I invite you to turn with me in your Bible to John chapter 15. And if you want to join with me in the Pew Bible, you can turn with me to page 902 in the Pew Bible. We are going to be looking at verses 12 through 17. This is on page 902. John chapter 15, beginning at verse 12. Hear now God's holy word. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. 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've made known to you. 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. These things I command you so that you will love one another." And thus far, the reading of God's holy word. Well, we are going to pick up where we left off over a month ago in our series on the Gospel of John. As you know, we are making our way through the Gospel of John, and so we're gonna pick up where we left off, and that means we are going to consider verses 12 through 17 of John 15. But before we do that, I do want to provide a brief recap of where we are at. And the gospel of John is neatly divided into two books or sections. And the first 12 chapters make up the first section. And it is about Jesus's public ministry. And it's often referred to as the book of signs. The second section is from chapter 13 to the end of the book. And it covers Jesus's private ministry to his disciples and his death and resurrection. Now, Jesus's private ministry to his disciples takes place in the upper room where they ate the Passover meal together. And that is where we are right now. They have finished eating the Passover meal. Judas has left to go and betray Jesus. And now Jesus is teaching his 11 disciples and preparing them for his imminent departure. And as we have seen, chapter 15 is essentially about relationships. It is about the covenant relationship that we have with God, with Jesus, and with one another. In many ways, this final discourse of Jesus to his disciples is the new covenant version of Moses's farewell discourse to Israel in the book of Deuteronomy. And in the first 11 verses, Jesus uses the vine metaphor to describe the current relationship we have with God, with Jesus, and with one another. Jesus is the true vine, Christians are branches on the true vine, and the Father is the vine dresser. And from all of this, we learn that the church is the people of God. Or as Paul put it, we, the church made up of Jews and Gentiles, we are the circumcision, we are the Israel of God, the people of God. And so if you want to be a part of God's house, part of God's vineyard, part of God's people, then you need to be joined to Jesus by faith and thus part of the church. Because Jesus himself is the true vine. He is the true Israel, the true people of God. God is establishing and growing his vineyard in and through Jesus. Or to use another biblical metaphor, Jesus is the chief cornerstone and God is building his temple, his house in and through Jesus. And this means, of course, as Jesus says in these first 11 verses, that we need to abide or remain in Him in order to experience fullness of joy or to experience salvation. You need to remain in Christ. And we do that by imbibing His teaching, His words, by loving Him and keeping His commandments. Or as the author of Hebrews put it, we have need of endurance so that when we have done the will of God, we may receive what is promised. And again, Moses said essentially the same thing to Israel in the book of Deuteronomy. He exhorted them to be covenant keepers and not covenant breakers. That's the same thing as to say you need to remain or to abide in Jesus by loving him and keeping his commandments. And Moses, too, exhorted Israel to place God's words on their hearts, and they were to love and fear God and to keep his commandments that they might live. Now, although Moses and Jesus both essentially said the same thing, there is one key difference. were at least one key difference. Moses told Israel to keep the commandment that the Lord had told him to teach them. So Moses receives the word from the Lord, the commandments from the Lord, and then he goes and teaches and tells Israel what the Lord had said to him to tell them. Jesus, though, told his disciples to keep his commandment. He doesn't say, thus says the Lord, or this is what the Lord told me to tell you, or these are the commandments of the Lord which I have received from him to tell you. No, he says, this is my commandment. He told them to keep his commandments. Verse 10, keep my commandments. And in verse 12 he says, this is my commandment. And Jesus is able to say that and to do that because Jesus himself, as we have seen, and we were told right from the very beginning, that he is indeed the Lord God. He is Yahweh. He is Emmanuel, as we talked about in Christmas, God with us. And so he doesn't say, thus says the Lord. He is the Lord. He says, keep my commandments. And so then in the first 11 verses of chapter 15, Jesus focuses then on our relationship with him and with the Father. In verses 12 through 17, he now turns his attention to the relationship that we have with one another. Now the two are related, our relationship with Christ and with one another are always related, but here he focuses on our relationship with one another. And his main point, or rather command, is simply this. Love one another as I have loved you. Jesus has saved us, he has made us clean, as he says in verse three, and now he gives us his law, He commands us to love one another. Now there are obviously many commands in the Bible, and all of them, of course, are important. But I think it's fair to say that they aren't all equally important. As Jesus says elsewhere, there are weightier matters of the law. And this particular commandment, to love one another, should be classified as one of the weightier matters of the law. And it's one that Jesus here wants to impress upon your heart and your mind. He wants you to feel the weight of this command that he is giving to us. And there are a number of reasons why this is so. First, we should know that this is the second time Jesus has given this command to his disciples. You might recall in John chapter 13, he had said to them, a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. You know, if you wanna stress something, if you wanna highlight it's important, then one thing that you can do to do that is to simply repeat yourself. If I, for example, think that you ought to write a thank you note, then I will tell you, you ought to write a thank you note. And I won't just tell you once, I will perhaps tell you over and over again. And the sheer fact that I repeat myself will tell you that that is very important to me. And I really think that you need to do that. Well, this is what Jesus is doing here. He is hammering home his point. He's telling them this is very important. He wants them to understand the weightiness of this command. And John certainly got the message because he stresses this command in his epistles. 1 John 3 says, for this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Again, in that same chapter, and this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as he has commanded us. And also in his second epistle, he says this, and now I ask you, dear lady, not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. We also see the importance of this commandment by noting that the paragraph begins and ends with this command to love. You'll notice there in verse 12, this is the commandment that you love one another, and then verse 17, these things I command you so that you will love one another. So there's these bookends of this love commandment here paragraph, and this is simply a literary device to highlight, again, the importance of this commandment to love one another. And so this is John's way of putting this commandment in bold letters, or he's underlining it, or he's highlighting it, or to use a newspaper metaphor, he's not putting it in the back page or in the middle, he's putting it on the front page so that everybody gets the message. This is what I want you to do, to love one another. But a third way in which we see the importance of this commandment is that Jesus highlights this particular commandment. In verse 10, Jesus talked about abiding in his love by keeping his commandments. Notice the plural, commandments. But now here Jesus gets very specific. He highlights or he mentions a particular commandment that he wants us to keep. Out of all the ones he could have mentioned, he chooses to mention this one. So clearly it's an important command to him, one that we need to be careful and diligent to keep. And of course, this one command sums up the whole law. If you keep this command, then you will end up keeping the rest of the commandments. Paul says in Romans that love does no wrong to a neighbor, and therefore it is the fulfilling of the law. He also says that the whole law is fulfilled in one word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Now, perhaps this is why Jesus says in verse 12, this is my commandment. My one commandment that I'm giving to you is the one commandment that entails all the other commandments. So then loving one another is an important command. It's a weightier matter of the law. And do note that it is a command. It's not a suggestion. It's not something that we are to do only if we feel like it, or only when it's easy to do, or only if we agree with it in these various circumstances. No, Jesus is Lord, and this is his commandment to you and to me. We are obligated to love one another. Love, Paul says in Romans, is the debt we owe to one another. But Jesus' commandment of love does, though, come with a twist. We are to love one another as Jesus has loved us. And this is what makes the commandment new, as we saw in John 13. As we read in Leviticus 19, God exhorted Israel to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus changes that to love one another as I have loved you. Now that God has come in the flesh and has lived a perfect life of love as a human being, he then is the perfect, the concrete example of what it means to love as a human being and what it means to love other human beings as a human being. And in verse 13, Jesus says this, greater love has no one than this, that someone laid down his life for his friends. And that is of course exactly how Jesus has loved us. He has laid down his life for us. In chapter 10, Jesus said that he is the good shepherd and the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. and in the chapters to come, we will see him do just that. He will willingly subject himself to abuse and torture and even to death on a cross for us and our salvation. And how he has loved us then is the way in which we are now to love one another. But the point, of course, is not that in order to love in the same way that Christ has loved us, we need to necessarily lay down our lives and physically die for one another. Now, in rare cases, that might actually be true, but those would only be very rare cases. We can still love with Christ-like love without physically dying for one another. And that is because the point here is the principle behind Christ's act of sacrificial love. The way in which Jesus loved us was that it was sacrificial and it was beneficial. He gave up his life for us. He didn't die for the sake of dying or to show what a loving guy he is. No, he gave up his life because that is what it took in order to deliver us from our sin and death. That's what we needed. And that's why he gave up his life. It was sacrificial and it was beneficial. We saw the same thing with the foot washing. The point is not that we need to wash each other's feet in order to copy Jesus' example. No, the point, if we're gonna copy his example, is that we have to humble ourselves and be willing to serve one another and to meet the needs of one another. That won't be washing each other's feet because that's not our need. But it will be doing things that will benefit and that will cost us. It will benefit the other person and cost us. That's the point. And so to love like Christ is to give up our rights or our comforts or resources for one another. We will do what is needed to be done in order to benefit the other person. And so like Christ's love for us, our love will be tangible, it'll be concrete, it'll be expressed, not just in words, but in what we do for one another. So what would that look like then today? Well, there are many ways in which that could be expressed, isn't there? It might be worthwhile going back after the service today, and we have free time, to think about how can we love one another as Jesus has loved us? What would that look like? What would we do in order to follow Jesus' example here? Well, here are just a few possible examples. It could mean that you go and fix or clean somebody's bathroom. It might mean visiting somebody in the hospital or at a nursing home. Might mean giving money to the Deacons Fund that will then go to help other people. It might mean that you're going to write an encouraging letter, or that you're going to pray for one another. It might mean that you're going to let your little brother play with your toy, even though he wasn't willing to let you play with his. It might mean filling in for somebody so that they can have a break from their duties and responsibilities. I mean, on and on, you can go, where you do something that's gonna cost you for the benefit of somebody else. Love one another as he has loved us. That's what Jesus wants us to do. It is very important to him. He commands us to love. He repeats it. He emphasizes it. He highlights it. And in light of this, it should not surprise you that how you treat one another is directly tied to your relationship with him. And we see this in two ways. First, your love for one another is a reflection of your love for Jesus. Now, as we've seen already, love for Jesus is expressed by keeping his commandments. And Jesus' key commandment, as he says here, is that you love one another. Therefore, if you love Jesus, then you're going to love one another because you're going to keep his command to love one another. And the more you love Jesus, the more you will love one another. Love for Jesus, whom you have not seen because he's in heaven, will be expressed by love for your brother or sister in Christ, who you do see, and who is sitting in front of you, behind you, and beside you. In Matthew 25, as you know, Jesus equates giving food to a hungry brother with giving food to him. Because your love for Jesus is expressed in your love for one another. It's tied together. Many years ago when I was in seminary, my counseling teacher taught us that all the problems that we have in our relationships with each other, what he called our horizontal relationships, all stem from problems in our relationship with God or with our vertical relationship. So if you are walking close with God, if you are loving Christ, then you will be loving your brother. And if you are not loving your brother, then that means your relationship with God is not where it ought to be. Because the two are tied together. And husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, church members, we should take note of this very fact. Because as you all know, It is hardest to love those well who are closest to us and with whom we live day in and day out. It's harder to love those in the same church than those who are members of another congregation. Isn't that true? Loving from afar is so much easier. That's why it's so easy to think that the grass is greener on the other side. to think that if I were in just a different relationship, or in a different family, or in a different church, it would be so much better. And that is why, at least partially why, broken relationships and serial marriages and church hocking are so prevalent. But we have to understand that life with sinners that you live with constantly is never going to be easy. You're not going to be easy. I'm not going to be easy. To love sinners, you need to love as Christ has loved, don't you? Indeed, Christ has saved us to do just that, to go and bear fruit and love one another. He has saved us so that we might love Him by loving one another. Now I realize, and certainly the Bible realizes, that life in this fallen world is messy, and it is at times tricky. And relationships change over time, and some come to an end. Some come to an end for good reasons. Some come to an end for the wrong reasons. That's why there are biblical divorces and there are unbiblical divorces. And people leave churches for good reasons and some for not so good reasons. But regardless of the situation, the call and command to love always remains true. So focus and work on loving the people, especially the people who are closest to you. Don't give up on it or hate one another, because to do so is to hate Christ. Because your love for one another is directly tied to your love for Christ. The two go hand in hand. That's why John says in 1 John 4 verses 20 and 21, if anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. We also see how our love for one another is tied to our relationship with Christ in that as we love one another, that will strengthen our relationship with Jesus. In verse 14, Jesus says, you are my friends if you do what I command you. This is reminiscent of what he had said in verse 10. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. We grow, in other words, in our friendship and in our relationship with Jesus as we keep his commandments, and in particular, as we keep this command, to love one another. We will grow in our communion, intimacy, and fellowship with Jesus. He will teach us and reveal himself to us. Our friendship with him will go from strength to strength as we love one another. In verse seven, we saw the connection between faithfulness and answered prayer. We see the same thing in verse 16, but now in relation to the specific command to love one another. You know, Peter makes the exact same point, except he applies it even more narrowly to husbands. When he says that husbands must dwell with their wives in their standing, otherwise their prayers will be hindered. You see, your relationship with God is connected to how you relate to one another. And if husbands are not dwelling with their wives in their standing, that's gonna affect their relationship with God and their prayer life. You see, you can't grow in a relationship with someone if you gossip about them, if you hate their spouse and their children, if you lie about their family and these sorts of things. You know, that person's not gonna open their heart to you or develop a close friendship with you if you treat him and his loved ones in that kind of sinful way. And the same is true with Christ. how we love one another affects our relationship with him. So let me ask you this question, or perhaps questions. Do you want to know Jesus better? Do you want to have a more intimate communion and fellowship with him? Do you want to please him? Do you want to walk with Jesus as Enoch walked with God? than love one another. You know, here we see that you can't be a lone ranger Christian, right? You can't love Jesus all by yourself. You can't do what he wants you to do all by yourself because he wants you to love other Christians. It's like a father wants his children to love one another, get along with each other. He doesn't want them fighting, bickering and hitting each other and going their separate ways. No. To be a Christian is to be in community with other Christians. It is to be part of a church congregation. To be an active member of the church and congregation. That's how you love Jesus. But you can't do that if you worship at home or on the boat or wherever and stick to yourself. Jesus' command to love one another is one that we do need to take to heart. We need to focus on it and work at keeping it. But we know it's not gonna be easy, at times it's gonna be hard, and at times we're not gonna be successful. After all, there is a good reason, by the way, that Jesus here and the entire New Testament and indeed the entire Bible has to stress this particular command. We are redeemed sinners. And that is what the church is made up of, a group of redeemed sinners. We don't naturally love other people. We naturally love ourselves way too much. And that is why we need to be constantly exhorted and reminded to love one another. So here are the reminder. Heed the exhortation. Love one another as Christ has loved you. Let us pray. Lord, our God, we do ask that you would forgive us for the many ways in which we have fallen short of your command to us. And indeed, even the way in which we've not really treated it seriously, we've not focused on it or kept it in the forefront of our minds and hearts that we would Look out for not only our own interests, but the interests of others. We do pray, oh God, that you would enable us to imitate the mind of Christ and his example, that we might love one another as he has loved us. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.