Love One Another

John 15: 12-17 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.

We are commanded to love! And love like Jesus loved US! Sacrificially! To lay down our lives for others. Meaning to put them first and give up our rights and plans and wishes.

Then Jesus changed the status of His disciples from servants to friends. We are His friends! And He promises eternal fruit to His own who remain in Him. “I chose you…to go and bear fruit – fruit that will last.”

John 15:18-25 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. 20 Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. 21 They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me. 22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.23 Whoever hates me hates my Father as well. 24 If I had not done among them the works no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. As it is, they have seen, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. 25 But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.”

That last part is from Psalms 69:4 Those who hate me without reason
    outnumber the hairs of my head;
many are my enemies without cause,
    those who seek to destroy me.
I am forced to restore
    what I did not steal.

John uses the word “world” 77 times in his Gospel. And a lot in his letters. Because Scripture uses this word in several different ways, you have to determine its meaning based on the context it’s used in. So, in this verse it has four aspects: fallen humanity as a whole, the system of life as it is lived by the majority of people who ignore God, the short term as opposed to what lasts forever and the sphere in which fallen humanity finds its satisfaction apart from God.

The people who choose to reject Christ also reject His followers. We’re different then they are. They don’t want to be like us. His words and works condemn the world’s manner of life. And if we are like HIM, OUR lives condemn them too. So, take it as a compliment! 😊 The closer we are to Him, the more we are like Him, the more they will reject us.

Jesus also tells us we are CHOSEN by God.

And we’re not to retreat from the world. Jesus sent us into the world to make disciples. Invite them into your homes so they see you saying grace. Live a holy life so they can see what one looks like! Show them what it’s like to have joy in trials because of God.

John 15:26- 16:4  “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me. 27 And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.
16 “All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. 2 They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. 3 They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. 4 I have told you this, so that when their time comes you will remember that I warned you about them. I did not tell you this from the beginning because I was with you,

Jesus didn’t leave them unwarned or unprepared. The Holy Spirit would be with them and they would have Jesus’ words.

If we continually come to the Bible the Holy Spirit will apply God’s Word to our changing life experiences.

1st John 4:7-12

1 John 4:7-12 “Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.”

Christian love is a choice and an action. Our source of love is God. Jesus is our example of how to love and the Holy Spirit living in us gives us the power to love. It’s been said that we are never nearer to God, then when we love. Since we are in His image and He is love: to be like God, to be what we are meant to be, we must love.

I read something interesting when I was studying this:

In this passage the statement, “God is love” is the explanation for many of the questions we have.

1. It’s the explanation to creation. Why did God create this world? Hasn’t it been heartbreak for Him? All the disobedience and rebellions. Why would He want something that’s nothing but trouble? Well, creation is essential to the very nature of God. If God is love, then there has to be something to love!

2. It is the explanation of free will. Unless love is a free response, it isn’t love. If we were like robots, programmed like machines, there would be no possibility for a personal relationship between God and man. God, by a deliberate act of self-limitation gave man free will so when we love God it’s real.

3. It is the explanation of providence. He didn’t just create the world and let it go. We are in His constant care and He sustains, upholds and broods over us.

4. It is the explanation of redemption. If God were only law and justice He would leave people to the consequences of their sin. He does this often during our lives, but remember the wages of sin is death. God seeks and saves the lost souls because He is love.

5. It is the explanation of the life beyond. If God were simply a creator, man like a flower, would live briefly and die and God would just create another. But, God loves us enough to want us with Him throughout eternity.

1st John 3:10-18

1 John 3:10-18 “This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.

This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother's were righteous. Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”

You can tell what a person is by their conduct.

We are told you should love one another. If you want to know how to do that, look to Christ for example. He laid down His life for us. (1 Peter 2:21) No man can see Christ and say he doesn’t know what a Christian life should be.

If we argue that the opportunity to die for someone else doesn’t come along that often, John tells us that when we see our brother in need and we have enough, we should give to him. To shut your heart and to refuse to give is to show that the love of God, which was in Jesus, isn’t in you. Any time we show self-denial or self-sacrifice for another person, we show this kind of love.

The little insert story about Cain and Abel is there to explain why bad people hate good people and why non-Christians hate Christians. Good people are a walking rebuke to evil people. The evil person will always show his flaws in comparison. And wherever a Christian is, if he’s living right – he acts as the conscience of society. That’s why Jesus was hated and why He warned Christians they would be hated.

1st John 2:7-8

1 John 2:7-8 “Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.”

The commandment is to love others. It’s old because it comes from the law. (Lev.19:18) And it’s new because Jesus interpreted it a new way. (John 13:34-35)
Jesus raised it to a new standard. Jesus didn’t just love His neighbors, He loved sinners and He loved His enemies. The Jews used to believe God wanted to destroy sinners. The rabbis said, “There is joy in heaven when one sinner is obliterated from earth.”

But, Jesus was a friend to the outcast and sinners and He taught us there is joy in heaven when one sinner comes home.

Jesus widened the boundaries of whom we are to love until they included the whole world. Where John writes the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining – remember darkness is identified with hate and light with love. We have been shown the light and it’s even now inside Christians. The world is already going through a process where it’s spreading. It may seem slow and we certainly see a lot of hate in the world, but it is progressing until Christ comes back and the reign of Christ will be a reign on love.

Don't Lose Your First Love

When the apostle John was an old man in exile on Patmos, the church was made up of second and third generation Christians. Christ still hadn’t come back. Some of the wonder and newness had worn off. And Jesus knew this would happen.

In Matthew 24:12, He said, “The love of many shall grow cold.” And it was to the church of Ephesus where John had lived and preached a long time that Christ says in Revelation 2:4, “Nevertheless I have something against you, because you have left your first love.”

When you love someone you want to know everything about them. You want to spend time with them: please them. You are excited by the very thought of them.

But later, sometimes, you might go through a period where you're a little bored with them. Or too busy to pay them much attention.

It’s the same in individual Christian lives. We’ll have mountain top experiences and we’ll have long dry patches. Sometimes Christian living gets tedious. We find ourselves not wanting to be holy and set apart anymore. We just want to blend in with the rest of the world.

As Christians we are given a new ethical demand: a new standard of moral purity, a new sexual ethic, a new kindness, a new service, a new forgiveness… and it’s difficult. Then when we lose that first thrill and enthusiasm, it’s harder and harder to stand against the world. Especially today in an America that idolizes material things and celebrities.

Memories help spark a fading love. Remembering your husband’s face when he proposed, the look in his eyes when you walked down the aisle or when you told him he was going to be a father. Remembering how God loved us so much He sent His only Son: perfect, sweet, sinless Jesus, to die a terrible death for us so we could spend eternity with him in Heaven.

It helps to spend time with that person. Not the rushing around, catching each other on the fly, leaving interrupted sentences hanging in the air, but uninterrupted, quiet time learning more about this person you love. Thinking about your future together and thanking Him for being a part of your future!

Live a life worth of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle: be patient, bearing one another in love. Ephesians 4:1-3