⁹ “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. ¹⁰ If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept 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: to lay down one's life for one's 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 so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. ¹⁷ This is my command: Love each other.
Before the eleven understood Friday,
Christ called them friends.
Thoughts
- Remain in My Love (9-11) Last week the vine said remain in me (4), and today Jesus names that same remaining as remaining in his love. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you: he is telling them where the love comes from. The love that holds these eleven men is the love the Father has for the Son, now given to them. Now remain in my love finds them his. As we learned last week, they are clean by his word (3). His commands are how they live inside the love he has given. You keep them because you are loved, the way a person stays in a house that is home. And he tells them why he is saying all of this. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete (11). Hours from Gethsemane, he wants them full of his own joy. ➤ He loved us with the Father's own love. Remaining is staying in that gift.
- Love as He Loved (12-14) The many commands of (10) pull together as one. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. We already knew we were to love one another. What he adds is the measure: as I have loved you. Then (13) shows what that love looks like. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends. Hours from the cross, Jesus is telling them what he is about to do for them. Then he says You are my friends if you do what I command. He is talking about people who already live in the love he has just shown them. The friendship is already in the room. 1 John 3:16 will say it later in the church's voice: he laid down his life for us, so we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. The life he is giving becomes the life we share with one another. ➤ The measure of our love is the life he laid down for us.
- Friends Because He Chose Us (15-17) I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. A servant is sent to work without being told why; Jesus lets them in on the Father's work and has made known what he heard from the Father. Then he says the word that keeps remaining from turning into a matter of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps: You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit, fruit that will last (16). He gave them the name friend, and Chrysostom heard the kindness in it: Jesus ran toward their friendship first, and only then sent them. That is how friendship with him begins. The fruit of the vine is given a name in (17). This is my command: Love each other. ➤ We are friends because he chose us, and showed us the Father's heart.
Reflection
- He called the eleven friends hours from the cross. What would change if you believed he meant you?
