John 15:9-17 (NRSV)
Read John 15:9-17 on biblegateway.com
Verse 9As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. Verse 10If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. Verse 11I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. Verse 12"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Verse 13No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. Verse 14You are my friends if you do what I command you. Verse 15I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. Verse 16You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. Verse 17I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
Devotion
The image of Jesus’ abiding love, captured so powerfully last Sunday in the image of the vine and the branches, continues now in the reading for this Sunday. The setting is Jesus’ farewell words to his disciples, distressed by the prospect of their abandonment by his looming passion and death. But Jesus offers to his disciples a quite different prospect, grounded in the “just as” depths of a relational love. “Just as” the Father and the Son “abide” in love, so that abiding love is now promised to Jesus’ disciples. For them and now for us, that abiding love is made real in our keeping Jesus’ command to love one another. The great mystery of the Easter gospel is that in that abiding love, the experience of such a relationship leads not to sorrow and fears of abandonment, but precisely to the intention of the Father in sending the Son—that we may have joy, and that our joy may be complete.
Prayer
God of Love, fill our hearts with joy because in the sending of your Son you have shown the power of abiding love that binds us together and sends us to embody that love in care for our neighbor. Amen.
Interested in digging deeper into today’s text?
Read more here with Enter the Bible.