The Gospel of John

The Meaning of Biblical Love

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 50- 70

Genre:

Track: 050

Dictation Name: RR197AB52

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after. That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord in His temple. Wait on the Lord, be of good courage and He shall strengthen thy heart. Wait I say, on the Lord. Let us pray.

Teach us our Father to wait on Thee, to know that Thou art our sufficiency. We pray our Father that Thou wouldst quiet our often troubled hearts, our doubtful hearts and make us ever mindful how great Thou art that Thou art closer to us than we are to ourselves. More mindful of us than we can ever be and so give us grace to take hands of our lives and to commit them into Thy keeping. For Thou who hast begun Thine good work in us will continue it until Thy purposes are accomplished for all eternity. Our God we thank Thee, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture lesson is John 15:9-17 and our subject: The Meaning Of Biblical Love. John 15:9-17.

“As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.

10 If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.

11 These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.

12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.

13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

14 Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.

15 Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.

16 Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.

17 These things I command you, that ye love one another.”

This is an extremely important text and a very much neglected one, or perhaps I should say, not an understood text. Our text speaks of love but not in the pagan and modern antinomian sense. Love is tied to obedience; obedience is the test of love and essential to it. The two cannot be separated. Our Lord begins by declaring in verse nine:

“As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.”

This has been variously phrased, Plumber translated it ‘even as the Father loved me I also love you, abide in my love’. Westcott’s wording is similar: ‘even as the Father loved me and I loved you, abide in my love’. The pattern of our obedience and love is established by God the Father and God the Son, that is what verse nine is telling us. We love as we have been loved and we are to love as He has loved us. We do not define obedience, it has been done for us by Jesus Christ in His life. The redemptive and gracious love of God does not have us as the end. The whole purpose of God is not simply our salvation, that’s the starting point, seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness or His justice. So it is the love of God which we have received must be revealed to others through us. Then in verse ten we see the essential and the inseparable relationship between love and obedience:

“If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.”

There is only one way to abide in the love of the triune God, by keeping His commandments. Jesus Christ abides in God’s love because He kept God’s commandments. This statement makes again untenable the very common view that commandments only refers to Jesus’ words.

And we have red letter editions of the bible which are to fix our mind on Jesus’ words, well, if we believe the Bible everything from the first sentence of Genesis to the last of Revelation is the word of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. It’s all our Lord’s words. The standard is ‘my Father’s commandments’, antinomianism is condemned by John’s gospel and the whole of the bible. Two of the great Christian scholars, Westcott about a hundred and fifty years ago observed obedience and love are perfectly correlative, obedience and love are perfectly correlative, they are the same! That is why husband or wife or parents and children can say one to another; you don’t love me when you have no regard for what I say unto you. Well, Leon Morris also said of love: this is not some mystical experience, it is simple obedience. More than once scholar knowledgeable of the Greek and the Hebrew has said that you cannot separate love and obedience, where obedience is lacking there is no love. Then in verse eleven our Lord continues:

“These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.”

Our Lord describes here the night of His betrayal and the night before His crucifixion His frame of mind as essentially one of joy. This was a rather strange description coming as it did before the agony of the cross. It did however well describe His awareness of the cosmic victory for all time and eternity that He was about to accomplish on the cross. He prepares them to share that joy in the atonement, resurrection and the ascension in a short time.

His purpose in speaking to the disciples and to us is that we may understand what is being accomplished and that we become filled with His joy. In verse twelve He continues:

“12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.”

The commandment that is mine, the commandment that is a revelation of my nature our Lord says is that even as I have loved you you also love one another. This means an obedient self-sacrificing love, a ministering love, not a struggle for power. It is therefore not an emotional love but it is action based on obedience to God’s law in sacrificial terms. The standard and test of our love is Christ’s love. Then in verse thirteen our Lord says:

“13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Now this I submit, is one of the most important sentences that our Lord ever uttered. When we understand this we understand a great deal of what our salvation means. The word friends is the key word, it means what we mean by it but a great deal more that we have lost. The word translated as friends is in the Greek text ‘philos’ as in ‘philadelpha’, philos-adelphos, adelphi is brother, philos, friend. City of brotherly love, that’s the meaning of the name Philadelphia. And yet when we go through the bible, for example, in Esther 1:18 where we read about the princes of Persia, it’s the same word in the Greek Septuagint, philos, friends, why? Well in the bible friends and princes when this word is used means one and the same thing, why?

Well there was no hereditary nobility nor any hereditary princedom in antiquity. That is relatively modern beginning not long before the modern age. If let us say in antiquity or even in the Christian era you were a friend of a king which meant that you were invited to eat with him which meant that you were a part of his family which meant that he clothed you, remember the parable of the wedding feast? And everybody who came had to put a garment given by the king before they could eat at the king’s table at the wedding feast. And the one man who came with his own garment was cast out into utter darkness, meaning in the parable, that he could not come into the king’s presence in his own righteousness. Now this was everywhere the practice in antiquity. You could only be a part of the king’s table and a friend of the king if you were a member of his family, otherwise you were an enemy. So the king when he welcomed you to his table said thereby, you are my son or my daughter and I clothe you now and I feed you as a member of my family. So what is our Lord saying? Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends, for his princes. I am the king, I have made you here at the Last Supper as we eat together, I made you my princes, princes of grace not princes of blood as today so that as has happened often just in the last two centuries one or another prince has been quietly put into an institution as an idiot because of excessive inbreeding but at any rate.

That cannot happen in our Lord’s plan. He says I have chosen you, I make you a prince or a princess of grace and I give you the new life that makes you able to be a member of my family. But then we have a further definition, ye are my friends, my princes of grace, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Then again more in verse fifteen hence forth I call you not servants for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth but I have called you friends for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. Now, in the Gospel of John our Lord speaks of various relationships to Him, first there is the thief who comes in only to rob, then He says there is the hireling or the hired servant who only wants his paycheck so he’s in it for what the blessings of Christ may be, he’s in it because he figures this is the ticket to heaven, not so. Then there are the servants, the third class. The servant is a part of the family because in antiquity servants would come into a family, they would be members of the family, they could even receive a partial inheritance but they were there for life. A good example of that is Elaziar the servant of Abraham who until a son was born was to be the main heir even though he was a servant or a slave who was bought, he could have walked away any time but none did because they were made members of the family. Then finally there are the philos, the friends, the princes of grace, the princesses of grace. The friend, the prince of grace knows his Lord’s mind.

He obeys Him far beyond normal duties. This is our calling as Christians to be members of the royal family. Then in verse sixteen our Lord says:

“16 Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.”

Well here as elsewhere in John’s gospel as in all the bible predestination is assumed not argued. And it is set forth as an aspect of God’s grace and His love for us so we are not to see it as some have called it, a horrible doctrine, but as evidence of Christ’s love. We can never fall away, we are His for time and eternity, if it were our choice of Christ then we could be in heaven ten thousand years and by wrong thought or choice be lost but it is His love and His choice. So we are eternally secure, it is Christ who chooses us, not we Christ. The idea that man can choose Christ is thus all wrong and morally and theologically untenable. Moreover Christ declares that He has ordained appointed or chosen us for a particular post or calling. We are where we are because God so intended it. And one of the things that assures me of John Milton’s greatness in the sight of God is that while John Milton was often a hot tempered and erroneous in his thinking yet he knew God. And when he became totally blind in a sonnet he wrote meditating on it, he concluded after thinking of the condition that he had in terms of God, not what he wanted: ‘They also serve who stand and wait.’

Well, our Lord has a very practical concern, this is not spiritual talk rather the concern is kingdom growth and dominion.

“16 Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain..”

Not only does He ordain our productivity but also that our fruit should remain, this is a very practical concern with results. Then we are told:

“: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.”

So this is a general promise, whatsoever includes anything we can legitimately ask for in Christ’s name. how? To realize that it wasn’t our doing but His, He chose us, ordained us, to bring forth fruit in our sphere to do what we are required and to do unto the Lord, and then our fruit would remain. Thus we are told: whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. This is a general promise. Whatsoever includes anything we can legitimately ask for in Christ’s name. Then in verse seventeen we are again told:

“17 These things I command you, that ye love one another.”

This is a commandment to the Christian community, not to the world. The Christian community must manifest love, care, protection, charity and a loving discipline in dealing with one another. But love requires obedience to God’s ever word and the application of God’s law word to all our relationships.

Love and obedience have been defined for us by the word of God. There must be this obedient love in the Christian community that the goal is greater than the community. It is the kingdom of God and His righteousness or justice. Seek ye the first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Let us pray.

Our Father we thank Thee for this Thy word. We pray that by Thy grace we may bear fruit and that our fruit should remain. That we conduct ourselves not as servants but as princes and princesses of Thy royal household. Grant us this in Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

It is important always to remember the meaning of the word friends in the Bible, in particular in the New Testament because it is a Greek word and it translates the word princes in the Old Testament. It is a key to understanding our relationship to Jesus Christ and sadly it has been neglected because too many people have wanted minimal Christianity. Enough to get them into heaven but not enough to make them give more than they want to give and that is very, very sad.

Well if there are no questions let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee for Thy word. We thank Thee that in Thy sovereign majesty Thou hast chosen us. Sinners, rebels that we are, and Thou hast made us members of the royal household. Grant that now and always we serve Thee as we ought, that we rejoice that we have the privilege of Thy table and of Thy kingdom and that for all time and eternity we are Thine. How great Thou art our Father and we thank Thee. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.