“Abide in My Love”
John 15:9-17
5/17/09
It’s odd that we have to be told to
love. You’d think that love is something that we’d
all want for each other. We all know how much we ourselves want
to be loved. And yet, even the world seems to be aware of the
lack of love that has existed among people for years. There have
even been a number of songs written which mourn the fact that what the
world needs now there’s just too little of. And yet, when
it comes to giving an answer for the reason why people don’t
naturally love one another, the songs get it all wrong. They like
to lay the blame on the parents or the environment in which a child is
raised. They claim that children come into this world like blank
slates and that if loved themselves they would naturally love
others. Children must be taught to hate, so the philosophy goes.
But while it’s true that a child might grow up
expressing his hatred in a violent way due to his upbringing and
surroundings, the Word of God tells us that it’s not that we must
be taught to hate, but that we must be taught to love. According
to the Scriptures we don’t come into this world with a natural
inclination towards loving one another. Rather, we come into this
world as enemies of God, hating both Him and each other. Why
should the Bible have to command us to love at all, if that
weren’t a problem for us? But Jeremiah tells us, “The
heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can
understand it?” And Jesus says, “For out of the heart
come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false
witness, slander.” According to the Word of God, our hearts
are full of hatred from conception, which will eventually manifest
itself in our words and deeds as we grow older.
But if this is so, how then can Jesus command us to
abide in His love and to love one another as He has loved us? If
by nature we hate both God and one another, how can we do what Jesus
commands? The fact is we can’t unless our heart is
changed. Because our heart is contaminated with sin, there can be
no abiding in Christ’s love for us and loving one another unless
our heart is first cleansed. But this is exactly what the Lord
does for you through His Word and your Baptism. Jesus isn’t
speaking to unbelievers here in today’s Gospel, but to believers
whose hearts have been cleansed and changed through the preaching of
the Gospel and the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy
Spirit.
We see this change clearly in the reading from the
book of Acts for today when, as Peter proclaims that everyone who
believes in Jesus receives the forgiveness of sins through His Name,
suddenly the pagans who were listening to him were filled with the Holy
Spirit and they began speaking in tongues, praising God. Through
the Word of the Gospel the Lord had created new hearts within
them. Recognizing this Peter then commanded that they be baptized
in the Name of Jesus Christ, which is where, as the author of the book
of Hebrews explains, our hearts are sprinkled clean from an evil
conscience and our bodies are washed with pure water. And this
was done for you, too. When you heard the Gospel and were washed
in the waters of your Baptism, the Holy Spirit gave you a new heart, a
heart that can now trust in Jesus, abide in His love, and love others
as He has loved you. Whereas before you were like dead Lazarus,
who couldn’t do anything until the Lord spoke him back to life
with His Word, now, since Jesus has brought you back to life with His
Word, you can do anything He asks of you with the help of the Holy
Spirit whom you also have received through the washing of water and the
Word.
But if we now have been given a new and clean heart,
why is it that Jesus must teach us to abide in His love and to love one
another? Shouldn’t this come naturally? Well, it
depends on what nature you’re talking about. Yes, according
to the new nature that we now have in Jesus, we don’t need to be
taught to love. This nature loves without the Law and the
commandments demanding it to do so. This is why Paul lists love
under the fruit of the Spirit in the book of Galatians and then writes
that against such things there is no Law. Perfect love
doesn’t have to be commanded; it loves spontaneously. But
there’s another nature that we all still carry; it’s called
the sinful nature, the old Adam, and the flesh, and it neither wants to
love nor can it without sin. Can it love certain people?
Yes, like a mother that loves her children, even if she isn’t a
Christian. But it will not love everyone, including its enemies,
nor can it love as Jesus loves. Even Christians struggle with
this. And so, according to their sinful nature, Christians must
be taught and commanded to love, so that they might die to the hatred
that is so characteristic of this nature and walk not by the flesh but
by the spirit. There’s a warfare that’s going on
within every Christian, where every day he must, on the one hand, fight
against the lusts of the flesh that still hates God and his neighbors
and does not want to obey God’s commandments, and, on the other
hand, strengthen the will of the spirit with the Word of God, so that
he might abide in Christ’s love and love others as Christ has
loved him. According to the one nature we need to hear the Law;
according to the other nature we need to hear the Gospel.
According to the sinful nature we are slaves under the Law who do what
we are commanded only when coerced and threatened; according to the new
nature we are the Lord’s friends under the Gospel, who do what He
commands, because we live in His love.
This brings us to Jesus’ words in
today’s Gospel text, where He commands us to abide in His love
and to love one another as He has loved us. Again, because by
nature we only know how to hate, we must be taught by the Lord how to
love. First we are told to abide in His love for us. There
can be no loving one another the way God intends us to love one
another, if we are not first on the receiving end of Christ’s
love for us. We must first be loved by the Lord before we can
show His love to others. So, what does it mean to abide in
Christ’s love? We don’t have to guess; Jesus spells
it out for us. He says, “If you keep my commandments, you
will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s
commandments and abide in His love.” Well, it sounds like
Jesus is saying, “As long as you obey me and follow my rules and
do what I say, then you’ll abide in my love.” If that
were the case, Jesus would be little more than a new Moses and abiding
in His love would mean nothing more than obeying a bunch of laws.
The 10 commandments were originally and still are an expression of
God’s love, as they are summarized with the commands to love God
and love your neighbor as yourself. What’s more, the
commandments were given by God to protect His gifts to us. And
yet, we weren’t able to keep the first 10. How are we going
to keep any commandments that Jesus gives us?
Fortunately for us, the word
“commandment” has a much broader meaning that simply
“law.” It is often used in the Scriptures to refer to
the entire Word of God, both Law and Gospel. Here Jesus uses it
in this broader sense to indicate that keeping His commandments is
about more than just doing what He tells us to do. It’s
about clinging to everything He says and promises us in His Word, first
and foremost those things which He says about His love for us and how
He showed that love to us. Elsewhere the Apostle John writes,
“And this is His commandment, that we believe in the Name of
[God’s] Son Jesus Christ and love one another just as He has
commanded us. Whoever keeps His commandments abides in Him, and
He in them.” There in his first epistle John refers to
believing in Jesus and loving one another as the commandment of the
Lord; and you can’t have one without the other. Believing
in Jesus and loving one another go together, but believing in Jesus
comes first, then loving one another.
To believe in Jesus is to first be on the receiving
end of His love for you. To believe in Jesus is to trust that out
of His love for you He poured out His blood for you on the cross as the
atoning sacrifice for your sins and then rose again from the dead,
overcoming sin, death, and the devil for you, in order to reconcile you
to God. To believe in Jesus is to trust that He accomplished
everything that is necessary for your salvation, apart from your
willing or doing. Believing in Jesus means trusting in
God’s Word that out of His love for you He gave you His
only-begotten Son, so that through faith in Him you should not perish
but have eternal life. To believe in Jesus is not simply to
remember these facts once in a while, but to hold His Word sacred and
gladly hear and learn it. So, to abide in Jesus’ love is
first and foremost about being on the receiving end of that love as He
continues to pour His love into you daily through the Scriptures and
the Sacraments. Here today the Lord is strengthening your faith
in Him as He fills you up with His love in forgiving you your sins and
in feeding you on His body and blood.
Second, abiding in Jesus’ love means loving
one another in the same way that you are loved by the Lord.
Again, this would be impossible for you, if your heart were not first
changed and you were not on the receiving end of the Lord’s love
yourself. This kind of love that God wants us to show one another
cannot be coerced or forced from you by threats. You can only
love one another as Jesus loves you, once you have been loved by Jesus
and His love has its way with you. When the Lord fills you up
with His love, He doesn’t stop once your cup is full, but as
Psalm 23 states, our cup overflows. Jesus keeps pouring His love
into you until it has nowhere else to go but outwards towards the
people around you, so that they get wet with that same love.
Imagine a child playing in a bathtub. If you’re sitting
near him or her at the time, you’re going to get wet as they
splash around. I experienced this myself with my niece and
nephew. This is what it should be like for others as we splash
around in our baptismal waters getting everyone else wet with the love
of Jesus which He pours into our hearts.
The more we live under the Lord’s love for us,
the more we will show that love towards others, especially towards our
own brothers and sisters in Christ, who know that love, too. Of
course, none of us will be able to love as perfectly as Jesus. We
will be hindered by our sinful nature. We will not be able to
live as selflessly as He did. We will not give our lives for
others as completely as He did. We will have trouble forgiving
others as He forgives us. But as His love washes away our sins
and continues to be poured into us, we will with the help of His Spirit
abide in Him, bearing the fruit of faith towards Him and fervent love
towards one another, until He removes the sinful nature once and for
all and brings us into that perfect state of love in heaven on the day
He returns for us just as He promises. Until then, may He
continue to fill you with His joy as you abide in His love. Amen.