12 This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 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. 16 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. 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
There was a time not so long ago when many Christians wore WWJD bracelets and t-shirts. The question it posed was, “What would Jesus do?” It seems a fair question, and the purpose of them was to encourage believers to be faithful followers of Christ. After all, Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:1, “Be imitators of God, as beloved children.” And Jesus Himself said in Luke 9:23, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”
You still see these bracelets today, and while there is nothing wrong with the desire to do as Jesus would do, the better question to ask is this: “What did Jesus do?” When we begin to grasp just what He has done for us, we will better be able to understand His call to us to be faithful disciples, as we continue to abide in Him, as we have been looking at during the last couple of weeks.
Jesus is unique in both His person and in how He has saved condemned sinners from the penalty of our sins, so in this sense, it is impossible for us to do what He has done.
He laid down His unique, perfect life as the once-for-all sacrifice to atone for human sin, so at the core of the Christian faith, and central to the Gospel message, is the good news of what Jesus did for us, because we could never do it for ourselves. We are not saved by imitating what Jesus did but by trusting in what He did for our salvation.
In the same breath though, as we have seen in recent weeks, we are now obliged and duty bound to abide in Him and keep His commandments, but this obedience will never save us. We are saved exclusively by faith in what Jesus achieved on the cross for us.
In verse 12 Jesus says we are to love one another, but before we try and understand how we are to do that, we need to look at what He says in the second part of verse 12: “As I have loved you.” When we consider just how far from grace we have fallen, and just how depraved our hearts really are, have you ever stopped to consider the enormity of the truth that Christ loves me and He loves you? Not only that, but the love He has for us is beyond human measure, as Paul prays in Ephesians 3:17-19. “That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
The prophet Jeremiah though, wrote: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) And as Romans 5:10 says, God reconciled us to Himself through His Son while we were His enemies.
All of this makes it even more astounding that Jesus loves us so much that He would call us His friends.
For most people, the close relationships we have with others tend to be with people who are similar in their interests and social standing. The rich and famous rub shoulders with the rich and famous, and the same principle applies all the way down the social ladder. Of course, there are exceptions, but generally speaking our friends and acquaintances are usually like-minded people.
Which, again, makes the reality that the Son of God, the eternal creator of the universe, would call us His friends. The gap between us and Jesus Christ on the “social ladder” is immeasurable. God says through the prophet Isaiah, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9)
Even if we were without sin (which we certainly are not, but just picture the scene for a moment) - had Adam and Eve never rebelled against the Word of God, and we were still living in the Garden of Eden today, in complete harmony with God in a completely perfect and sinless world, the gulf between the creator and the creature would still be immeasurable. Now add back into that equation the reality of our sin and rebellion, and hopefully you get the picture…
Jesus says in John 15:14, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” J. C. Ryle wrote in response to this mystery, “For sinful men and women like ourselves to be called friends of Christ, is something that our weak minds can hardly grasp and take in. The King of kings and Lord of lords not only pities and saves all them that believe in Him, but actually calls them His friends.”
We must also not forget what Paul wrote in Romans 3:10-18. “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
And as Isaiah 53:2-3 reminds us, “He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.”
Jesus, with the Cross of Calvary which was only a matter of hours away firmly at the forefront of His mind, said in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
We’ve all heard and admired some remarkable stories of soldiers sacrificing their lives for their comrades in arms, parents risking their lives to save their children from great danger, and even strangers doing incredibly brave and selfless acts to save people they don’t even know, but all of these just do not compare to the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross for those He calls His friends. What He did for us cannot be measured in human terms for a number of reasons.
Firstly, Jesus did not have to die. He is the eternal God, the second person of the Triune Godhead who knows no beginning and no end, but by choosing to take on frail human flesh, He allowed Himself to be subject to physical death, a concept which is completely foreign to the one who has sovereign rule and authority over all things, including death and the grave.
Secondly, what makes Jesus’ sacrificial death unique is that He intentionally gave His life for us on the cross. Jesus’ coming into this world and going to the cross was not plan B, nor was it a desperate, spur of the moment decision, which as brave and as admirable as they are, is often the case when someone puts their life on the line for someone else.
A third point to consider is that Jesus died for us when we were not really His friends. He was our friend, but we were not His. He died to save people who had done nothing but wrong to Him and would in fact hate Him up until the point where He dramatically saved us. Romans 5:8 is very clear. “God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
We’re all familiar with Jesus’ words in John 3:16. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” This however, does not mean that everyone will be saved, because He qualifies it by stressing the need to believe in Him. In verse 18 He said, “Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” There is a small, but crucial word in John 15:14 which helps us to understand John 3:18: “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
And what does God command us to do in order to be saved? Not good deeds, not being better people, but that we should believe in Jesus Christ. Without saving faith in Him, there is no forgiveness, and it is this act of faith which causes Jesus to call us His friends, the ones for whom He died.
The sacrifice of Jesus is not universal. The Bible is clear that not everyone will be saved. It is only those, who though His enemies at the time, have been chosen by God to be Jesus’ friends through His redeeming work. This doctrine is known as limited atonement, which helps explain what Jesus meant by saying He laid down His life for His friends. The implication in verse 13 is that Jesus lays down His life not for everyone, but only those who He calls His friends - those who turn to Him in repentance and faith.
He died for us, knowing all the details of our rebellion and wickedness, knowing every sin and every evil thought, giving His life to bring us to salvation. How do we even begin to understand the depth of that kind of love?
We tend to focus on the physical torture of Jesus on the cross, because physical pain is something we have an understanding of, but we simply cannot comprehend the spiritual torment He went through while bearing our sins upon Himself as He bore the full fury of the wrath of God at our sin. Crucifixion in the Roman Empire in those days was reserved for the worst of criminals. That was bad enough, but Jesus suffered the infinite wrath of God while He hung on the cross. Not only was His death physically degrading, but it included separation from the Father as He bore our curse and suffered divine wrath. This gives Him every right to say, “Greater love has no one than this.” If you ever doubt the love of God for you, just consider the Cross of Calvary.
Now, bearing all this in mind, once we begin to gain some kind of grasp of Jesus’ love for us as He calls us His friends, we begin to have a clearer picture of His call on our lives. After all He has done for us, how can we not respond in gratitude and joy to Him?
Verses 14 and 15, “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.” (John 15:14–15)
As the New Testament unfolds we read of how the apostles understood themselves to be servants of Christ. Peter identified himself as “a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,” while Paul referred to himself as the bondservant of Jesus.
Throughout the Bible we see people being acknowledged as servants of the Lord, but now in John 15, Jesus teaches about a whole new relationship between Himself as the master and we as His servants, when He calls us His friends. A true friend is more than an associate or an acquaintance. Friends know a lot more about each other than those with whom we have a distant relationship.
We remain Jesus’ servants. We should never forget that, but as His friends we have the privilege of being part of His “inner circle” as it were, and He does this through His written word as He reveals His will to us. This is what He meant by saying in verse 15, “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.” (John 15:15)
If we want to know the will of God, all we have to do is turn the Scriptures, and we will find all He has sovereignly chosen to reveal to us. Of course we don’t have the full picture in the Bible of the mind of God, but we do have all we need. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 2:16, “We have the mind of Christ.”
Remember that as Christians we are to abide in Him as our true source for life, and as we do so through studying His Word, we learn what it means to submit to Jesus’ authority over us. This has been a common theme in His Farewell Discourse, which began in chapter 14, but now Jesus adds another important detail to His teaching. Just as obedience to His Word is a sign or a fruit of our belonging to Him, He now adds in verse 12, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you,” and He ends the section we’re looking at today by repeating in verse 17, “These things I command you, so that you will love one another.”
Also, this is not some new, radical teaching of Jesus. He is merely underlining what the Law of God has always taught. You might remember from a series we did on the Ten Commandments a number of years ago that the first five commandments tell us how we are to relate to God, while the second five deal specifically with our relationships with each other.
Exodus 20:13-17. “You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour. You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbour’s.” When we obey these commandments, we have taken the first steps to loving one another.
In Luke 10, immediately before the parable of the good Samaritan, we read, “A lawyer stood up to put Him to the test, saying, ‘Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the Law? How do you read it?’ And he answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.’ And He said to him, ‘You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” (Luke 10:25-28)
So we should not be surprised at Jesus’ words in John 15:12. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” This has always been God’s will for us. One of the most tangible ways of expressing our love for God is by loving each other, especially our brothers and sisters in Christ. In fact, John gives us a stern warning of the consequences of us not loving one another when he writes in 1 John 4:8, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
Jesus continues by saying in verse 16, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” We have the record of Jesus calling His disciples to follow Him, but there is a far deeper implication in His words here. This statement echoes many other passages in the Bible that teach clearly that all who are saved have benefited from God’s sovereign grace in salvation.
So while Jesus’ words in verse 16, which were addressed to the remaining 11 disciples, referred specifically to His call to them to follow Him, they apply in a much broader sense to the wonderful truth that Jesus has sovereignly chosen all believers before their conversion and has appointed them all to “go and bear fruit,” as He continues to say in the same verse.
The apostle Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit taught the same principle in Ephesians 1:4-6. “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace.” The Greek word Paul used for chose in verse 4 is eklegomai,from which we derive the English word election.
We often hear of Christians deciding to choose Christ, and while that is certainly true, the reality is that He first chose us. As we have seen, because of our sinful nature, we would never choose to follow Him. He chose us, and our choosing Him is a response to His choosing of us as the result of the grace of God working in our lives. This is why Paul could write in Ephesians 2:8-9, “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
It is a mistake to think that we chose Jesus before He chose us, for the simple reason that our depraved hearts are incapable of choosing light over darkness, and truth over lies. We were not His friends before coming to faith, but His enemies because of our rebellion against God. It is only through the immeasurable grace of God that we are saved, which means the glory for our salvation belongs entirely to Him.
We have looked at John 15:16 in sections so far. It does help to do this when trying to understand the specifics in any given verse in the Bible, but there is always the risk that we will lose the bigger picture of what is being taught. Context is always important, so in this verse in its entirety, Jesus says, “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.”
Not for the first time in His Farewell Discourse Jesus teaches the importance of obedience, abiding in Him and bearing fruit for the Kingdom. He would not repeat these things if they were not important.
We are to obey Him and do the things He has called us to. If we love Him, we will obey His commands, as we seek to bear fruit that will please Him and glorify God. Our greatest joy should be to please Him.
And so Jesus ends this part of His teaching with the most important commandment of all: to love one another. There are dozens of “one another” statements in the New Testament, but all of them are summarised in “love one another.” After washing the feet of His disciples in chapter 13, Jesus told them, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another,” (John 13:34-35) and He repeats this commandment twice in chapter 15.
Earlier on we looked at Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3, and I want to close by going back to his wonderful prayer. “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith - that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:14-19)
Notice that in verse 17 Paul prays that we would be “rooted and grounded in love.” This is what Jesus has been teaching - that we would love Him and one another, and part of the reason for this is that we are engaged in a battle, which is our theme for next week. Jesus knew what lay ahead for Himself, His disciples, and each of us in this world which is so hostile to the Gospel and the name of Jesus Christ, which is why, when we are bound together in love for each other and we abide in Him, we will be equipped to stand up for the truth of God in a world which hates Him so much.