John 15:12–14

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. The love of God in Jesus went far beyond this. It has to stand alone, and it is right that it should. We ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters, as we are taught elsewhere. But what is that worth if our hearts do not go out day by day to the common needs and sufferings of God's children? The Lord at once binds love up with obedience, without which it is only self-pleasing.

Such was His love that He could lay down His life for His friends. Here He does not present His death as the sacrifice that pays for sin, which could be no pattern for us. He presents it as the highest expression of love for one's friends. These verses hold a whole history of love: the Father's love to the Son, the love of Jesus to His people, and the love of His people to one another. Each stage is both the source and the standard for the next.

This is a completely different thing from laying down His life for sinners. Here it is for His friends. It shows the intensity of His love: I sacrifice Myself for him. He does not say, I am your Friend, but we are His friends. He was the Friend of sinners when He gave His life for them. We are His friends when we enjoy His confidence... If I have a friend, I tell him what is on my mind, even things that have nothing to do with him. I share all my thoughts with the one who is my friend.

No one can boast of greater love / Than dying for a friend; / You for Your enemies were slain, / What love can compare with Yours?... The thought expressed in the hymn is quite different from the Lord's thought in John 15. In the hymn we think of ourselves as His enemies, which is the exact opposite of "You are My friends."

In John's Gospel, two statements from His own lips show how He expressed His love to God and love to man... He expressed love to His Father and love to His friends in full, when He laid down His life for them both. On the one side for the Father's glory and on the other for the need of His own.

"By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us." If you want to know what love is, look here. This was love indeed. "And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters." The same life that we live by was in Him. Should it not show the same love? He may not often ask us to lay down our life for our brothers and sisters. But are there not plain, simple, common ways to test that love every day? My brother may be in need. It is no use talking about being ready to die for him if I at once shrink back from meeting his ordinary, and maybe urgent, need.

The Lord at once binds love up with obedience, without which it is only self-pleasing, with nothing of Him in it or before the soul. "You are my friends if you do what I command you." He is not speaking of reconciling enemies, but of why He calls us His friends. Obedience is the character and the condition. He treats us as friends according to His perfect love, for He lets us into His secrets instead of merely pressing our duty. In principle this is the cherished privilege of the Church — to know His mind, and to read the tangled web of human life by it. But in practice we must be constant in obedience, or the privilege is a bare title and not a living reality.

We all know how the sweetest and most tender relationships and feelings are the easiest to disturb and break. "You are my friends, IF you do what I command you." The life, with its relationships and intimacies, is ours, but we can well understand the meaning of the IF. None of us cares to tell everyone his secrets; we keep them for our intimate friends. But someone may show by his ways that he undervalues his friend's confidence. This may grieve that friend, and, in the very nature of things, the intimacy stops. Distance takes the place of nearness.

He is treating them with perfect confidence. He treats the true disciple with the confidence of being His friend. Otherwise He would be betraying His Father's confidence in telling His secrets. If I go to a person on a matter of business, I simply tell him my business and have done with him. But if I go to a friend, I can tell him everything on my mind, even what does not concern him at all. I do this because I have full confidence in his love and his interest in what concerns me.

One more thing goes with this in verse 14: "You are my friends if you do what I command you." How unspeakable the privilege! To be treated not as servants who receive their orders and nothing more, but as the trusted friends of Christ! He tells them His mind — all that He has heard from the Father. So they keep it in a world that has seen and hated both Him and the Father, and it shapes them as witnesses for Him.

How beautiful it is to see an example of true friendship in Abraham. The Lord said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice," and so on. Abraham was trustworthy. It is as we do what our Lord has commanded that we continue in His love, and, like Abraham, we become trustworthy.

But can He trust us? Are we really His friends? "If you do what I command you." This is the proof. Not doing what we think, but what He commands. And He has said, "If anyone serves me, he must follow me." There is no such thing as knowing the Master's mind apart from the intimacy of communion. This involves separation from this world and its ways, and nothing but His love can draw us to Himself. As He draws us in this way, our hearts will close against every other voice. In the quiet of His presence we shall learn His secrets and receive His commands.