Sermon Discussion Questions:

1. “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” How does understanding God’s initiating, predestining love change the way you view your relationship with Him?
2. Consider the nature of the Father's love for the Son. Is that difficult to believe that this is the same way that Jesus loves you?
3. “What you believe about God will shape how you treat one another.” How does a shallow or distorted view of God’s love affect the way we treat people?
4. The sermon gave many examples of love within the church. What is one specific way you can intentionally love someone in your church this week?
5. Jesus ends this section with the command to “love one another.” Why do you think abiding in Christ’s love is so closely tied to loving other believers?

When I was a kid, my mom was a big fan of natural remedies whenever we were sick. Vitamins, supplements, chopped up herbs that were thrown in tea—all that jazz. While my friends took NyQuil, I was given large chunks of raw garlic to eat and saltwater to gargle. Much to my mother’s chagrin, I have not carried on most of her homeopathic methods. All but one: what she called “honey bear tea.” It was a somewhat deceptive title because it led you to believer that you are just drinking tea with honey in it…when in reality, you are drinking hot water with honey and a healthy dose of apple cider vinegar. It is not the most pleasant thing in the world to drink, but it does help a sore throat.

The most important thing to do in the concocting of the tea is to thoroughly stir it after the honey is added, otherwise you will get a large glob of honey, or a thin brew of straight vinegar. I thought of this old remedy as I have been studying our passage we will look at today. There are many passages here that are sweet and comforting, and there are others that are more bracing. What we need is to mix them together properly to receive the full benefit.

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By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. 9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 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. 11 These 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. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No 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. 16 You 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. 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another. - John 15:8-17

The command that stands out the most to us in this passage is: abide in my love. What does that mean? To abide is a command. How do we obey it? How do we abide in Jesus’ love? Well, to answer that question, we need to understand what He means by love, and how that is connected to our obedience.

God’s Love

There are some of the most powerful summaries of how God loves us in this passage. Let me just pull out a few:

God’s Predestining Love

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide - John 15:16

Consider what this would have sounded like to the disciples. Jesus chose them in a unique way. They were just ordinary guys, nothing special about them, and out of everyone else, Jesus chose them as disciples: He said “I want you.” But Jesus means something more than just “I chose you to serve in the role of disciple” here. He is referring to the choice of salvation. How do we know that? First, Judas was also chosen as a disciple, yet he was not chosen in the same way that the other eleven are chosen (see John 15:3, 13:10; cf. 6:70-71). Second, Jesus says that He chose them and appointed them to bear fruit that will abide. Judas’ fruit did not. He abandoned Jesus.

When Jesus tells the eleven that they did not choose Him, but He chose them, He is referring to His predestining choice of them from before the foundation of the world, as the apostle Paul explains, that the Father “chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,” (Eph 1:4-5). 1

Your relationship with Jesus did not have its genesis in you reaching out to Him, but Him reaching out to you. You did not choose him, but he chose you—and His choice of you was not just His response to the knowledge of your choice in the future, like a fortune teller gazing into a crystal ball to discern which horse she should bet on to win the race. No, His choice—not yours—is the ground, and our choice is the response. And that choice is real, it is not an illusion. Just like the disciples chose to accept Jesus as their rabbi when He called them. But their choice was a response to Jesus’ choice, and Jesus’ choice was so fundamental in that equation, that Jesus can say: You didn’t choose me, I chose you. His choice is the ground for our response. If he did not choose us, we would never have chosen him. In this is love, not that we loved Him, but that He loved us (1 John 4:10).

People are so afraid of being earnest when it comes to relationships today. If you are too eager, you run the risk of looking desperate. So you stay aloof, don’t appear too interested, act like you would be okay if plans got cancelled, if it didn’t work out—you have so many other friends, relationship prospects, whatever. Jesus isn’t like that. He will never stand back, palms forward, disinterestedly saying to us, “Hey man, I never sought you out, you were the one who wanted to be on the team, so you’re free to leave.” No, He says, “I have loved you from before you were even aware of me. And my love for you is eternal and unchanging. I know that I love you more than you love me, but that will not change my unwavering love for you.”

God’s Atoning Love

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. - John 15:13

C.S. Lewis, in his book The Four Loves, believes that the love between friends is the most spiritual. Your love of your spouse has the erotic element; your love of your children has the familial element—both of these have a kind of biological imperative to them. You have instincts for sex and for kith and kin that propel you. But friends? Friendship is a kind of luxury good, in a sense. Not because it is unimportant, but because you have no primal imperative in the same way towards your spouse and children. It is a heroic act for a mother to rush into a burning building to save her child, but in a sense, she is helped by her nature as a mother that compels her out of innate love of child to rush into danger. But if her child is not in the burning building, but her friend is? It is a remarkable kind of love for her to rush in and risk perishing.

The Bible uses the many metaphors to describe our relationship with God, including that of children to a parent, or a bride to a husband, but when Jesus wants to underline the fullest extent of His love for us, He doesn’t describe us as children or as a spouse, but as a friend. “No 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. - John 15:15

One of the reasons that the Lord of the Rings is such a beautiful story is because it taps into this blueprint: friends laying down their lives for one another. Gandalf, Aragorn, Sam, Frodo—everyone is risking their lives for people they are not related to. But even that story doesn’t fully compare, because in the Lord of the Rings, if they do not risk their life, eventually the tide of evil will wash over them, and the world will be destroyed, them included.

God was not forced to come down and deal with sin and satan out of self-preservation. He was not at risk at all. If the forces of evil are marching on the land, it is still a heroic, loving thing to do to lead the charge, risk your life, to save the city. But also, if you don’t, the bad guys are going to get you eventually? Why not at least go out with courage? But if you are not in danger at all? If your kingdom is far above and removed from them so as you are not in danger whatsoever? And you still come down and lay down your life? That is incredible love.

Even more, the Bible tells us that we—whom were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, who Jesus is laying down His life—were not innocent victims who needed to be delivered from a bad guy. We were the bad guys. Before we came to faith in Christ, we were dominated by sin, following the course of this world, slaves to our passions and desires, envious, angry, divisive, lustful, bitter, disrespectful, vain, lazy, arrogant…”but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” (Rom 5:8). The death of Jesus Christ paid the debt our sins had owed and delivered us from our slavery to sin, to transform us from enemies of God, to friends of God.

This is the love of Jesus Christ for us. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his enemies to transform them into His friends.

God’s Eternal Love

How does Jesus love you? Think of the person that you love the most in this world. Maybe it is a child, a spouse, a parent, a friend, a brother, a sister. Now picture that love like a river. The love you have for that person is deeper and wider than anyone else. Other people aren’t necessarily evil or unlovable, but they just aren’t as lovely as this person is—they get you, they are trustworthy, they love you in return, they are fun, they make life better. And it would be incredible for Jesus to say, “As that person (your spouse, your child, your parent) loves you, so have I loved you.” If God loved us like our best friends, like our mothers, like our spouses do, that would in of itself deflate the idea that God is cold and detached.

But Jesus doesn’t say that.

Even our dearest friends and loved ones fall short. They are imperfect and sometimes those imperfections fall on us. Even more clear to us, we are imperfect and we see how riddled through our best intentions are with self-seeking motives, vanity, hypocrisy, sloth, and pride. And while we love truly, the sin in us and the sin in them, chokes that river of love, and fills it with mud and debris. Jesus’ love for us is deeper, and wider, and purer.

So, He tells us something that we wouldn’t dare to say or believe unless the Bible told us: As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. - John 15:9

The Father and Son are sinless, perfect, infinite, and eternal. The river of love that flows between the Father and Son is immense, and crystalline pure. No arrogance, no hypocrisy, no disingenousness, no flippancy, no snapping of anger, no ulterior motives. Pure, simple, unadulterated delight in the other and joyful wonder at who the other is. This Niagra Falls of sparkling of love between two flawless, perfect persons…that describes Jesus’ love for you.

You. Two-timing, backsliding, law breaking, distracted, mixed motives, vain, self-centered sinner…you. We do not deserve His love. And yet, He gives it to us. And we dare not refuse.

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. - 1 John 4:16

That brings us back to the original command: “Abide in my love.”

The simplest part of obeying that command is to believe, to accept the degree and totality to which God loves you. But that isn’t all of it. There is more.

Our Obedience

By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. - John 15:8

True disciples are revealed through their fruit.

And, I wonder if this strikes you as uncharitable, scrutinizing, judgmental, even. Why can’t we just take someone at their word when they tell us that they too are a follower of Jesus? Consider Jesus’ famous parable of the sower and the four soils. All four soils received the word—but how do we know which one was the good soil?

“But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.” (Mark 4:20)

Jesus tells us in Matthew 7 most plainly:

20 Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. - Matt 7:15-20

This was the message of John the Baptist to the crowds: “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.” (Matt 3:8; see also Matt 3:9-10).

And that final comment from John the Baptist leads us to the next question we should ask: what is the fruit that Jesus is speaking of?

The fruit is obedience to Jesus’ commands.

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. - John 15:10

You are my friends if you do what I command you. - John 15:14

Genuine love of Jesus Christ is revealed NOT in someone’s profession of faith, NOT in someone’s positive demeanor, NOT in material comforts and worldly status, NOT in someone’s testimony nor ability to explain orthodox theology. Genuine love of Jesus is revealed in obedience to His commands. Earlier, Jesus stated: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” (John 14:15).

Love leads to obedience, and obedience leads to “abiding in love.” Now, I have two questions about that: what does that look like, and what does that mean? Let’s take the second one first

What does that mean?

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love

Jesus isn’t telling us how we enter into a relationship of love (as if our obedience merited God’s love or even sustained God’s love). I think Jesus is referring to two dimensions of “abiding in my love” here.

First, Jesus believes that all true Christians persevere to the end in faith and obedience.

As Charles Bridges observes, the difference between the righteous and the wicked is not that one never falls, but that the righteous rises again through repentance while the wicked persists in his sin. Christians and non-Christians both sin. But when God convicts us both of our sin, we agree with God against our sin. A non-Christian agrees with his sin against God. Unlike Judas, true disciples persevere in their faith, continue to believe because God sustains their faith, appoints them to bear fruit and for their fruit to abide. Branches that do not bear fruit are thrown away because they prove that they were not abiding in the vine. Real Christians prove that they are real by their fruits of repentance.

But secondly, there is a felt experience to God’s love that is accessed through our obedience. Notice that immediately after telling us this, Jesus explains: “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full,” (John 15:11). These things I have spoken, like “keep my commandments”—obedience leads to joy. How do we abide in Jesus’ love in such a way that we feel it? We obey Him. Christians can sacrifice so much through disobedience—the pain of a guilty conscience, the dullness of lukewarm heart. Paul warns us that we can “grieve the Holy Spirit” (Eph 4:30) or “quench the Spirit” (1 Thess 5:19).

Peter was not Judas. Yet, Peter began to walk down Judas’ path…and what agony did he experience? What sorrow? What dead blankness and heaviness of heart?

• For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. 1 John 5:3

What Does it Look Like?

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. - John 15:10

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. - John 15:12

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. - 1 John 4:11

WHAT YOU BELIEVE ABOUT GOD WILL SHAPE HOW YOU TREAT ONE ANOTHER

What does this look like?

How does Jesus love us?

His love is earnest, sincere, and evident. His love is first, His love initiates, His love does not wait for us to be lovely. His love is costly, His love absorbs, His love swallows hurt and sin, and spits out forgiveness. His love is willing to be inconvenienced, His love is willing to pay for the other, His love goes into the hard place that no one else wants to go, His love serves. His love is patient, His love stays, His love remains, His love is constant. His love calls you friend, His love dies for you.

And this unfathomable love given to us for free in Christ, is what He assumes we must give to one another.

What does that look like?

It looks like: with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. (Eph 4:2-3)

compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. (Col 4:12-13)

It looks like spouses, parents, children, siblings, and church members choosing to love one another day after day. Extending the same kind of constant presence, and forgiveness to each other.

It looks like using your time, energy, and gifts for the good of other people, in big and little ways. It looks like meeting needs not because it is easy or preferable, but because it will bless others. It looks like not waiting to be cajoled into serving others, but jumping in with enthusiasm to help meet needs.

It looks like people like Scott and Erica Wagoner jumping in to help lead our church into providing shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child every year.

It looks like the group of people who gather every Sunday morning at 8:45 to pray for worship gatherings.

Like Joe Bellanti, and Alan Wicks, and Keith Witwer, Rod Barker, and Marv Liebe getting together and planning out how the older generation of men can invest in the lives of younger men in our church.

It looks like singles like Hannah Bircher or Kevin Gregg who, though they have no obligation to do so, frequently babysit out children so my wife and I can go on dates.

Like Shelley Witwer using her landscaping skills to single handedly redesign the front of our church so that it looks beautiful.

It looks like Alison Hoffman and Larie Williams and Amanda and Noah Torres who start bible studies with our teenagers to disciple them.

It looks like formal ministry like what our elders and deacons and discipleship group leaders and children’s ministry volunteers and safety team do, and it looks like informal ministry, like taking another church member out to lunch, praying for each other, coming to church, investing in relationships, forgiving one another, etc.

If you receive the love of Christ, you will love one another. You must.