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Preached in Markham Baptist Church, February 24, 2008
 

Jesus says, “My command is this, love one another”. 

He was a very difficult man to love.  In fact, it was easier to mock him and complain about him behind his back than it was to love him.  He seemed to stand against everything I that wanted to do in the church.  I characterized him as small-minded – it didn’t help that his marriage was a mess and he seemed oblivious to it all.  He disregarded his wife’s feelings and opinions and it was clear to everyone that she was dying on the inside while he watched his sports night after night.  He was a very difficult man to love. 

Jesus says, “My command is this, love one another.”    

She was a very difficult woman to love.  It seemed that she wanted control of the church.  As church clerk she had a finger in every pie and a say in every decision.  She had an argument against every idea that wasn’t her own.  When the church decided to launch a mid week kids ministry she had 12 reasons why they shouldn’t do it.  When she didn’t get her way she would sabatoge any program, any ministry that she didn’t agree with.  She was very influential and very vocal.    She was a very difficult woman to love.  

Jesus says,  “My command is this:  Love one another.” 

Those are hard words.  How can we be expected to love one another???  There are some very difficult people in the church – they are not all easy to love.  Why couldn’t Jesus say,  “My suggestion is this: Love one another ….”  That’s so much softer than “commandment”.  Why did he have to make it a command?

Or if he had to make it a command why didn’t he say, “My commandment is this:  Love those whom you like and ignore the rest.”?

That’s much better, isn’t it?  And attainable?  Indeed, that’s what we sometimes practice.  We don’t really take this word from our Lord in John 15 seriously.  My command is this, love each other.  He really doesn’t really mean that, does He?   Who can muster up love for another person simply because Jesus says we have to?  

As I read this, I picture Jesus standing there with His finger waving and speaking in the tone of voice my mother used when she told me to eat all my vegetables.  “Eat all those vegetables.  There are people all over the world who don’t have vegetables to eat – you ought to eat them and appreciate them.”  I couldn’t just eat them, I had to appreciate them too! 

And this is how we sometimes picture Jesus here. “You there – you branches – are you loving your fellow Christian as you should?  You’re not?  Then smarten up and love one another.” That’s how we often read these words.  But when we think of it and the picture we have of Jesus – we realize that Jesus is not the scolding parent.

And that’s not the spirit that these words are spoken in John 15.  They are spoken by the one who ate with tax collectors and sinners.  Look at the text: “My command is this: Love each other,” – there is the command but we read on – “as I have loved you.”  

This love then that we are to have for one another is not something foreign to us.  It is a love that we have experienced and witnessed and tasted – it is the love that Jesus has for each of us.  This love that we are to love others with is not something that we muster up from deep within us - it is a result of abiding in the vine.  It is in fact the result of depending on Christ.  It is the fruit that we are able to bear because we are remaining in Christ, abiding in Christ. 

Well, we think – that love must have skipped over me!

Nope.  That’s not what Jesus says.  He says that He has loved us. There is no escaping. If you are branch - and you are - and Jesus is the vine - and He is – and if Jesus lives in you – and He does – then He has brought His love with Him and it now flows through your veins as surely as sap runs through the veins of a grape vine. 

As I have loved you – is not our own love with which we love others. 

In the first letter of John we have this same idea – chapter 4:7  “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.”

You can inverse that statement to read, everyone who is born of God loves.  There is no escaping.  If you have been born of God then you love one another. If you haven’t been born of God, then you don’t love one another.  It’s that cut and dried.

The love that with which we love others is not our own – it is love that is gained from a relationship with Christ.  It is His love that we are to love others with.  He is after all the vine. He is the source of all that we need to live this Christian life and that includes the ability to love others. 

This means that if we are to follow this command then we need to be intimately connected to Jesus Christ.  In fact, this command is an impossibility without having Christ in us, the love of Christ in us. 

And with that understanding it turns this verse from saying, “you must do this …”  to “you are able to do this …”  You are able to love others because the great love of Jesus Christ Himself is in you.  You have tasted His love and in turn are able to love others. 

And we ask, What does this look like? 

In verses 13 – 16 Jesus goes on to describe not only the kind of love that we are to express to one another, but He describes the kind of love that He expresses toward us.  So Jesus says, consider the love that has been expressed toward you – verse 13: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” 

That not only tells us how we are to love – but tells us how we are loved.  This is how God has loved you through Christ. What is the nature of this love?  It is a love that sacrifices itself for you.  So we read in 1 John 3:16 - “This is how we know what love is.  Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” 

I think I would be able to get my mind around Einstein’s Theory of Relativity more easily than I can get my mind around the idea that God in Christ would actually lay down life for the likes of us – sin-ridden, selfish, petty, lost in sin, prone to sin – whatever phrase you choose we are a mess – and He would sacrifice Himself for us??? It must be love. 

Jesus did not hold on to His life for you – He laid it down.  He knew that the only way that we could be forgiven was for a perfect sacrifice to be offered on our behalf.  And Jesus Christ knew that He was the only acceptable sacrifice that could be offered to free us from sin and the penalty of sin.  And He did not hold on to His life.  He laid it down for us all on the cross so that through faith in Him we can know forgiveness of sin, the life of God and freedom from death. 

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.  It is a love that serves.  In John 13 we have a most amazing passage where Jesus gets up from the table and wraps a towel around His waist and washes the feet of His disciples.  This is how Jesus showed His disciples the full extent of His love.  He served them, did the menial job of washing their feet. 

And while it is strange to think of Jesus the King of kings serving us, there is a sense in which He comes to each one of us, serves us as He takes our sin-caked souls, and tenderly washes us clean by His power, His grace and by His sacrifice on the cross.   I wonder if Paul didn’t have this image of Jesus the servant in mind when he wrote in 2 Corinthians 8:9 - “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.”

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life.  It is a love that sacrifices, it is a love that serves. It is a love that spends. 

Paul writes to the Galatians 2:20 – “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

And that just wasn’t on the cross.  When Jesus was walking this earth He was always spending Himself for others. No matter how tired He got, no matter how hungry He felt He did not turn His back on others. He was always spending Himself for others. 

And it is no different today - He lives today and if there is anything that you need to help you in your spiritual life, you can be sure He will give it.  If there is anything that you need for your work in His Kingdom, you can know that He will provide it.  His love is a spending love.  

And we ask, “Why?  What did I do to deserve to have Him love me like this?  What did I do to warrant His attention?  Why would He love me?” 

And the answer comes back - It is the nature of His love – His love is a love that sacrifices, serves,  spends and it stoops.  Romans 5:8 reads, “But God demonstrates his love for us in this:  while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”   It is a love that stoops to the unworthy and the unlovely – it stoops to the lowest of the low.

Now matter how far you think you gotten from God you are not outside the reach of the love of God in Christ. No matter how deep in sin you have sunk God’s love in Christ is for you is deeper.  No matter how many times you’ve turned your back on God – God’s love for you is constant and waits for you and will welcome you when you turn to Him.  He will never ever turn His back on you. “O that you would have the power together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge.” (Ephesians 3:18)

Now at this point we can think two things.  We can think, “Hallelujah! I am the lowest of the low so His love must include me!” Or we can think, “Whew, at least I’m not the lowest of the low – but if Christ’s love stoops to the lowest of the low then it must include me too!” 

And if that is your reaction, I’m reminded of the disciples on that last night of Jesus’ life.  They trooped up into the upper room, like sulky children, because back on the road they had been arguing angrily within earshot of Christ, as to who had made the biggest sacrifices upon Christ’s behalf.  And their angry voices rose and reached the ears of Christ.

“You on the right and you on the left hand, indeed!  And why you?   You only left your fishing boats.   And what about the business that I left, it was worth ten of yours.”

Yet when Jesus prayed for them in John 17 it was not a desperate cry for forgiveness that He offered.  He thanked God for them, looked at them very lovingly, told them how grateful He was, and would always be, for all that they had been to Him. He says that “glory came to him through them.”  (John 17:10).  He was proud of them, for they had stood by Him in all His temptations, and had helped Him far more than they knew, by their friendship and faith.

Now we must understand that this is the way that He thinks about you and me.  I know in our own mind we sometimes think we are pretty good.  We’re not all that bad – we are not terrible sinners.  What have we done wrong – the small white lie, swore under our breath at some bad drivers in morning rush hour.  We aren’t the lowest of the low. 

But in spite of our misplaced pride in our own so called goodness – and it is misplaced pride in ourselves – in spite of that - Jesus still loves us.

Listen to this – the love of Jesus stoops not only to the lowest of the low – but His love reaches even further - to those who do not think they are the lowest of the low – and in some ways those people can be harder to love – but not for Jesus.  His love is so great, that He gives Himself, spends Himself, stoops to even those who think they do not need His love. 

And this is the kind of love that has reached us.  It is the love of Christ.  And it is the love that is in us through Christ’s indwelling and it is the love that we are to have for others. Do you know that one in the office who takes great pride in himself, who claims credit for every successful project even though he has had little to do with it, must always build himself up and always trumpet his own accomplishments? he is so hard to love, because he thinks so highly of himself, yet Christ loves him, and calls us to love him as we taste his own love in our hearts. 

That would be wonderful all on its own but that’s not the end of it. Jesus says at verse 14 and 15, “You are my friends if you do what I command.  I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master’s business.  Instead I have called you friends, for everything that I have learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

What kind of love is this that Jesus has for you?  It is a love that calls you His friend.  Follow Him and you are His friend. You are not His slave, you are not His page boy or errand boy, you are not His maid or servant girl – you are His friend.  Is a servant allowed to know his master’s business?  No – only a friend has that information. And Jesus says everything I that I have learned from my Father I have made known to you.  You are His friend. 

To me that speaks of a loyal love.  We have a hymn entitled, “O love that will not let me go.”  That is the love of Christ for you. 

Do you know John 13:1 in the NIV says, “Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.”  And then Jesus puts the towel around His waist and washes the disciples’ feet.  He shows them the full extent of His love.  But the King James Version translates those words this way: “having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.”

He kept loving them, as stained and soiled and selfish as they were, Jesus loved them to the end – His love is that loyal.  And so His love for you.  His love will not let you go. 

Think again of the disciples. You would think that after three years of being with these guys Jesus would have had enough of them –  they doubt Him, they question Him, they test Him, they don’t understand Him, in the end they deny Him and desert Him. You would think He would have enough of them. But no, He says to them just before his death – “I go to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”  (John 14:2-3).

He said this to comfort them – but do you think Jesus may also have said this because He was eager to have them by His side in heaven as they were on earth?  He loves to the end. 

Or think of Peter by the lake after the resurrection of our Lord.  Think of how discouraged he was because he had denied Jesus three times.  He had denied his friendship with Jesus. He denied even knowing Jesus.  But after Jesus rises from the dead He appears to Peter and asks him three times, “Do you love me?”  And each time Peter responds yes – yes – yes.  And Jesus places in his hand the great commission to feed His lambs, take care of His sheep, to feed His sheep.  Jesus doesn’t give up on His friends.  He loves them. 

Peter discovered a beautiful truth about Jesus Christ – with Jesus there are second chances.  Max Lucado writes, “It’s not every day that you find someone who will give you a second chance - much less someone who will give you a second chance every day.  But in Jesus, Peter found both.”   We too have failed Jesus badly, but He still trusts us.  Are we big enough to feel the thrill of it?

Do you see how our text in John 15 is a “you are able” passage?  It is as I think of a fellow Christian who is difficult to love, who has offended, and hurt me, and instead of immediately thinking of ridiculing and hating that person, or even passively enduring that person, I think first of God’s love for me – how He loves me even though He knows me and my sin – and I begin to think how I have wronged Him, and how He still loves me.  I think of all the times that I have hurt Him yet He still loves me.  I think of all the time I sinned against His name yet He still calls me His friend.

And I realize that that love is not only extended to me but that love exists in me because Christ is in me. And that begins to change my thinking of that other person, doesn’t it?  I begin to think of how God loves that other person too, and instead of seeing the offensive manner, instead of seeing the insulting attitude, I see a victim of sin for whom Christ died, one whom God loves, and one in whom Christ also dwells. And now I am in a position to love.  I can love others having tasted His love in me and realizing that His love extends to those around me.

We haven’t finished with our text yet. You would think we have hit the mountain top, but there is more yet.  Jesus love for us is sacrificial, it is loyal and then at verse 16 it is gloriously unearned.  “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit – fruit that will last.  Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.” 

“I chose you,”  Jesus says.  Do you understand the magnitude of that?  I mean, Jesus is here right now and He looks you in the eye and says, “I chose you.”   It boggles the mind, yet there it is, “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.”  He has picked you out.  He likes to have you with Him. 

All through his gospel John refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved (John 13:23; 19:26; 21:7,20).  He’s not bragging – he’s simply stating the truth of his own experience. He knew the love of Christ – the disciple whom Jesus loved. And do you know that that is an epitaph that you can write across your own life?  You are the disciple whom Jesus loved – for He chose you. 

Now we must understand that this is the way that He thinks of you and me. I know, when we aren’t thinking highly of ourselves we are thinking that we are worst bunglers in the Christian life.  We dwell on our faults, our mistakes, our past sins and we think, how could He possibly choose me?  How could he possibly continue to choose me – and we think that for the sake of the gospel Jesus would be much better off if He simply forgot about us because we know what a great handicap we are to the whole Christian cause.

Yet somehow Jesus has no such feelings, no intention of letting us go.  “I choose you,” He says “and I did knowing what you are, and where you have been and what you will become and I do not regret it.  I stand by you; grateful that I can call you my friend.” 

I choose you. 

So we understand that love is a choice – true love is a choice – that is unearned but freely given.  And having tasted that love we are called to love one another with that same kind of love, choosing to love each other even though we bungle the relationships up; choosing to love even though we make a mess of things; we choose to love those who do nothing to earn our love. 

So is the nature of our Lord’s love for us.  It is sacrificial,  it is loyal, it is unearned – and because it is His love that is in us, Jesus again says at verse 17, “This is my command,” – this is what I have enabled you to do – “love one another.”

Amen. 

Copyright MBC and Tom Cullen - February  2008