08 May 26 | Love One Another As I Have Loved You
The commandment to love one another is possible only because of a choosing the disciples did not initiate, a love they received before they knew to ask for it.
The Gospel: John 15:12-17
¹² "This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. ¹³ No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command you. ¹⁵ I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. ¹⁶ It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. ¹⁷ This I command you: love one another."
Today’s Focus
The commandment to love one another is not new. Jesus gave it at the beginning of the farewell discourse. He gives it again here because everything between the two statements has been the explanation of why it is possible. The vine, the abiding, the love from the Father through the Son — all of it is the infrastructure that makes this love real. The standard is the cross. No one has greater love than to lay down life for friends. Then Jesus changes the designation. Not servants. Friends. Because he has told them everything he heard from the Father. Full disclosure. And then the reversal. It was not you who chose me. He found them beside fishing boats and at tax tables. The choosing preceded everything. The fruit they are appointed to bear uses the same abiding word as the vine — what is done from within the love that chose them before they chose anything bears the mark of the eternal. Love one another. That is how the passage closes. Calibrated to the cross. Empowered by a love they received before they knew to ask for it.
In the Margins
The commandment Jesus gives in this passage is not new. He gave it in John 13:34 on the night the farewell discourse began. He is giving it again here, in the middle of the discourse, because everything between the two statements has been the explanation of why it is possible and what makes it real. The vine and branches, the abiding, the love that flows from the Father through the Son into the disciples, all of it is the infrastructure that makes loving one another as Jesus loved possible. You cannot love this way from your own resources. You can only love this way from within the abiding.
The standard He sets for the love is not lowered from the first statement. As I love you. He then gives the definition of that love at its fullest expression. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. The Greek preposition hyper, on behalf of, for the sake of, runs through John's passion theology. Jesus lays down His life hyper the sheep in John 10. Caiaphas unwittingly prophesies in John 11 that one man will die hyper the people. Here He lays down His life hyper His friends. The love the commandment commands is calibrated to the cross. The disciples who receive it know what its fullest expression looks like because they are hours away from watching it.
Then Jesus does something remarkable. He changes the designation. He no longer calls them servants. He calls them friends. The distinction He makes is about knowledge. A servant does what the master commands without necessarily knowing why. A friend is brought into the master's confidence, told the reasoning behind the commands, made a participant in the purpose rather than simply an executor of orders. Jesus has told the disciples everything He has heard from the Father. The full disclosure of the Father's purpose, everything the Son received from the Father, has been extended to the eleven in the upper room.
Abraham was called the friend of God in Isaiah 41 and in the letter of James. The disciples receiving this designation is a direct parallel. Abraham believed God and his faith produced the friendship with God that defined his entire life and legacy. The disciples are being placed in that same category, not by their own achievement but by the disclosure Jesus has made to them.
Then He reverses the expected direction. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you. In the rabbinic tradition, a disciple sought out and chose his teacher. Jesus inverts this entirely. The disciples did not come to Him. He came to them. He found them beside fishing boats and at tax tables. The choosing preceded everything they have done and everything they will do. And the choosing has a purpose. He appointed them to go and bear fruit that will remain. The word remain, meno, is the same abiding of vine and branches. The fruit of genuine discipleship participates in the permanence of the vine relationship itself. What is done from within the abiding, in the love that flows from the Father through the Son, bears the mark of the eternal because it arises from the eternal love that chose the disciples before they chose anything.
The commandment closes the passage. Love one another. Everything between the commandment's first statement and its repetition here has been the unpacking of how it is possible and what it costs and what it produces. The disciples go from the upper room into a world that will hate them, carrying a commandment calibrated to the cross, empowered by a love they received before they knew to ask for it.
Reflection Question
Where are you currently trying to bear fruit from a branch that has been severed from the vine?