John 15:12-17Keeping the vine and branches metaphor in mind. Then we obey this command in the strength found by abiding in Him. We are called to a type of love and a degree of love that we don’t have outside of Christ. He says very clearly that He chose you and appointed you to bear fruit that is incorruptible. The only way in this world to bear incorruptible fruit is in Him impacting the lives of others. So you pray for this fruit while knowing your source of strength is Him. Utterly dependent on Him then you ask the Father in His name and receive it. The Love we have for one another in Him is an incorruptible fruit of our life in Him. Yet, if we don’t listen and reflect on what Jesus teaches here, we spend our lives on nothing. It will be similar to or identical with the nothing those who don’t know Christ dwell on. However, a life spent on corruptible “stuff” is still a life spent on nothing. Determinedly remaining focused on spiritual matters is “contra mundum” or against the world in the sense that your values and evaluation of the goodness, truthfulness, and beauty is “contra mundum” and can cause conflict. Jesus didn’t have conflict with the Pharisees because they were opposed to goodness, truth, and beauty. He had conflict because they were wrong about what was good, true, and beautiful.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay 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 have 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.
In our age especially, the world is threatened by anyone claiming to know anything metaphysical or transcendent. Our society slipped from “freedom of religion” and an absence of a state sanctioned religion to “freedom from religion” and a state religion of secularism without thought or reflection. It is better to experience this friction than to live in a place where nobody took notice of the difference or acknowledged it as an ideal but not a goal.
John 15:18-25
“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause.’
In our age especially, the world is threatened by anyone claiming to know anything metaphysical or transcendent. Our society slipped from “freedom of religion” and an absence of a state sanctioned religion to “freedom from religion” and a state religion of secularism without thought or reflection. It is better to experience the friction as Jesus did than to live in a place where people don't admit religion into the public square or acknowledge religion as an ideal but not as a goal.
John 15:26-27
“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.
The coming of Pentecost was not to be unexpected and it was essential to the foundation of the Church. The Holy Spirit flows from God the Father and witnessed to the truth about Jesus sweeping people into the Church and the apostolic witness of those trained by Christ formed a foundational set of doctrine and teaching by the eyewitnesses of the incarnation, ministry, and resurrection.
No comments:
Post a Comment