“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. This I command you, that you love one another.” (John 15:12-17 NASB1995)
What did Jesus mean here by commanding us to love one
another? He was not speaking of human love, which is based in our emotions and
in our circumstances, and in the ones we are choosing to love. For this is
agape love, which prefers what God prefers, which is all that is holy,
righteous, godly, morally pure, upright, honest, faithful, and obedient to our
Lord and to his commands (New Covenant). So if we love with this kind of love,
we will love even those who hate and mistreat us and who speak evil against us.
If we truly love other people like Jesus loved us, and gave
his life up for us on that cross to set us free from our slavery to sin, so we
would now obey him, in practice, then we are not going to be people who lie to
people just to make them feel good, so that they will like us. But we will
speak the truth of the Scriptures, taught in their appropriate context, because
we love the people of this world, and all who profess faith in Jesus Christ.
For we want them to be delivered from bondage to sin and to live holy lives for
the Lord.
And so we will lay down our lives in order to see others be
set free from their bondage to sin and to walk holy in surrender to the Lord
and to his will and purpose for our lives. And we will be opposed, hated, rejected,
and persecuted, as Jesus was, because we love the people, and so we tell them
the truth and not the lies which are so popularized today. But if they attack
our character with lies, we do have the right to defend our own honor, like
Jesus did, and like the apostles did, but to do so in love, and not in hate.
Now, the Scriptures do teach that, as followers of Christ, we
are to serve and to obey the Lord with our lives. So Jesus was not telling his
disciples that they no longer had to serve him and to bow to him as Lord, and
that they were on an equal level with Jesus as his friends. But he was letting
them know that, if they obeyed his commandments, that they were in an intimate
relationship with him, and that he regarded them as his friends, because they
did what he said, out of love for him, not just because they had to.
But it is true that we do not come to faith in Jesus Christ
of our own accord, of our own doing, on our own terms. We must be drawn to
Christ by God, as he persuades us as to his righteousness and holiness, and of
our sinfulness, and of our need to die to sin and to now obey God with our
lives. For even the faith to believe in Christ is not of our own doing, but it
is persuaded of God, and it is gifted to us by God, and thus it will agree with
God in following him in death to sin and in walks of obedience to his commands
in holy living.
And it is true, as well, that faith in Jesus Christ, which
is of God, and not of human flesh, will result in us denying self, dying to
sin, and in obeying our Lord’s commands, in practice, or it is not faith which
saves. For we are not saved and on our way to heaven based on a profession of
faith in Jesus which is not accompanied by us dying with him to sin and now
living for him in walks of surrender to his will in obedience to his commands.
So if sin is still your practice, and not obedience, you are not in Christ by
faith in him.
[Matthew 7:13-14,21-23; Luke 9:23-26; John 1:12-13; John
6:44; John 10:27-30; Acts 26:18; Romans 2:6-8; Romans 6:1-23; Romans 8:1-14; 1
Corinthians 10:1-22; Galatians 5:16-24; Ephesians 2:8-10; Ephesians 4:17-32;
Ephesians 5:3-6; Titus 2:11-14; Hebrews 3:1-19; Hebrews 4:1-13; Hebrews 12:1-2;
1 Peter 2:24; 1 John 1:5-10; 1 John 2:3-6; 1 John 3:4-10]
My Sheep
Based off John 10:1-30 NIV
An Original Work / June 24, 2012
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love
My sheep hear me.
They know me.
They listen to my
voice and obey.
I call them and lead
them.
They know my voice,
so they follow me.
They will never
follow strangers.
They will run away
from them.
The voice of a
stranger they know not;
They do not follow
him.
So, I tell you the
truth that
I am the gate, so
you enter in.
Whoever does enter
Will find
forgiveness and will be saved.
Nonetheless whoever
enters
Not by the gate;
other way,
He is the thief and
a robber.
Listen not, the
sheep to him.
Oh, I am the Good
Shepherd,
Who laid his own
life down for the sheep.
I know them. They
know me.
They will live with
me eternally.
The thief only comes
to steal and
Kill and to destroy
the church.
I have come to give
you life that
You may have it to
the full…
They know my voice,
so they follow me.
Appointed by God to Bear Fruit
No comments:
Post a Comment