In his own words (part 12)

To understand what Jesus meant by his disciples being his friends, the clue he gave them was to “Love one another as I have loved you,” John 13:34. In other words, be the kind of friends to each other that he’d been to them, and then they’d understand. 

Which involved them doing two things: first of all, laying down their lives for each other, just as Jesus had done (and would do) for them (John 15:13). And secondly, sharing everything they were learning with each other, just as Jesus had been doing with them (verse 15). Taking into account what Jesus said in John 13:15, that “I’ve set you an example for you to do as I have done.” 

But why did Jesus do those two things, and why do we need to as well? Because in us “bearing fruit” in those two things too, “Then,” Jesus said in John 15:16, “the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.” 

Which is why Jesus added in verse 17, “This is my command: Love each other,” because in loving each other in the two things he did to love us, it opens up this amazing relationship with the Father, where he personally takes it upon himself to answer what we ask for. And so does Jesus, because in John 14:14 healsotold his disciples, “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”  

I see. So, if I lay down my life and share my life like Jesus did, the Father and Jesus become very real to me – I can talk to them and they “talk” back. Which is wonderful, but practically speaking: “WHAT can I ask for that both the Father and Jesus would happily answer?” – and “HOW do I lay down my life and share my life like Jesus did to open up this two way conversation with him and his Father in the first place?” 

Well, why not ask them how? Surely they’d answer such a request, because if we get good at laying down our lives for our fellow disciples and sharing what we’re learning with each other, we’re following Jesus’ example. And if following his example is what we want to do, then surely both the Father and Jesus would happily answer our requests to help us get good at it – or “bear much fruit,” as Jesus phrased it (15:5). 

Practically speaking, though, in what ways can we “lay down our lives” for each other?…(continues Monday)

In his own words (part 11)

In John 15:14 Jesus told his disciples, “You are my friends if you do what I command.” And by “friends” Jesus gave us two clues as to what he meant. 

The first clue is in verse 13, when he said: “There’s no greater love than laying down one’s life for one’s friends.” 

Calling his disciples “friends,” therefore, meant Jesus would die for them. And he wasn’t talking in context here about dying for the salvation of the world. He was talking to his disciples about dying for them: “I love you, my friends, and to prove it I’m going to be murdered for you.” 

That’s not normally what friends say to each other to prove their friendship. “I’ll take a bullet for you” is about as close as it gets, but that’s only facing the possibility of being killed. In Jesus’ case it was planned; he knew it was going to happen. And he wanted it to happen, so his disciples would know how much they were loved. That was the first clue, then, as to what Jesus meant by friends. 

The second clue he gives is in verse 15: “I have called you friends, for everything I learned from my Father I’ve made known to you.” He wanted them fully in the know as to what the Father had planned and how he was bringing it about. And Jesus, having come from heaven, knew it all – about life, death, hell, heaven, relationships, history, the purpose of life and creation. And by sharing it with his disciples, Jesus gave us the second clue as what he meant by “friends.”    

But how would being Jesus’ friends become real to his disciples? Jesus clued them in on that too, in verse 14: “You are my friends if you do what I command.” So what was his “command” to them? 

It was to “Love each other as I have loved you,” verse 12. In other words, express the same definitions of friendship to each other that he’d just expressed to them. Which of course would make his friendship real to them, because they were now living that friendship too. 

Loving each other like Jesus loved them, then, was the best clue of all as to what Jesus meant by “friends”…(continues Friday)

In his own words (part 10)

Jesus has just finished telling his disciples to stay attached to him by believing he loves them and always will, and by sticking to his teachings, John 15:7. And then he says in verse 11, “I have told you this, so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.” 

But then, just a few verses later, he tells them: “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also,” verse 20. And in verses 18 and 19, that because they didn’t “belong to the world,” don’t be surprised if people hated them. They’d hated him (18), and because they were his disciples they’d be treated the same way (21).

So how could Jesus promise them joy if they were about to be hated too? Especially when hatred makes people say and do some awful things, and for no reason as well (25). So it must have puzzled the disciples, because how can you have joy when you’re being accused falsely of things you never said or did? Or when you lose your job, or get thrown in jail for years without justice being done, because of someone who lied about you, and for no legitimate reason – just hate.  

But the Father set things up this way to attach us to his Son. And it would certainly attach us to his Son if we discovered Jesus had the power to pull joy out of the hat for us even when we’re suffering. And if we stick to Jesus like a branch to a tree (15:5), then no matter what happens to us, or what people do to us, he said he will fill us with his joy. 

That’s the promise. But let’s get real: Did Jesus have joy when he suffered, and he was hated for no legitimate reason? The author of Hebrews answers that for us, in Hebrews 12:2, because it was “for the joy set before him that Jesus endured the cross, scorning its shame.” 

Jesus knew that in his Father’s master plan, joy would result from his suffering. So for his disciples it would be exactly the same. So let the world hate them, because what would come of that hate? Some real hurt and suffering, yes, but Jesus would live the joy he experienced in his hurt and suffering in them. So they too could “scorn its shame.”

That was his promise, that being attached to him guaranteed…(continues Wednesday)  

In his own words (part 9)

How on earth were Jesus’ disciples going to love each other with the same love Jesus had for them, John 15:12? 

He was operating on a level of love way beyond their capacity. Like he said in verse 13: “Greater love has no one than this, than laying down his life for his friends.” And Jesus lived that way, gearing his life to helping, healing, teaching, and then death on a cross too. 

But how can we love like that? It’s a tall order for us lowly, busy creatures stuck in a world of physical suffering, financial worries, and the focus of the culture being so much on self. And with so much time taken up in just surviving, who’s got the energy to love as Jesus loved?    

Fortunately, Jesus left a couple of clues for us to tap in to. The first in John 15:4, when he told his disciples, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you.” Jesus used the analogy of him being a vine and his disciples the branches. Stay attached to him, and like a vine feeding nutrients to its branches, he’d feed his love through to them. No matter what circumstances they were in, then, he could enable them to love as he loved, which is an amazing promise, because things happen to us in this world that make loving as he loved extremely difficult.   

The second clue is in verse 7: “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.” 

In the first part of that verse Jesus explains how we stay attached to him, which is taking what he said and taught seriously. Because by doing that it automatically opens up the second part of the verse, which is contact with Jesus himself. 

Which is great to know, because what we’re after is the ability to love as he loved, believing it’s obviously the right way to live, but situations and circumstances keep arising that make it so difficult to do. So Jesus had better help us out or we’re sunk. And fortunately, he promises to answer, because that’s what the Father sent him to us for, to do in us what we cannot do. 

And for a wonderful reason too, to not only experience Jesus’ love in us but his joy as well (verse 11)…(continues Monday)

In his own words (part 8)

It was hugely important to Jesus that his disciples “Now remain in my love,” John 15:9. Because it was knowing he loved them, and what being loved at that level of love was like, that would set the stage for them spreading that love by loving each other with the same love he had for them. 

And Jesus knew what that love would do. It would do “even greater things” than he himself had been doing, because many people spreading his love would influence and impact many more people than he was able to. Such love would “bear much fruit,” therefore. It would change people’s lives, make people feel very comfortable in a Christian’s presence, and inspire an example that others would follow. 

I remember the first time I attended church as a teenager. I was nervous, totally out of my comfort zone, wishing I was somewhere else, and thinking I’d be left standing or sitting alone with no one to talk to, and no one wanting to talk to me. Instead, a man came up to me, shook my hand, and got me talking, and I found myself happily blathering away as if we’d been friends for years. 

It was the genuineness of the man that struck me, because I was a hard-nosed, cynical teenager with a chip on my shoulder about humanity in general. The rest of what happened in church that day didn’t interest me much, but the way that man listened and got me talking and feeling comfortable opened my eyes to something wonderful.

Well, Jesus came to make that “something wonderful” happen all over the place through his disciples. And all to the glory of the Father who created this to happen. Because he started it. It was his idea to show his love through Jesus, who would show his love to a group of disciples, who would then spread out all over the world showing what God’s love in humans does in all sorts of ways that people really appreciate. I know I did, because I haven’t forgotten to this day, fifty six years later, what that man in church did for me and how comfortable he made me feel. 

And such a small thing too, but for me it did the trick. It bore fruit. Which according to Jesus is what God’s love is meant to do…(continues Friday) 

In his own words (part 7)

So why did Jesus tell his disciples in John 15:12, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you”?

Two reasons: first of all, to fulfill his promise back in John 14:12 that “anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing.” And what he’d been doing was loving his disciples, John 15:9: “As my Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” His disciples, therefore, could now love as Jesus loved. 

And why was that important? For the second reason, which was to bring glory to the Father, just as Jesus had done, by making the Father’s love visible. Jesus had made his Father’s love visible by loving his disciples in the same way his Father had loved him. The disciples could now make the Father’s love visible by loving each other in the same way Jesus had loved them.

So there’s a sequence here: first the Father’s love for Jesus. Jesus then loves his disciples like his Father loved him. The disciples then love each other like Jesus had loved them. And so the Father’s love would spread.

The disciples loving each other, therefore, was the next crucial stage in the Father’s love being made visible on this planet. And the key to that happening was Jesus’ statement in the last part of John 15:12, that the disciples love each other “as I have loved you.” 

Jesus focused his disciples’ attention on his love for them. He really did love them too, as John relates in John 13:1 – “Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus now showed them the full extent of his love.” More than anything, therefore, Jesus wanted his disciples to know he loved them and always would. That was the starting point for them. 

It was for Jesus too, because this was exactly what his Father had done for him, when Jesus heard the words, “This is my Son, whom I love” back in Matthew 3:17. At the very start of Jesus’ ministry, therefore, the most important thing that would ground him and prepare him for whatever happened next, was knowing he was loved. The Father did that for him, so it’s no surprise that Jesus did the same for his disciples, which explains why Jesus told them to “remain in my love” in John 15:9…(continues Wednesday) 

In his own words (part 6)

It was the Father’s wish that Jesus choose some disciples and love them. Because in loving them they would love each other, and loving each other would be the best clue of all for clearly identifying them as his disciples.

It’s one of the great secrets of heaven that the Father sent Jesus to tell us – which is what Jesus does in John 15. 

In verse 9, Jesus got the secret rolling around in his disciples’ heads when he told them, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.”  Two points here: that, first of all, Jesus knew the Father loved him. He knew what the Father’s love was like, and to him it was the most wonderful thing of all. What could top his Father’s love? What greater thing was there in all creation and beyond into eternity than being loved by the Father? And Jesus is saying he knew this love intimately. 

Which is amazing when applied to the second part of that verse, because Jesus then says he loves his disciples with the same love his Father has for him. So not only does he know the Father’s love personally, he’s also capable of expressing his Father’s love to his disciples too.

So the Father is getting his heavenly ball of love rolling on this planet through Jesus loving as he loves and expressing that love to his disciples. They were the next in line, then, to be caught up in this rolling ball of love that had come trundling out from heaven in the person of Jesus.  

At which point Jesus then says to his disciples, in the last part of verse 9, “Now remain in my love” – or “Never lose sight of knowing I love you.” Because his love for them and knowing what his love was like, were the most wonderful things of all that could happen to them too. And not only in them knowing and experiencing his love, but also in being able to express his love as well – just as Jesus knew and experienced his Father’s love and was able to express it too.  

The Father’s love, therefore, was spreading – first through Jesus knowing and expressing his Father’s love, and now through the disciples knowing and experiencing Jesus’ love and being able to express that love of his to each other now as well. The ball of heavenly love was well and truly rolling…(continues Monday) 

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) 

In his own words (part 4)

In his own words, Jesus came into our world “to bring glory to the Father,” John 14:13. While on this planet, then, Jesus was his Father’s biographer and portrait painter, which he was fully qualified to be – having personally “seen and heard” the workings of heaven and his Father in action (John 3:32). If anyone could turn a magnifying glass on the Father to see his brilliance in fine detail, therefore, Jesus could. 

So it’s not surprising when Jesus told his disciples in verse 6 that he was “the way” to the Father, “the truth” about the Father, and a demonstration of “the life” of the Father. “No one,” he concludes therefore, “comes to the Father except through me.” It was only through Jesus “passing on everything I learned from my Father,” for instance (John 15:15), that his disciples knew anything about the Father at all.

And to top that off, it was only by his example that they’d come to know the Father too. Or as Jesus put it in John 14:7, “if you really knew me you’d know my Father too.” It was through Jesus being the perfect reflection of the Father, therefore, that the Father could be truly known. 

None of this had hit Philip yet, however,because he says in verse 8, “Show us the Father and that’ll be enough for us.” To which Jesus replies in verse 9, “Don’t you get who I am, Philip, even after all this time I’ve been with you? Because anyone who’s seen me has seen the Father. So how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’ when (verse 10) I’m in the Father and he’s in me. So when I speak, they aren’t just my words – they’re his too. And whatever I do, it’s my Father living in me doing it.”

That’s because, as Jesus said earlier in John 5:19, “the Son can do nothing by himself; he can only do what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” Everything about Jesus himself, then, was designed to accurately portray his Father.  

But there was another way Jesus was revealing the glory of his Father – and perhaps the most meaningful way to his disciples too – when he told them in John 15:8, “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit.” It was through Jesus enabling them to do that, therefore, that would not only bring glory to the Father, it would clearly identify them as Jesus’ disciples too…(continues Wednesday) 

In his own words (part 3)

It was in Jesus’ own words, “You believe at last!” in John 16:31 that we see how important it was to Jesus that his disciples believed he’d come from God (verse 30) – because – in believing he’d come from God they’d take what he taught seriously.

And that was important, because as Jesus said in John 14:21, “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me.” So taking what he said seriously would be his disciples’ means of loving him.

But why was loving Jesus so important? Because (same verse), “He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.”

So there’s a sequence here that opens up this world of love that both the Father and Jesus have for us – the sequence being: believing Jesus came from God, which leads to taking what Jesus taught seriously, which is how we love him, which leads to the Father loving us, and Jesus also loving us by showing us more of himself so we love him for who he is, as well as for what he taught.  

In verse 23 Jesus goes back to the point, though, that “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching.” Because that’s the ‘key code’ that opens the door to the second part of verse 23, which is: “My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” 

So this is the sequence by which the love of both the Father and Jesus become real to us: it’s through the Father and Jesus setting up home in those who express their love for Jesus by obeying what he taught. 

But how do the Father and Jesus “set up home” in us? By sending the Holy Spirit to live in us and with us (verse 17) as our constant guide and personal counsellor, bringing to mind what Jesus taught and how it applies to our circumstances (verse 26). Because it’s in the Spirit doing that for us that more and more we see the value of Jesus’ teaching and therefore an even greater desire to obey it, which in turn opens up this whole new world of love for him and the Father’s love for us.

No wonder Jesus was so elated, then, when his disciples believed he’d come from God, because now the ball was really rolling…(continues Monday)