John 15:9,10 - Loving and obeying

15:9

One of the themes that runs through John’s gospel is the similarity between our relationship with Jesus and Jesus’ relationship with the Father. Commentators often focus on the differences. Now at one level this is perfectly right and reasonable (has anyone of us created a universes recently?), but it is actually not doing justice to the text nor to the words of Jesus. Why did Jesus keep saying things like this, “as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you”? Was it because He wanted to emphasise the difference in His relationship with the Father, or was it because He wants us to appreciate the depth and significance of our relationship with Him? The answer is obviously the latter.

Again, we need to make sure that we do not just interpret the word “love” in a sentimental way.

So how has the Father loved Jesus? He gave Him an enormously important task. He shared His thoughts and purposes with Him. It involved Jesus going to the cross. He gave Him the strength to go through with that task. He raised Him from the dead. In the same way Jesus brings us into His confidence, and He involves us in His work. We too may suffer, but we will also see His power at work in our lives. So we must remain in His love. Jesus constantly chose to obey His Father. We remain in Jesus’ love by constantly choosing to follow Him.

15:10

Now we are told how we remain in Jesus’ love, by keeping His commands. The gospel call is a call to obedience. This does not mean in any way that we earn salvation, but it is a call to repent, to turn back to God, to put our faith in Christ. What are we believing? We believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, this means acknowledging our sin so that we can receive forgiveness. We believe that God will give us the gift of the Holy Spirit, that we are born again by the Spirit. What does the Holy Spirit do? He works in our life to transform us so that we become increasingly Christlike. We follow Jesus on Jesus’ terms, and that includes obeying Him.

This is also about relationship. Jesus was in intimate relationship with His Father. How do we know that? What was the effect? It was a life of perfect obedience. Obedience and relationship go together.