New Command: Abide In Christ's Love With One Another

I am the vine, and my father is the vinedresser.

Every branch in me, that's abiding language, that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes that it may bear more fruit. The goal of the vine and the vinedresser is the same, that we would abide and bear fruit. As we see this, one of the things we see first is this is a divine claim of Jesus. Not only is he putting himself in, in, in participation with the S with the father, but it's a, I am statement. He's identifying himself. He is identifying himself with the covenant name of the old Testament. Yahweh, I am the vine. The, the, the picture plays out in that he is the source of life, the source of strength. The father is divine dresser. Whenever there's a branch that bears fruit, the father disciplines the one he loves, the one that is bearing more fruit so it'll bear more fruit. The one that does not bear fruit is removed. It's dead. It's important to understand discipleship, how discipleship and spiritual growth work. We have lots of other word pictures. This is an important concept in scripture, and you know it's important because he uses different ideas and concepts to teach us. It's very similar to the picture of the church as a temple. Christ is a living stone, and we're built upon him. You abide in Christ by resting on him, the living stone, and we build each other up as stones, and the whole goal is that you're growing up into glory and into holiness, is we are built into a temple by the living stone. Another picture is the body. Christ is the head, the source of strength for all the members to work together to build each other up to the goal, and that is maturity in Christ the head. All the pictures make one thing clear, whether it be the vine and branches, the head and the members, or the living stone and the stones, that Christ is the source of life. Christ is the goal. Now, we have membership here at Jefferson Park because we chose the body metaphor. We could have chosen to call it branch-ship, but that sounds fruity. So here we look at the importance of the church in the life of discipleship. And while branches doesn't have the same kind of absolute necessity of the other branches, we'll see, I hope, later that it does get more explicit in latter sections. He's explaining what it means to be a disciple. And that if you're united with Christ, if you're abiding in Christ, you're bearing fruit. If you're not united with Christ, if you're not connected to Christ, you're dead. If this doesn't make much sense, I could take it to my garden, I just cut some blackberry vines off the branches off the primary vine, and well, they're dead and wilted. There's no life. You must be connected to the source. The key command in the text, Notice 1 and 2 is describing what it is, and verse 4 is now a command, and it's the controlling command here. Abide in me. The command isn't to bear fruit. The command is abide in me, and then you will bear fruit. Abide in me. That's the clear instruction. That's the key emphasis of 1 through 8. It is described as how the vine relates to the branches. And the call for those who would be disciples is to abide in Christ as he is in us. There's a, there's a union. There's a covenant. There's an assumed emphasis that we are a covenant people, not individuals. We're covenant with Christ. Now that command is important related to verse three, where he tells these disciples who have been with him for some time already.

You are clean because of the word that I've spoken to you.

Now, there's something here that's unique for these disciples, and they've been with them for three years, and they've expressed faith, they've confessed faith, Christ has affirmed that faith, and it's gonna become a more clear faith in just a few days at the resurrection and the ascension. But we have to make sure we get this right. They are not saved by obeying the command to abide in him. They, they've been saved by placing their faith in him as the Messiah. We are, we are saved by faith alone, not by our obedience. Once we have been, been, uh, we've heard the gospel, we believe the gospel. We've, we've, we've confessed the gospel. We are saved and we're united with Christ here. The command to abide is now how to live. Since you are part of his kingdom says you have been grafted into him, the vine. When you believe in Jesus Christ, you have a new identity. You're united with Christ as a son of God. You're united with Christ and forgiven. You're united with Christ in a way that every spiritual blessing is yours and you then practice abiding in him so that you might know how to enjoy all of those blessings. What Christ is commanding here is abide in him who has already saved you. If we get that wrong, we mess everything up. Your salvation is not based upon obedience, but you're enjoying that salvation and bearing fruit of that salvation dies. Now the word abide, we see the key command, abide in me, abide in Christ, branch, abide in the vine, the source of life. This is very similar to what we heard last week from Mark Collins from Psalm 16. Abiding is where you find your refuge. Where do you go in times of trouble? That's where your abiding is. What do you do when you're worried or you're tempted or you're feeling frustrated or finding things too difficult? Where you find your refuge is where you're abiding. Abiding is also where you prioritize your commitments, where you spend the most time and energy and resources. Abiding is where we decide to place our delight and enjoyment, where we decide to enjoy life. And abiding, well, it's what we're practicing to participate in more fully wherever we are seeking to abide. The command here, abide in the son of God who laid down his life for you. Abide in the God of all glory and goodness and authority. Abide in him who has loved you with his own life. That's the command of Christ. Notice what he says is, again, picking up this teaching and just looking at it from different angles.

Abide in me and I in you.

As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, again, going back to that word picture of one and two, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. There is no way to bear the kind of fruit that Christ is expecting unless we have Christ as our source. There are some things that humans are just not capable of apart from God's help. It's interesting as we think about what this fruit is, and it's going to become more and more clear as we go through the text, but anyone can produce division and destruction. It takes zero skill to be part of Demo Day. But we're not just going to hire anybody to do demo day. No, whenever we're going to build something back up, and we want it to function, and we want it to be safe, and we want it to look good, there's going to be a certain skill needed. It's amazing how easily weeds grow and how hard it is to get a plant to produce something that's tasty and good. That's frustrating. Here, the fruit Christ is speaking of is a change of character, a change of conduct, and a way of life that brings God glory. We cannot do it on our own. There's nothing we can do of godly kingdom good apart from Christ. Notice how he takes the picture of one and two, and then he makes it very clear, abide in me, personal. And now verse five, he kind of brings it all together.

I am the vine. You are the branches.

The importance there is who is dependent upon who? Who is the source of energy in life? And who's dependent? I guess we miss it.

As a branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.

Branches, there's nothing we can do apart from Christ. But isn't it amazing to consider what we can do in Christ? If we're with Him, abiding in Him, relying upon Him, trusting Him, obeying Him, praying for the strength, there's nothing we can do apart from Him, but it's actually impossible to not bear fruit if we do abide in Him. There's a way in which we must think, abiding in Christ is an activity of focused energy, knowing this is where I commit my time, my energy, my thoughts. The fruit is the outcome of abiding. The fruit is an assurance of your abiding. What the big picture is, to abide in Christ is to bear fruit. And if you abide in Christ, you will bear fruit. And if you bear fruit, it's because you abide in Christ. And if you do not bear fruit, you need to ask why and how are you not abiding in Christ? He's saying this over and over again in different ways. We even then see two conditional statements.

If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch in weathers.

There's a judgment, there's a warning, which is really just doubling down on what he said in verse two. But then notice,

if you abide in me and my words abide in you, then ask whatever you wish, and it'll be done for you.

Here, prayer is significant. He's speaking of prayer here, and we'll repeat this a little bit later. Now, can you really ask whatever you wish, like he's Santa Claus, and it'll be done for you? I think there's a bit more nuance here, and here's my interpretation, and you're happy to hear challenges of it, but here's my interpretation. If we're abiding in Christ, and his word is abiding in us, Our thoughts and desires are aligned with God, and this is the beauty of it. If you're asking for the things God has promised to give us, guess what'll happen? He'll give it to you. We believe in a prosperity gospel, that you could become a tree so rooted in the very love of Christ and the power of God and his word that you blossom and you flourish and you produce incredible fruit. That fruit might not have a Lamborghini on it. What are you wishing for? Are we really longing for the fruit that aligns itself with God's word? Are we longing and asking God, how can I be more obedient? How can I repent of more sin? How could I be more like Christ? How can his words dwell more fully, deeply in my heart and my soul to shape my desires so that my wishes are already aligned with your will? It's amazing the fruit a disciple would produce when abiding in Christ. And then verse eight,

by this my father is glorified.

This is how we glorify him, the vine dresser who sent his son to be the vine in whom we depend upon.

That you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

Discipleship is not some hidden mystery Something that's just personal or private. There's a, there's a weird tradition in our country that said religion was a private matter that, that public matters are, are, are the things that, that the size you talk about and religion is more of a private matter. We won't talk about well, that whatever that is, it's not abiding in Jesus. Cause if you're abiding in Jesus, it's public. It's, it's demonstratable. You're, you're proving it. It's, it's, it's John 13 made it even more clear. The world will know you're my disciples by the way you. Obey my command to love one another. We need to make sure we understand what this fruit is and what it means to abide. Christian, again, hear the command and how good it is. Hear the instruction on how good it is. Abide in Jesus Christ, your creator and your savior, who has begun a good work in you and who will complete it. A couple questions we have to ask as we think about, am I really going to lean in and abide in Christ? Am I really going to trust Him in a way that's going to make me vulnerable and take things out of my own control? Can you trust Jesus? Is He good? That's a legitimate question you have to ask if you're really going to believe in Jesus and seek to abide in Him the way He is expecting here. Is He good? We'll see his own teaching, and you can see later in the book of John, he lays down his life for us. He comes and gives us everything we need at his great cost. He used his perfect power and authority to give you everything that's good, life, forgiveness, righteousness. As Paul argues in Romans, if the father has not withheld his own son, what good thing would he ever withhold from us? You have to ask, is he good? Yes. He's proven his goodness to us. We can trust him. Second question is, can I trust him? Is he just? Jesus is so committed to righteousness that he laid down his life to be just. If God just said, I'm going to forgive all sin, that actually isn't justice in itself, just that declaration. Because a just God must punish every sin with equity and justice. So Jesus comes to die so that the sin is paid for. He's so committed to righteousness and justice that he laid down his life so that those who are forgiven of sin, that sin is still paid for. That's his commitment to justice. The third question, is Jesus able? He rose from the dead. He entered a virgin's womb. He ascended to the right hand of the Father. If you've believed in him, you know he's begun a work of forgiving, cleansing, transforming. Or we could go back and just look at all scripture. Matthew is so fun. How many promises has he kept and fulfilled at his own expense? Yes, he's able. Before moving to the next section, I want to see the role of word and prayer.

You're already clean because of the word that I've spoken to you. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish to be done for you.

He cleanses us with his word. His word abides in us. We're seeing a word-centered church. If you're new with us, take the bulletin. And I hope the fact that we've printed the words make it clear we really matter what words are being said, being heard, being believed. We seek to make sure we're walking through the text and letting the text drive us and direct us. And as sure as I am wholeheartedly committed to Protestant, the Protestant commitment to scripture alone, scripture alone isn't sufficient. You gotta pray. We take God's word, scripture alone as the authority of what we pray. If we're just committed to right doctrine, we're not going to get it right. Because you're not actually practicing the dependence upon God in prayer. The word abiding you is what makes your prayers effective. Prayer is the way in which we come to God and open our hearts and ask him to change our desires, change our nature, change our wishes. Prayer is how we learn how to have that word empowered in us. This is where we do believe in the prosperity gospel, as we commit to God's right doctrine and pray accordingly, he will bless us. Abide in Christ to bear fruit. That's our first point. A grand big picture of what it means to be united with Christ, to obey Christ, and to be obedient. Our second section, beginning in verse nine, Abide in Christ by keeping his commandments. Now, Jesus' prayer that I read just a little bit ago in John 17 did many of these same kind of things that can be a little confusing about as the father's in me and I'm in the father. There's a way in which as we hear this language, we're being invited into what God is doing. He is doing it to us and for us and bringing us into his own life, never confusing the creator creation language. But I want to see that the argument continues, 9 through 11 is a continuation of 1 through 8. And I want you to see there's three main movements in this section. Abide in my love, verse 9. keep my commandments to abide in my love, that's verse 10, this will bring you joy, verse 11. I love how fantastic these three things are together. You ever put those three words together anywhere? Love, law, joy? Right, the barnhouse signs, love, live, laugh. Never seen one of Hobby Lobby that says love, law, joy. Right, the word law is stuck in between love and joy and we probably don't associate it with either one of those words. So we might want to rethink how do I consider the law and how can I best think Jesus' thoughts about the law after him? Do we delight and rejoice in God's law? Psalm 1 teaches us that the blessed man delights in the law of God and that's what makes him produce good fruit. Nothing different here. Loving God means keeping his commandments. It means we delight in his law and seek to obey it. We have to be careful of the way we look at the law because here it's right between love and joy. Christian, the law is God's good gift. We looked at Exodus 20 earlier and that this was a good gift for those who had been saved, who know how to live in his new land. He gave us his law out of love, like a parent. Good parenting means we make expectations clear and we make those expectations good. The one who gives every good and perfect gift from heaven has given us his good law. No, let's look at these texts a little more closely and notice the, the as statements as the father has loved me, that is Jesus, the son. So I've loved you. You're you. We're now participating in receiving and enjoying in the very love of God, a divine love. It's important because God loves the world. God loves his earth. God loves his creation, but there's always been a unique way in which the father, the son, only spirit have a. divine love that's shared only among themselves. And now Jesus is telling us, well, no, we we've actually been given a greater love than what we were designed to have or created to have. And notice the command. It isn't abide in me, but abide in my love. That's not a different abiding. It's just making it more personal with love being the focus. Jesus has shared with us his own divine love. The love of God has come from God and we get to enjoy it. Now verse 10 tells us how to abide in that love, and it's a how-to. Notice it's a conditional statement. If you do this, then you will abide in my love. If God loves you, he loves you. The condition for God loving you is that he was willing to die for your sin. It's unconditional love towards us, but there was a condition of God that he would die for your sin to redeem you and forgive you and save you. But, but his love regarding who we are, he loves us while we're sinners, but how we return his love is significant. This commandment is a condition.

If you keep my commandments, then you abide in my love.

Jesus is making it very clear what it means to abide in Him, and it's to hear His words and to obey Him. You cannot love Jesus without obeying Him. You cannot love Jesus if you constantly say, but I won't do that. If you regularly read commands in Scripture and you say, no, that's too much, I won't do that, You have an obedience problem, but the most significant problem is you have a love problem. Jesus loves us, and therefore, he has high expectations for us. There's a lie in our culture that's really corrupted generations of children, and it's that if you really love somebody, you're just gonna let them do whatever they wanna do, and you wanna get them in touch with how they feel inside, and what they think, and what they desire, and you don't have high expectations, you just want them to You teach them UBU. That's teaching narcissism? It's teaching people how to hate themselves in a love that's abusive? No, to love somebody is to have high expectations. To love someone is to give clear expectations where they can grow up to them, and while showing grace and mercy while they grow up, but you want someone you love to succeed. to bear some kind of good fruit. But Jesus loves us, so he gives us high expectations. Those expectations are the way we abide in him. We are invited into the divine love, and we are invited to obey his divine law, and we cannot separate these two. Notice how verse 10 ends.

just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love.

Jesus, who is without sin, as the son of God, he came down as a man to live the life we could not live, and he obeyed every one of the commandments. This is referring to his mission. Jesus, the vine, Jesus, our model, Jesus, our brother, our older brother, who gives us all of our blessings and benefits. We're not going to love God differently than he loved God. It's obedience, or being invited into the love that requires obedience. What a blessing the law is, because if we've been saved from sin by this Savior, the law then helps us see more sin, so we repent of sin. The law helps us to see what righteousness and goodness look like, so we can start setting ourselves in the right direction, knowing this is good and right and true. It's not a burden to love the law when you're seeking to love God as it reveals sin because you confess. What a joy it was just this past week to sit down with a young man of the church. And he welcomed a very clear, direct correction. You must honor your parents. And you must seek to live at peace with all men. and his discipleship, his fruitfulness of just saying, that's right, that's good, that's true, and I haven't been doing it, was such a refreshing balm to my soul to see his faithfulness, to hear that, to see the law of Christ is good in his own discipleship. Verse 11. Oh, this is the kicker. I said these things to you, at least nine in 10, if not the whole thing. So you might have joy.

I say these things to you so that my joy may be in you.

And if you have Jesus' joy in you, it's a full joy. If you have Jesus' love in you, it's a full love. If you have Jesus' holiness in you, it's a full holiness. My joy may be in you with his word, with his spirit. And it fills us with joy. What a promise. I've loved you. Keep my commands to abide in that love, and if you abide in my love, you will have joy. Joy outside of you, as a source, but it's placed inside of you, then your joy is full. As we think about how to apply these things, first I want to address the miserable Christian. The way many of us end up in misery is by disobedience. God does not bless disobedience. If you've confessed Christ to be your Savior, and you're miserable today, and you know you're miserable, others probably can see it, people have asked you how you're doing, how can we help? This isn't the absolute test, but there is a question. Can you trace back to the last time you tasted that full joy? and see that around that time, there was a moment when a sin was confronted or an obedience expected, and you said, I won't do that. So Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, right, two questions, if you're depressed, doubting, or you're sleeping, that was his physical physician aspect. The second one is, did you deny obedience? Because if you deny obedience, that joy does leave. It doesn't mean a lack of joy calls one for one always with it, but that is a question you have to ask. If there was a time of joy and you can now just feel that misery, a lack of joy, can you go back and see how you weren't obedient? And if you weren't obedient, repent to receive that joy. Now, I also believe there's a way in which It's difficult to come out of unrepentant sin unless you understand forgiveness. Believe that as you repent, you're forgiven. If you're burdened with guilt because of that sin, you're gonna go back to it. So let me just be very clear. You are no more a sinner today than you were when you first believed in Jesus and he saved you. He forgives us. Now forgiveness is perfect. As we enjoy that forgiveness by confessing our sin, we get to enjoy His joy. Second, I want to address the legalist. There's so many different kinds of legalist. Can't go through all of them all, but Jesus, the author of the law, He knows how the law is supposed to work. He knows the proper place of the law between love and joy. My favorite thing to do in a Bible study looking at a New Testament letter is point out how according to today's standards, Jesus and Paul sound like legalists. It's because we've become so robustly anti-legalism that our impulse is to avoid the law and therefore we lack joy. When we remove God's law from its proper place, you know what we do, we insert our own opinion as if it's law. Law always functions. We must see Jesus as a good law giver. Without him we don't know what's right. We don't know how to delight in him. We rob ourselves of joy. There's a way in which we do have to say stop it to one another. Jesus' way of saying stop it is deny yourself. It's good and right to say stop, in order to start a proper good behavior. We have to be able to say correction in order to bring constructive, loving, building up discipleship. We have to be careful of avoiding the law because it has its proper place in that those who are saved by grace through faith alone will now commit themselves to the work of God by obeying his law. And that's the way to bear fruit. Now, if we step back from 1 to 11, abide in Christ to bear fruit, that abiding in Christ means we must keep his commandments, and the fruit is at least being obedient. The fruit we bear is at least becoming more and more like God in righteousness because we're bearing his fruit. But if I were to think about this church and who we are, I'm gonna say one through eight probably is something we can embrace and truly enjoy. Nine through 11 is where we probably need more hard work. Let's not forget the last statement of the Great Commission,

teaching them to observe all that I have said.

The one Savior has saved us by giving us his good law to trust and to obey. Our third section, abide in Christ by loving one another. Now, the connections of these texts, abide in me to bear fruit. The way you abide in me and my love is by keeping my commandments. Well, now he's gonna be very explicit. This is my commandment. There's other commandments, but this is my commandment. This is the one he wanted to lay down right here for us in the context of abiding in him, abiding in his love, by obeying his commandments. This is the commandment. So as we can see, there's an important place this has. The fruit you should bear from abiding in Christ is explicitly loving one another. The command we keep to abide in His love is explicitly loving one another. The as or just as in these commandments are what's important.

Love one another as I have loved you.

There's a long list of one another's again. Christ is a control for them.

Welcome one another as you've been welcomed. Forgive one another as God and Christ Jesus has forgiven you. Love one another as Christ loved you.

Even above this, I loved you as the Father loved me, and you obey the Father as I have obeyed the Father. And now love one another as I loved you. Jesus loved us not because we're deserving, but because he's merciful. So to love one another, we have to be able to show mercy. He loved us not because it was convenient or comfortable, But he loved us even when it hurt. It was costly. Our love must be sacrificial. He loved us not because we agreed with his political party. In fact, we'd rejected him as our king. Our love must be united in him. Last week, I offered a love definition. It's committing yourself. It's a personal promise of who you are, your commitment, your time, your energy, your affection, your attention, the direction you're going. There's a way in which we learn how to direct our loves according to God's word. Now as he says, love one another as I have loved you, he makes it very clear, greater love has no one than this in verse 13. That someone laid down his life for his friends. He is making it clear the love he has shown is the costly sacrificial love. He is the model of love as the greatest love. And then 14, he gives a condition again.

You are my friends if you do what I command.

Again, he's bringing verse 10 right back into the middle of this.

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what the master's doing, but I've called you friends. For all that I've heard from my father, I've made known to you.

Here for these disciples who are students to a rabbi, he's making it clear, I'm elevating you up because I'm making known to you the business of the father. I'm bringing you into the table room where we know each other.

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give to you.

Notice here, bearing fruit is brought back in. But look at the purpose clause there. so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. That is simply double-clicking and explaining more of what it means to whatever you wish it will be done for you. To love someone is to turn towards them. That's God's posture towards us. To love someone is to commit yourself to them in a promise. That's what God has done for us. We need to be careful as to what kind of qualifications we put on our love for God, for another. Members of Jefferson Park Baptist Church, I love you. I love you because of the way you care for me and my family, the way you care for each other. I love you in the way that when there's a need, you quickly arise and seek to meet that need. I love you for the way you faithfully come and we sing together. I love singing with you, where we get to join together in the songs of Christ. I love that we come together and learn together. I love that we're committed to the mystery of the word and to prayer. I love that we come together in members meetings and we seek to build up unity with one another. I love the way we're on mission to partner with missionaries and to really focus on how the nations are coming to us at UVA right across the street. I love how you come alongside my children and witness the same God, same word, and the same salvation with us. But I love you most of all because we all share in the same love of Christ. If I only love you because of what you do, I'm not really loving you. I love that we can enjoy those things together, but we ultimately love each other because we have all shared in the same love of Christ. So that's why we sing to one another, pray with one another, encourage one another, welcome one another, seek to know each other, and especially forgive one another. I want to emphasize one of the things we should be doing with one another in that the text in both 6.1 and 6.2 end with prayer, and so I want to think about how we should pray with and for one another. I want to leave you there because they're too significant as a purpose clause, and it's a concluding declaration. Notice there, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, He may give it to you. Grammatically it's important, as we tend to think individualistically, that's not a you, it's a y'all. These are all plurals. As y'all ask the Father in one name, my name, he may give it to y'all. There's an important way in which if we wanna be unified as Christ prayed for that unity in John 17, it is coming together, not just believing together, but praying together, singing together. It knits our hearts together with the same commitment to Christ and his salvation and his word and obedience and mission. But prayer is hard, and so it's important that we teach each other to pray. It's important we pray for another and that there's times where we're going through difficulties, we're going through trials and it's hard to pray and so encouraging that others would pray for us and we pray with each other to unite together our hearts in Christ and his word. I want to encourage you, our Wednesday prayer service is so encouraging. What the Treslews do in their commitment to praying at 9 a.m. is so encouraging. There's other groups that come together and you're praying together. Find a way to pray with other members of Jefferson Park. We come together and we learn together. We come together and we have prayers here, but really joining together in the way, we'll share the prayer list from Wednesday night. The way we unite together in prayer together is one of the strengths of our church. It is necessary for us to truly be united on the mission he has before us. So think about this calling. Love one another. He repeats it in verse 17. That's how we close.

These things I command you so that you will love one another.

Again, this all begins in that we know Christ first loved us. That's the assumption. As we abide in the love of Christ, as we know his love, we then are full and are able to give this love. The question and challenge this morning is, will we reevaluate our loves and the things that we've qualified so that we might know Christ's love and His joy more fully? Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you that you did not leave us alone in our really destructive and abusive self-love. You've caught us up out of a love of mere selfish desire, a self-centeredness. You've caught us up to know you and love you, who's most glorious and lovely. Thank you that This is what makes your law not a burden but a gift and a joy. Lord, for those burdened with guilt, may you bless them to feel the full power of your declaration. You are forgiven in love. For those who are regularly tempted to hide in shame, may they hear your declaration drawn near to me in love. Father, for those desiring to know how to trust you and your word and your law, may they know how to hear you're the good God who's given good instruction. Obedience is that narrow way to finding more joy and love in you. May you bless us to be united in you, united together, to know you, to make you known. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.