Love Is All-Important
LOVE IS ALL-IMPORTANT
JOHN 15:12-19
The new community of Christ’s followers would be based on love.
Once again we return to the all-important theme of love. The link between love for God and love for one’s neighbor is so strong in John’s Gospel that Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament states: “Love to God and Christ takes second place after love to the brethren.” There is some strong evidence for that rather surprising statement. But this love is no mere sentiment which can be worked up by a man at will or which comes irrationally upon him. Its source is the love of God shown in Christ and only those who have first meditated on, and responded to, that love are able to reflect it in their attitude to others. Jesus’ love was proved by laying down his life. It was also proved by the way in which he treated his disciples as his friends, keeping them informed about what he was doing. His friendship to them was also shown by the fact that it was he who had chosen them, rather than the reverse.
If it was previously impossible to speak of light without mentioning darkness (1:4f. etc.), now it is impossible to mention love without in the end coming on to hatred. Men hated the light (3:20) and the “Book of Signs” showed how many of them came consequently to hate the One who was the Light of the World. Jesus acknowledged that the world hated him, though it could not hate his unbelieving brothers (7:7). But where his disciples are faithful, the hatred will spread to them (cf. 17:14). The reason for the hatred was that he had picked them out from the world, and nobody likes a convert taken away from his own side.
Notes 15:12: “My commandment” is singular, perhaps summarizing all commandments (15:10). 15:13: there is no reason to suppose here that Jesus did not die for the whole world. It is his friends who specifically benefit from it and appreciate it. And it is by receiving his sacrifice for themselves that they become in a real sense his friends. 15:15: the contrast between servants and sons had been made in 8:35. Here it is servants and friends. The friends need to do his will just as much as servants, but because they have a different relationship and a fuller knowledge, it is done on a different footing. 15:16: the friends of Jesus are not marked off by natural attractiveness nor even by their own moral choice. His sovereign will initiates and maintains the relationship.