In his own words (part 5)
In John 15:16, Jesus made an extraordinary statement that I’m only just coming to terms with, when he said to his disciples, “You did not choose me, I chose you.”
If that means, then, that I didn’t choose Jesus either and he chose me, then please, I’d like to know, is there any obvious evidence that he chose me and I truly am his disciple?
Jesus offers a clue in the same verse, when he says his disciples will “bear fruit – and fruit that will last.” Because, verse 8, it’s in the “bearing of much fruit” that “you show yourselves to be my disciples.” These are obvious and permanent fruits being produced in us, therefore, that clearly identify us as his disciples.
But what sort of fruits was Jesus getting at?
For starters, he told his disciples in John 14:12, that “anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing.” Well, that makes sense, because if we’re his disciples trusting him to teach us and help us be like him – then the obvious result of that would be the same kind of fruit in our lives that he produced in his. And he also said in verse 12 that he’d be going back to his Father to enable us to “do even greater things” than he did, making it even more obvious that we are his disciples.
So what exactly did Jesus do in his lifetime that he now enables us to do in ours?
He tells us what he did in verse 31: “I love the Father and I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.” In both word and deed (verse 10) he was totally in tune with his Father’s wishes, because he loved him. It was as simple as that.
But there was a second thing Jesus did that was also in tune with his Father’s wishes, when he told his disciples in John 15:9, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” His Father wanted him to do that too – to love his disciples with the same love his Father had for him, because in that was the best clue of all for clearly identifying them as his disciples…(continues Friday)
Buck To Basics 