EASTER 6 – May 9, 2021 – John 15:9-17
“LOVE”
Introduction: Grace be to you and peace, from God our Father, and from our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ. Our text is the Gospel Lesson just read, from John 15. We begin with prayer.
Dear fellow disciples of our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ:
- It is truly remarkable what blessings God wants to bestow on us. Jesus assures us that God has the greatest love for us, a love that moved Him to lay down His life for us. He calls us “friends.” Now that is amazing!
- The fact that we struggle to comprehend this love of God, and that we are often unwilling to accept it and live in it, shows the depth of sin’s infection of our nature. Our reluctance and reticence to live and abide in God’s love demonstrates our unwillingness to be His friends. This truth must be told, and understood, and repented of – so that we can know His love.
- It is the why of His laying down His life. This is the sin that required a redemption that could only be supplied through the death of the God/man Jesus Christ.
- In that our nature continues to rebel against this love of God, it is important that we continue to meditate deeply on God’s love. Jesus directs us to God’s love, to His own love for us. The prophets do the same, as do the apostles. All of Scripture bears witness not only to the horrid condition of human sin, but also to the vast redeeming love of Almighty God.
- So, in accord with Jesus’ teaching, we look at “LOVE.” First:
I. God Loves Us With His Own Love
Text: “As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you.”
A. Jesus Wants Us To Abide In His Love
Text: “Abide in My love.”
B. We Do So – Abide In His Love – If We Keep His Commandments, His Word, His Instructions
Text: “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.”
C. He Instructs Us In These Things Because He Wants Us To Have Fullness Of Joy
Text: “These things I have spoken to you that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”
Statement: It may be difficult to think about how it is that we are to “remain” in Jesus’ love for us. But He gives us the practical application: “Keep My commandments.” That is love – to respect what another says, what he/she teaches – especially when that teaching is from God, from His Word, for “God is love.”
Application: As we mull this over, this again gives us pause to consider our fallen nature. We are not eager to “keep” Jesus’ commandments, His instructions. We are eager to explain our way around them, to modify them to suit what we want to do. This happens even within the church today, whole church bodies deserting the instruction of Jesus to fit in with the degraded culture around us. Jesus calls this an “evil, adulterous, sinful, twisted” generation. And it demands that we conform to it rather than keeping the commandments of Jesus! That is the peer pressure we are under, the choice that we must make!
It is for our good, our blessedness, for the sake of love and our joy that Jesus teaches us to “abide in His love.” But that is accomplished only as we keep His commandments, just as He kept the Father’s commandments.
Transition: And this is also critical to another blessing God wills for us to have, and that is our own participation in love. Jesus makes clear that:
II. God Wills For Us To Love One Another Just As He Loves Us – With Divine Love
Text: “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
A. This Is A Love That Devotes One’s Life For Others
Text: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends.”
B. This Kind Of Love Bears Much Good fruit
Text: “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.”
Statement: Again, this can only be accomplished by remaining in His love, and by keeping His commandments. You remember what the apostle wrote about the law of God, the moral commandments: “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” [Rom. 13:10] No genuine love ever violates the commandments of God – no matter how “loving” the sinful person believes his/her sinful behavior to be. This is the horrible confusion of this perverse and adulterous generation of ours!
Application: And we are sorely tempted to do the same, to adjust the commandments of Jesus to permit the immoralities peculiar to our own sinful flesh. We reason that surely Jesus would agree with our logic. But He does not, and He will not. It would be unloving to do so. He knows it, and deep down within us we know it too. We have His law written in our hearts.
So, included in His commandments are the imperatives to repent of our sin and to believe the Gospel – that He laid down His life to take away our sin and guilt. However, as we see in our text, He also commands us to remain in His love and to faithfully keep His Word! This so that we may love. And:
III. Remaining In Love Brings Additional Blessings To Us And Others
A. We Become Friends Of God Who Know What He Is Doing
Text: “You are My friends if you do what I command. 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.”
B. He Then Also Grants Our Prayers
Text: “I have chosen you . . . so that whatever you ask the Father in My Name, He may give it to you.”
Statement: You see the kind of blessedness God desires for us! He calls us His own dear children. He calls us His friends. He lays down His life for us. He urges us to remain in His love. And the only way that we can do this is to “keep” and remain in His Word! If we do, then we will be growing in love – which results in good fruits! And it also brings us fullness of joy and assurance that our prayers are granted!
Application: That we would desire the pleasures of this carnal world more than these pleasures and joys that Jesus directs us to is further evidence of the corruption of sin in our being. For this we repent, confessing this deep trouble to God, seeking His forgiveness and salvation in Christ Jesus. And when we do so we receive exactly what we seek – God is faithful and just to forgive our sins, for Jesus laid down His life for us, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. This is “keeping” Jesus’ commandments, and abiding in His love.
Conclusion: It is truly a privilege that Jesus lays before us – to grow in knowing and believing the great love that God has for us, and then participating in this Divine love toward one another.
It should begin with our family – wife, children, parents, brothers and sisters, and other relatives. It should be foremost in our relationships with fellow Christians, especially those who are fellow members of our church. It should be extended to those in the community, and even to our enemies. For this is how God has love us and all people! But if we are to love it must be in conformity with the commandments of Jesus!
So let us take care to remain cognizant of how our sinful nature, in so many ways, seeks to draw us away from the blessings of God’s love. Let us remain fully repentant, and living fully in the joy of Christ’s love. Then we will be friends of God, even as He describes us. God grant it to each of us, Amen.
Votum: And the peace of God, which surpasses all human understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds in the true faith, which is in Christ Jesus, even unto life everlasting, Amen.