Digging Deeper: Love (one another) in the House

Jesus says to his disciples during their last meal together before he is arrested, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Here, Jesus is essentially explaining the way in which we, as his disciples, are to live our lives – in love. That’s what this whole thing is all about. God is love, we learn from John, and everyone who truly loves has been born of God and knows God. And Jesus tells his disciples that the greatest love that one can ever have is a love that is willing to die for your friends. This is a love of complete surrender. And Jesus demonstrates this love for his friends when he is murdered the next day. And yet Jesus’ love is so great that he not only gives his own life up for the sake of his friends, but even for his enemies as well.

And Jesus says:

“You are my friends if you do what I command. 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. 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. This is my command: Love each other.” 

This is amazing! If we are to be filled with the love of God, then our relationship with God is fundamentally changed. We are no longer servants of God, but instead we become servants of others. And as we are filled with the love of God in service to others, we discover that we are no longer just servants in the house. No! We are members of the house! Jesus himself refers to us as his friends! That’s just crazy that Jesus would ultimately think of us as though we were his peers, when he is so much greater than us. But that is what he is saying happens when we are filled with the love of God to the extent that Jesus is filled with the love of God.

Jesus has shown the greatness of God’s love to us by humbling himself and becoming human, and more, a slave to humanity, and the pinnacle of their rejection of God in his death. But he brings himself down to our level in order to bring us up to his level. We will never be as big as Jesus, but the goal of Jesus is make us like himself, children of God, sinless, resurrected, everlasting, powerful, and above all else, made perfect in God’s love.

We can see the images that Jesus is drawing from in the Old Testament. Israel was always known as the servant of God, the one whom God had chosen to serve him and to be his representative to all the nations of the world.

The prophets Isaiah says:

But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham, my friend; you whom I took from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest corners, saying to you, “You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off”; fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

-- Isaiah 41:8-10  

And later Jesus’ own brother James writes about the love of God at work in the lives of his servants, so much so that they are no longer called servants, but the very friends of God himself. James tells us about the faith of Abraham and how that faith was played out in the actions of his life and in his relationship with God.

James writes:

You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”– and he was called a friend of God.

-- James 2:22-23  

I’ve always hated the song “I Am a Friend of God,” in part because of its repetitive lyrics and generally uninspired tune, but also because it seemed as though it were making God out to be like some buddy or pal that we can just hang out with. And yet, that is almost what Jesus is saying here. Not that God isn’t all-powerful, but that despite the fact that he is all-powerful, he chooses to have a loving and active relationship with his creation – with us.

God is dangerous! We learn from the Old Testament that the holiness of his presence will destroy you if you treat him like a buddy and walk right up to his face. But in the New Testament we learn that Jesus makes a way for us to be in God’s presence without being destroyed.

And we can become friends of God… 

Like Abraham and Sarah who spoke to God about the future without realizing at first who they were talking to.

Or like Jacob, who wrestled with God all night long, and only afterwards realized that that he had seen the face of God and lived.

Or like Isaiah, who went into the Holy of Holies of God’s Temple, and saw God seated on the throne, but whose life was spared and whose dirty mouth was made clean by the cleansing fire of God’s command.