Easter
John 15:9–17
9As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. 11These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. 12"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17These things I command you, so that you will love one another. (Joh 15:9 ESV)
"As the Father has loved me..." The love between the Father and the Son is the most perfect and complete love. The love and communion between the persons of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the source of everything that exists. It is out of this love that God created the universe and all that is in it. This inner Trinitarian love is the pattern after which all things were created. That union, that love, is the model for the unity and love between Christ and his church, between husband and wife, between a parent and his children. Today is Mother's Day when we celebrate the love of our mothers and express our love back to her. The love of a mother for her child is patterned after God's love for us. In Isaiah God tells us; "I will comfort you as one whom his mother comforts." God's love is the foundation for all things. From that love between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God created man in his image. God dwelt among men and was present with man. The Son of Solomon in the Bible is an expression of God's love for his people. When God and man are in communion with each other there is the fullness of joy.
Part I:
"As the Father has loved me...so have I loved you."
...says Jesus (verse 9 in our text). God loves you as his children. In I John God says: "See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God..." In Baptism God made us his children. Now God interacts with his children. He dwells with his people. Jesus says, "Abide in my love." Abide means to live in, to dwell in. The believer in Christ lives in God's love; in relationship with God. We live out that relationship and love in our daily life. In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus teaches us to pray, "Our Father." Our relationship with God is a relationship of love, like a Father for his children, like a mother for her children, like a husband for his wife. This is how God interacts with his people.
Jesus tells us to abide in his love, to live in it and continue living in it and walking in his love every day. The problem is that mankind has become separated from God. Being separated from God is the most horrible hell. It is, in fact, death, for all life comes from God. But not just physical death, it is eternal death. It is literally hell.
This is the human problem today; our human dilemma. This is the reason for and source of all human suffering and pain. It is the source of all pride, prejudice, hatred, selfishness, and evil. Mankind did not abide in or remain in his love. Man sinned and sin is the breaking of the relationship between man and God. You were born in sin and sin separates you from God. You are by nature sinful. You are by nature separated from God; an enemy of God; dead to God. Being separated from God is the worst thing that can happen. When it seems that God's face doesn't look upon you; when it seems as if God doesn't hear your prayer; when it sounds like God doesn't speak to you, this is the most gut-wrenching agony we can ever experience. It's just as bad as when your husband or wife, or your mother or daughter don't speak to you or listen to you. Things just aren't right. It feels like a living death. There is no peace, no hope.
Being separated from God's presence is hell itself. What is so terrible about hell? Separation from God. There is no blessing. There is no good thing. There is no life, no hope, no peace, no joy. For all such things come only from God. Being separated from God means there is no blessing to be had.
So Jesus says, "Abide in my love...that your joy may be full." For when God does turn his face toward you and looks upon you there is joy. In the midst of all of life's perils; in the midst of pain and suffering; in the midst of depression and despair; in the midst of loneliness and fear, God's presence lifts up your soul, restores your joy, strengthens your spirit, gives you life and hope. When God speaks to you there is refreshment. When God hears your prayer there is hope. Abide then in the love of Jesus.
Jesus says: "If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love." What is his commandment?
Part II
[Because] the Father has loved me...Love one another as I have loved you.
That is his commandment; to love one another as Jesus has loved you. (verse 12 in our text). Again, the source of that love we have for one another is the love the Father has for the Son; the Trinitarian love. That is why no one who does not love his neighbor is a true believer in Jesus. It is impossible to be a true believer and not love your neighbor. Love comes from God. God is love. "We love because he first loved us." Then he says, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another....if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us." "In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."
What does love look like? Jesus tells us, "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." Jesus laid down his life for us. Even though we were his enemies, he went to the cross for us. We are separated from God by our sins. We are born separated from God, but He bore the weight of our sins. He carried our sins to the cross. He suffered their punishment. He laid down his life for us in order to pay for our sins; to reconcile us to God. He died in order to end the separation between you and God, and restore your relationship with God. He died in order that you may abide in his love. It is by the obedience, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that you, through baptism, now abide in his love. In fact, he no longer calls you servants, but he calls you friends and makes the will of his Father known to you. Jesus has given his life for you and thus brings you into relationship with his Father. Now as you live out your life on this earth, you live it out in relationship with God; you live in love for one another.
Part III
Because the Father has loved me...I chose you.
As the Father chose Israel to be his people, to dwell among and with them, to save them from their enemies, to be in relationship with them, to make them his children, so he has chosen you to be his people. He has chosen to dwell in and among his church. You are his chosen people; his children; his bride. We did not choose God. He chose us. He has made us a community; a family. This is the greatest honor and joy we have that God has made us a people of his own possession. We are his and he is ours. He belongs to us just as much as we belong to him. "We are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of God's own possession, that we may proclaim the goodness of him who called us out of the darkness and into the light." I Peter 2:9.
He chose us and appointed us to go and bear fruit. That is, to do all that he commands us; to love one another, "for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love, does not know God for God is love," says the Apostle John.
But we have not kept this command to love. We have failed. Even the most loving person in the world; the most loving husband, the most loving mother, the most loving child, or the most loving neighbor, has not loved perfectly. We have all fallen short. We have all sinned against God by not loving as he has loved us. We have not laid down our life for one-another. Oh, yes, we have loved a little, but there is always a limit to our love. We stop at the point of having to lay down our life. Love is fine until it starts to hurt; until it starts to cost us something. Until it means giving something up for someone else. Then we reach the limit of our love.
What's the point of this? The point is that we don't deserve for Jesus to chose us. We are unworthy. We are but dirt. We were made out of dirt and we will return to dirt. We have nothing to boast about. We have nothing to be proud of. We have sinned. We have failed to keep the commandment to love one another as God has loved us.
So these last verses in our text come as a complete shock. I Chose you. Why? We have no merit. We are not worthy. We are but sacks of filth, says Luther. But God chose us because he is love. And the love between the Father and the Son has spilled out onto you and brought you into that relationship with them, in Jesus Christ. "For God so loved the world..."
You did not choose Jesus. As a sinner you do not have the will or the ability to choose Jesus. Your natural inclination is to flee from Jesus and all that he desires for you. But Jesus loves you in the same way the Father loves him and that love became visible when he laid down his life for you on the cross. And because he laid down his life for you, this love led him to choose you to be his friends, and through faith he made you his children in baptism, and he brings forth his fruit of love in your lives as he abides with you in Holy Communion. When Jesus died and paid for your sin, he wiped out all that separates you from God. He opened the door to heaven to you. He brought you into a relationship with God. To live in relationship with God is truly to abide in heaven.
Amen.