Jesus already saved these disciples; His word made them clean (verse 3), and His cleansing was grace, not deserved. Grace made them friends, they did not earn His friendship. The point Jesus makes fits because to love just as He loved them means friendship is a fruit of love more than love is a fruit of friendship. His disciples must die for the kinds of people Jesus died for.
Before we go on, remember, this is our standard.
By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. (1 John 3:16, ESV)
We are called to abide in life to die, to be strengthened to be spent, to be filled to get emptied. Easy love requires little abiding. The Christian church has so few sacrifices because that takes great sacrifice, and great sacrifice requires great abiding.
Jesus defines the relationship between He and His disciples.
You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. (John 15:14–17, ESV)
The first comment relates to what characterizes the relationship not the condition for entering it. You are my friends if you do what I command you is another way of describing that they would have ongoing dependence on Him.
But the word friends sticks out like a corn stalk in a cucumber patch. Friends ? Jesus elaborates. No longer do I call you servants (slaves), for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I heard form my Father I make known to you .
A master owes his slave no explanation. A master gives orders and usually no reason. A master says, “Because I say so.” Jesus says that there is a different arrangement between He and them.
The difference, though, is not that He no longer tells them what to do. He remains Master. He just said, “If you do what I command you.” Jesus does not abolish His role as Lord, He establishes it. But He establishes what kind of lord He is, namely, a good one, a life-giving one, a loving one, a sacrificial one.
He bases their relationship to Him on His revelation to them. He revealed much about the what and the why in this chapter alone. He wants fruitfulness and He wants His joy in them and their joy full and the Father praised. He says why they should pray. He says why they should sacrifice. It is the divine expression of love.
He calls them to serve as friends. He loves them and gives Himself for them so that they could be friends.
Note that He does not call Himself their friend or say that they should no longer call Him master. He wants them to know that He is for them, but that doesn’t mean that He is the same as them. Earlier He said, “If I your Lord and Teacher” (13:14), and He’s saying what sort of Lord and Teacher He is to them. Being friends does not mean being equals.
”What a Friend We Have in Jesus” attempts to strike an inviting tone but the timbre is off. Nowhere in the Bible is God the Father or God the Son called our friend. Yet Jesus encourages His guys with their fellowship with Him. They have a special relationship with their Master.
In case they abuse that, Jesus adds, You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide . As we’ve read in John’s Gospel, Jesus didn’t choose these guys because they were sharp, or well-versed, or well-known. For that matter, apart from Him they could do nothing. He chose them, they didn’t decide to love Him first. Being His friend is a boast-able connection, as long as we boast about Him. It all depends how we drop His name.
He chose them and He chose their work and He chose their work product. He appointed or assigned them to go and bear fruit and the kind of fruit that would remain. Here the fruit appears to be connected with their task to represent Jesus and bring men to Him, the task we now know as the Great Commission.
it is hardly possible that any one would devote himself earnestly and diligently to the work, if he did not expect that the labour would bring some advantage (Calvin, 121).
But in context, how does that happen? Remember the bookends of the paragraph, verses 12 and 17. Remember the first time Jesus mentioned loving one another and what the result would be (13:35). When Jesus sends them to go bear fruit for more disciples that includes the disciples loving one another in the presence of others to make them say, “Hmmmm.”
We may compromise on a thousand doctrinal points. We may be fearful or ashamed to confess Christ before men. But we are evangelistically little-fruited because we are little-loving toward one another. The fruit of our love is little because we don’t abide in Jesus, though again at the end of verse 11 He talks about our resource. I chose you and appointed you…so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you .
We ought to be asking for fruit, which means we ought to be asking God to help us have the joyful strength to die. We ought to pray that He would spend our love for the sake of more friends in Jesus’ kingdom. How far will a friend’s love go? Between friends, love goes to the end, to death. When the love between friends is watched, that love goes to the ends of the earth. The sacrificial love of husbands and fathers and elders and teachers and neighbors and name-your-calling will bear fruit in eternal souls, and there is no greater fruit.
In case we already forgot, Jesus says it one more time.
These things I command you, so that you will love one another. (John 15:17, ESV)
He doesn’t add “just as I have loved you” this time, but He didn’t need to. The promise is big.
How great is your love? Greatness of love extends to the degree that your life is spent for another.
God calls us to love. He sent His Son who modeled love. He sent His Spirit who unites us to the Son and empowers us to love. He tells us to pray that we would love.
If your love is not great in spending, consider Jesus and pray. He chose you for love and, if you ask, He will give it to you for good and joy.