John 15:9-17 [Easter 6 CWS B] Confirmation Sunday Pastor Ron Koehler Grace—Benson/Vail, AZ May 6, 2018 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other. 9
In the name of the One who loved us and gave himself for us, our Savior Jesus Christ, dear friends,
If you were to go to a bunch of the University of Arizona baseball games, after a while, you would be able to recognize the players, right? After all, you can get fairly close to the field and the players wear ball caps, but you can see their faces and sometimes they take their hats off. If you were walking around in the mall, you could likely pick them out; you’d recognize them. Their athletic builds would also help identify them. Certainly a U of A shirt would help too. There are any number of things that would make that U of A baseball player recognizable to you. What about when it comes to Christians? Are people able to recognize and identify Christians? Well, if they saw them in the church, it would be easier, right? But Christians don’t wear a uniform and we come in all shapes and sizes. So what about when Christians are out in the workplace or at school or driving or at the grocery store? HOW CAN YOU TELL WHO THE CHRISTIANS ARE? 1. THEY OBEY JESUS’ COMMANDS 2. THEY LOVE EACH OTHER Jesus’ words tell us about a couple of identifiable features of Christians. As he begins to talk about these things, our Savior says to Christians, the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. How simple is that? Jesus loves you! Many of us have sung the familiar children’s song “Jesus loves me this I know.” And how do we know that? “For the Bible tells me so!” Well this part of John chapter 15 is one of those places where the Bible tells you so! Jesus tells us in words anyone can understand that he loves us. The same way God the Father love Jesus—that’s how Jesus loves you and me. And you can tell Jesus loves you because he showed it. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. The greatest love possible is what Jesus showed. But you know, it was more than just giving his life for someone like a policeman or a secret service agent might do. Jesus’ life was a sinless one. The only reason he lived an earthly life in the first place was because he loved us. He wanted to live a perfect life as a human being. That would be the only kind of life that God the Father would consider a worthy sacrifice, one that would pay for sins. The laying down of his life was much greater than that of a soldier or fireman who dies while saving the life of someone else because it wasn’t just his life that Jesus took to the cross; he also took our sins to the cross. And the laying down of his life was greater still because the Father accepted his life and death as payment for the sins of the whole world. Jesus’ love for sinners moved him to make the greatest sacrifice ever known. You and I have the love Jesus. Jesus says he loves us. We trust him. God says that if we trust in Jesus and his love, then we have eternal life with him when we move from this world to heaven.
If you are familiar at all with the world of dieting, you are aware that many people will go on a diet, lose some weight, and maybe even do really well. But many, many people will regain that weight even within a year’s time. Why is that? Unfortunately, many of us know. Because people don’t remain on the diet! A better way of eating is treated, not as a lifestyle change, but as a temporary fix. Jesus says here, Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love. Saving faith in Christ cannot be treated like a temporary diet that helps you for a while, but then is dumped for an old lifestyle! Remain in Jesus—just like we heard last week—like a branch in a vine. How do we remain in him? By obeying his commands, he says. Is there an example of that? Yes! Jesus obeyed his Father’s commands. So we can look at Jesus and what he did to obey his Heavenly Father and see how we can do the same. Today is Aliyah’s Confirmation Day. She’s going to share with us her brief essay; it has to do with God’s commands, specifically the 10 Commandments. She’ll tell us about God’s expectation and Jesus keeping those commands and why we want to do the same. And that all sounds great, but how will we have the strength? The Holy Spirit lives in us, the Bible says. And we’re told that the Holy Spirit moves us to love God and creates in us a desire to keep his commands. But here’s the thing—if we do not let the Holy Spirit do his work in our hearts, we will not remain in Jesus’ love. It’s really that simple. There are a few things you are going to hear from me and other pastors repeatedly, like a Top 10 song the radio will not stop playing! Study God’s Word. Be faithful in worship. Regularly receive the Lord’s Supper. Aliyah, it is important for me to remind you of this on your Confirmation Day as you are encouraged to remain in Jesus all your life. But truthfully, everyone here should know that a week or so ago, I asked Aliyah this question as part of a Confirmation review: “True or False—Once Confirmation classes are over, we can consider our learning of God’s Word to be over because we know it all.” I could barely finish the sentence and she blurted out “No!” Remember that, Aliyah? I was really happy to hear that from you. You also told me that things you would do after Confirmation included reading the Bible and going to church. This is exactly what Jesus wants us to do! This is how we remain in his love! This is how we know his commands and want to keep them. One of the marks of an abusive relationship is the control one person exercises over another, where a person forces the other to do what they want in order to maintain the relationship. Little sinners try it out already as children: “You’re not my friend unless you give me one of your candy bars.” Teens and college-age people say things like “If you love me like you say you do, you’d have sex with me.” Adults hear this too: “If you care about the company and know what’s good for you, you won’t report what you saw.”
In every case there are prescribed behaviors to show love or maintain the relationship. But those are twisted and tainted with sin and selfishness! Jesus’ command here is different because it is truly based on love. Jesus first loved us and showed it. Jesus still loves us and wants to bless us. That can and will happen when we listen to him as our loving Shepherd and Savior. If we love him and know those things, then we have no problem obeying his commands. If we love him, we will remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. If we love him, we will give offerings willingly, generously, joyfully to support the spread of the gospel. If we love him, we will serve others with our God-given talents. Jesus’ command to obey him is not difficult or overbearing. If we greedily clutch our wallets or purses as we consider offerings to God and don’t make the time for Bible Study or reading the Bible and are not willing to serve our brothers and sisters in Christ, then it is not the expectation of Jesus that is out of whack, it’s our hearts! Sin is threatening to separate us from Christ, trying to keep us from remaining in Jesus who said, Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love. Today is a day of repentance for those sins and others which make it difficult to see that we are Christians. Jesus forgives us those sins completely. We do remain in him because he has removed those sins from us! After receiving that love from Jesus, we would not want to walk out of here today unchanged. If you were not remaining in him in some of those ways, fix them. Remain in him by following his commands. Christ can tell who the Christians are because they obey his commands. Other people will notice too and perhaps end up praising God themselves. “How can you tell your daddy loves you?” That was question the father asked his 6year old son as he they put their arms around each other after the bedtime prayers had been said. “I don’t know” said the boy. “Come on, how can you tell your daddy loves you?” the dad asked again. “Well, because you give me hugs” said the boy. “What else?” “Because you do things with me…and tickle me…and make me laugh…and buy me things…and give me kisses.” Once he started, the boy had no trouble telling the ways his father showed his love to him. Jesus says to us today, This is my command: Love each other and My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Our Savior urges us to love each other, but he explains exactly how: we are supposed to love each other with a love modeled after his love for us! That makes me think of Christ’s command to husbands when he tells them to love their wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25)! A Christian woman has no trouble realizing the precious position into which God has placed her in marriage, the family, and the church if the men in her life love her just as Christ loved the church that he died for! The same is true for brothers and sisters in Christ. They have no problem putting others first, serving others, giving up for the sake of others, if they see the love Christ showed them and see their fellow Christians living that love toward them. Position, responsibilities, types of spiritual gifts, and the like
become non-issues if love is there. Didn’t Christ show sacrificial love for us in his life and death? Didn’t he see that same sacrificial love in his Father who was willing to send him? That same kind of love is what Jesus calls for in the everyday life of each of us here this morning. So HOW CAN YOU TELL WHO THE CHRISTIANS ARE around you? They love each other! Do you remember what God says about love in 1 Corinthians 13? If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres (v.1-7). Have you been all of those things? Always? The Apostle Peter wrote the very words and will of God when he said, Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8). That’s true, isn’t it? It is true for us as Jesus’ love removed our sins from us. It is true for us also as we willingly and readily forgive others when they sin and do not show love. Haven’t you found that to be the case, that when a Christian friend hurts you, the love of Christ that you both have is able to smooth over those wrongs and remove the sting and restore your friendship? What a blessing to know the love of Christ and to feel and experience that love between us! Wouldn’t it be great if we saw a recommitment to Christian love here today? If we didn’t just say “nice sermon pastor” on the way out the door, but only have God’s truth hit you for the time you’re here? Wouldn’t it be great if we actually said, “Jesus is right. We need to love each other and I’m going to do that better beginning today”? That would show true repentance in us wouldn’t it? That would express our sorrow over our sins that have shown a lack of love. That would show a determination to live by the Spirit and obey Christ’s command to love each other. THAT’S HOW YOU CAN TELL WHO THE CHRISTIANS ARE! I pray that the Holy Spirit does his work on our hearts today, that he removes the hard edges on us, softens our hearts, makes us willing to serve, moves us to take the words of others in the kindest possible way, makes us eager to study his Word and compels us to live the love Jesus showed and wants for his people. I pray—and I hope you join me in this—that people all around us CAN TELL WHO THE CHRISTIANS ARE as they see us OBEYING JESUS’ COMMANDS and LOVING EACH OTHER so that they may come to know Jesus through us and so that God may be glorified. Amen. Now the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.