12 This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. 14 You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. 17 These things I command you, that you love one another.
Commentary
Vs. 12 “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
With Jesus just finishing His discourse on the paramount importance of abiding in Him (in His love) and keeping His Word and Commandments, and that as the Father loves Him so He loves us, therefore Jesus now gives us one great commandment that is to mark all of His disciples, which is that we love one another as He has loved us. Thus, as God’s love is openly expressed and given between the Father and the Son and then to us, so we are to exemplify His love to one another! Love then is the key to both the churches and individual believer’s well-being as the Apostle Paul clearly understood when he wrote the infamous love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13.
Vs. 13 “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”
Here Jesus makes Sacrificial love, His Sacrificial Love, the standard of all true greatness. For nothing good has ever been born out of self-seeking and self-serving “love”. Thus, there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for his friends, something which Jesus was now preparing Himself and later his disciples to do.
Vs. 14 “You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.”
Friendship then with God is not by casual acquaintance, nor is it by lip service or flattery, it is only by doing whatever He commands us to do!
Vs. 15 “No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.”
The Lord Jesus now makes it clear that His view of His disciples is not one of their being mere servants, rather He views us as His friends who of course are in His service, just as He was in ours. Now because He sees us as His friends, He shares with us all things that He Himself heard from His Father. Thus, Jesus by saying as much is saying that He Himself has taken them (and us all who believe in Him) into His own confidence, and thus into His “inner circle” where He can freely entrust us with keeping His Word!
Vs. 16 “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.”
Jesus now recalls several key things. First is that He chose us, not just to be His disciples or to eternal salvation, but He chose us, that is He foreordained and foresaw the roles and purposes that we as God’s children and His disciples would fulfill. Therefore, in choosing us, He also appointed us to go and bear fruit, and that the fruit that we bear should remain. For the works that we do in Christ’s Name, their everlasting impacts, must remain! And so Jesus once again says that whatever we ask the Father in His Name He may give us, for we are not independent of Him but fully dependent upon Him for the fruit we bear and which remains!
Vs. 17 “These things I command you, that you love one another.”
Jesus now commands us that we are to love one another, because in the process of seeking to do great and mighty things for the Lord, love sadly can get left behind. Therefore, it is paramount that in all that we do that we do it through God’s love and in accord with His love, otherwise it will not remain!
Scripture Quotations
New King James (1982):Thomas Nelson.
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