Love and Obedience
I am preaching on Sunday and my text is John 15:9-17. There is one verse in there that I think is particularly difficult to hear, yet, I think we desperately need to hear it and try and work out out. Jesus is speaking and says "You are my friends if you do what I command you." (v. 14) The greek word for friends is derived from the verb phileo which in John's gospel is used interchangeable with agape. So really he is saying "you are the ones I love if you do what I command you."
What do you guys think about that?
I guess on one hand, we know plenty of scriptures to explain that God loved us even while we were enemies and for God so loved the world that he sent his only son and further down in this passage, Jesus clarifies that we did not choose him, but he chose us. So, lest we be mistaken, Jesus loved us first.
But maybe we don't have access to any real certainty of that unless we do what he commands us. Maybe, in this context, where he has finished his public ministry and ultimately his signs failed to engender much belief (the ones who did believe cared to much about the praise of man to admit it ... see the end of chapter 12) and he is now sitting with the eleven (Judas Ischarit has already left) who are his disciples. And he tells them, "As the Father has loved me so I have loved you, abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love..." You will remain, you will show yourself as one loved by Jesus Christ if you obey his commandments. If you look like him, if you love as he loved (sacrificially).
So, it isn't easy to be a Christian ... it isn't just about being saved by grace or being forgiven ... but to (to Dallas Willard's point) it isn't easy being lost either. He says that we have heard of the cost of discipleship, but there is a cost to nondiscipleship as well. It is only by going the way of discipleship that we can abide in love and so have the abundant life that is promised to us in the gospels.
Legalism is law without love. Legalism is accepting the rules without accepting or seeking to know the rule giver. Jesus is grounding obedience in love. Jesus is revealing the lawgivers face. The invisible God is shown forth in him. We must accept him first, then his commandments or we will end up with legalism. But it is possible to be a friend of a king (another thing he talks about in this discourse) and still be obedient to him as king.
Only the believers obey and only the obedient believe. (Bonhoeffer) Bonhoeffer in talking about faith, goes on to say there is a danger of taking either of those statements alone ... if the first is taken by itself we fall pray to cheap grace and the second alone to works. Pastorally there must be an awareness of which may be lacking in a person ... someone may be sorrowing from lack of faith from disobedience so words of comfort will not help ... only repentance and confession of sin. Constant disobedience can spoil belief ... what does such a word mean if not some obedience. Yet the opposite danger is to think that through obedience you can attain faith ... perhaps leaving everything (even actions of service to God) without God.
He goes on to say it more simply that we must entrust ourselves to the word of Jesus Christ, "believing it to be a stronger foundation than all the securities of the world."
Perhaps this is also a true statement and tension we must keep: Only those who love God obey and only the obedient love God.
What do you guys think about that?
I guess on one hand, we know plenty of scriptures to explain that God loved us even while we were enemies and for God so loved the world that he sent his only son and further down in this passage, Jesus clarifies that we did not choose him, but he chose us. So, lest we be mistaken, Jesus loved us first.
But maybe we don't have access to any real certainty of that unless we do what he commands us. Maybe, in this context, where he has finished his public ministry and ultimately his signs failed to engender much belief (the ones who did believe cared to much about the praise of man to admit it ... see the end of chapter 12) and he is now sitting with the eleven (Judas Ischarit has already left) who are his disciples. And he tells them, "As the Father has loved me so I have loved you, abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love..." You will remain, you will show yourself as one loved by Jesus Christ if you obey his commandments. If you look like him, if you love as he loved (sacrificially).
So, it isn't easy to be a Christian ... it isn't just about being saved by grace or being forgiven ... but to (to Dallas Willard's point) it isn't easy being lost either. He says that we have heard of the cost of discipleship, but there is a cost to nondiscipleship as well. It is only by going the way of discipleship that we can abide in love and so have the abundant life that is promised to us in the gospels.
Legalism is law without love. Legalism is accepting the rules without accepting or seeking to know the rule giver. Jesus is grounding obedience in love. Jesus is revealing the lawgivers face. The invisible God is shown forth in him. We must accept him first, then his commandments or we will end up with legalism. But it is possible to be a friend of a king (another thing he talks about in this discourse) and still be obedient to him as king.
Only the believers obey and only the obedient believe. (Bonhoeffer) Bonhoeffer in talking about faith, goes on to say there is a danger of taking either of those statements alone ... if the first is taken by itself we fall pray to cheap grace and the second alone to works. Pastorally there must be an awareness of which may be lacking in a person ... someone may be sorrowing from lack of faith from disobedience so words of comfort will not help ... only repentance and confession of sin. Constant disobedience can spoil belief ... what does such a word mean if not some obedience. Yet the opposite danger is to think that through obedience you can attain faith ... perhaps leaving everything (even actions of service to God) without God.
He goes on to say it more simply that we must entrust ourselves to the word of Jesus Christ, "believing it to be a stronger foundation than all the securities of the world."
Perhaps this is also a true statement and tension we must keep: Only those who love God obey and only the obedient love God.
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