REMAIN IN MY LOVE

 

ABIDE IN MY LOVE

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.

JOHN 15:9-17

COMMENTARY

Continuing with his speech, Lord Jesus reinforces his call for us to ‘remain’ in his love.

Jesus is clear that to maintain a good relationship with Him, it is necessary to live in harmony with his holiness, which requires obedience to his will. Jesus demands us to ‘abide’, because it is entirely to us, to decide to live under God’s will, avoiding sin. It is understood, that whoever says that believes in Jesus, and do not do his will, it is not in Jesus’s love, and it needs to repent and come back to Him.

And Lord Jesus summarizes his ‘commands’ into one, ‘Love one another, like I have loved you’. Because his is the highest expression of love in the universe. His unique love, is shown in that even when we were in enmity with Him, He loved us and incarnated and died for our salvation. And not only that, He filled us with miracles, forgiveness and practical love in every way. It is his wish that we should love like Him, and be that way true disciples of his.

Finally, Lord Jesus reveals to his 11 apostles, that they are special in humanity. He tells them that He had chosen them to be his special apostles, and not only that, He tells them that they have received the fullness of revelation until then (Of course more will be given to them later by the Holy Spirit). It is also important to note, that even Judas Iscariot, who was not with them at that moment, but had gone already to give Jesus to the Priests; was also one of these recipients, and since the gravity of his sin, Satan like.

Also Jesus tells them who they have been chosen to never fall, and to produce ‘fruit’, meaning, that they are guarded by the Holy Spirit to persevere to the end, be faithful to Christ and in that way, remain always within God’s favor.

And also to them, commends to love their neighbors as He showed them, in his living example. An issue of practice, not theory.

Omar Flores.

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