Love Each Other

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

LOVE EACH OTHER

 John 15:9-17

9 "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 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 learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 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. 17 This is my command: Love each other.

NIV

Jesus has been saying it over and over that if we love him we would obey his command. He has been saying that if we do obey his command, we can ask anything in his name. He has repeated this several times in this discourse with his disciples. Of course, there are those who would say all he said applied only to those disciples and it has nothing to do with us. We cannot ask anything, we are only allowed to ask just a few things and then we have to make sure when we do that it is within the Father’s will and that we are asking with the right motives, and that our heart is pure, and we have made sure we first cleared the sin from our lives. What hogwash! If all scripture is beneficial for correcting, rebuking, teaching, and training in righteousness, so we will be fully equipped, then that means all scripture is applicable for our lives. If we are going to say that we are subject to the command of Jesus, then we also have to say we are subject to his promise. What those who believe this only applies to his disciples use to base their opinion on is when Jesus said that they did not choose him, but he chose them. That is completely true, he called out to them to follow him, and they left whatever they were doing and followed him. Can we say that we were never called? Can we say that all by our lonesome, we made a decision, just out of the blue, to follow Jesus? Was it not the Holy Spirit who spoke directly into our hearts and called to us? Did we not hear, or feel that tugging on our heart and response to the call, by leaving behind everything we were and followed Jesus? Now, there are those who believe that just a few of us are called, that the reason we were called is because God chose us and only us, and he has left many uncalled. That he only gives eternal life to those few of us and the rest of his creation he has doomed them to perish. That is just so against his character of love. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, so that whosoever believes will not perish, but have everlasting life. The “Whosoever” is the key to knowing, God has sent the Spirit to convict all men of their need of repentance and to call them to follow Jesus. How can we say the Jesus ever turned anyone away? He has called all to follow him. He has called us and appointed us to go and bear fruit that will last. This is the fruit of love. We are to love each other. That is the command he has always been talking about. We want to make it more complicated than it is. The simple fact is he commands us to love each other as he loves us, as the father loves him. If we could just get that. If we could just wrap our mind around what love looks like in our daily living, in our relationships with each other, then we would not have to worry about jealously, envy, gossip, greed, malice, hatred, grudges, or being judgmental, or critical, or have a high opinion of ourselves, or make up all sort of rules we think are what Christians should be like. If we just loved each other, with all our imperfections, for we all have them, then all that would exist is love and all else would just fall in place. God accepted us just as we are and he is the one who started the work in us and he is the one who will complete it. It is not up to us to try to make others be a better Christian or to try to make them stop something or start something. It is not up to us to force our opinions or our lists on them. We are just told to love them, just as they are. God is doing the work in each of our lives. One way we can tell if we are following Jesus, if we are his disciples is if we are loving each other. Jesus said the greater love has no one than this that he lay down his life for his friends. Of course, he was talking about what he was going to do, by going to the cross. But at the same time in a practical way, by our putting others before ourselves, we are setting our own life down for them. How that looks may be different for each of us, but then all of it should be covered under the umbrella of loving each other.