20 September 2003

A Curse on Him Who is Lax in Doing the Lord's Work! (Jer 48:10)

A new command I give you: Love one another.

Amen Holy Spirit

Today I am starting with John 13:31. Jesus said to his disciples at the eve of His crucifixion:

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this ALL men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

Then the Lord said to them in
Jn15:9 As the Father has loved you, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remained in his love. My command is this: love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lays down his life for his friends. 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 call you friends, for everything I learned from my Father I have made known to you. This is my command: love each other.

The Lord said that if we do what He commands, He calls us His friends, we are no longer just servants who are only doing our duty because what we do, we do out of love for Jesus and His gospel and the kingdom of God. It is a promotion that is a treasure and is meant to be treasured.

And the Lord’s command is this: That we love each other as He loves us, so that the world will know through our unity in faith and knowledge based firmly in His unfailing love, that we are the disciples of the Son of the Most High God, whom the Father sent into the world so that it will not perish.

In following the Lord’s command, our love for one another in Him is a testimony to the world that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. God did not send His Son into the world to condemn it because but whoever does not believe already stands condemned because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

Jesus says in Jn 6:29 that . The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent He had said to this the crowd- to people who do not know him. How is it evident that those people did not know him? Because in the next sentence, they asked the Lord, “What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe it? What will you do?” But these are people who have already seen His miraculous sign because Jn 6 writes for us that they were the ones who were there at the feeding of the 5,000. The Lord says to them “I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.” They still asked for more signs for their hearts were hardened and they had not understood nor turned. To these people, Jesus said that the work of God is to believe. He did not impose any more burdens on them.

But to us, whom He chosen and appointed to go and bear fruit- fruit that will last- so that the Father can once again enjoy his vineyard and his garden and walk in it in the cool of the day. So that the Father does not have to say, “For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?” But let the Father Sing about a fruitful vineyard: “I, the Lord, watch over it; I water it continually. I guard it day and night so that no one may harm it”: Is 27:2. Our fruitfulness comes from the Lord and the Lord alone because He is the true vine and we are the branches. (Jn 15:1) “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” For is not love the first fruit of the Holy Spirit? Amen Holy Spirit.

Our fruitfulness comes from obeying His commands as it is our delight and our good pleasure, our treasure on earth and in heaven. The Lord says in Jn 14:15 If you love me, you will obey what I command. And for the purpose of today’s word, His command is that we love each other. The Lord is our first love, our most love, but I am not talking about our love for the Lord today, except to obey His command to love one another as He loves us. It is important because This is to the Father’s glory, that we bear much fruit, showing ourselves to be His Son’s disciples. We are not seeking glory for ourselves; but there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge. This is something that we can all do because we have the love of God in our hearts and we accept Jesus who comes in the Father’s name. We not only accept Him, but love Him and breathe His Holy Spirit. And His word is our daily bread which comes down from heaven, bread that we eat and will not die. We listen to Him, and He teaches us to love one another as a testimony to the world that the Father’s glory that fills the earth is the glory Jesus had with Him before the world began. Jesus brings glory to the Father by completing the work the Father gave Him to do. And now, we as Jesus’ disciples, doing His will and submitting to His purpose, must ensure that we follow His every command because whatever Jesus says is what the Father who sent Him commanded Him to say and how to say it. The Father’s command leads to eternal life. Jesus wants the world to know that we are His disciples so that the Father’s name will be glorified again and again.

So now, let us pay attention to our own deeds and conduct, and first take the plank out of our own eye, so that we will see clearly to remove the speck from our brother’s eye. And let us follow the command to the precise degree and standard so that what the Lord has purposed for this command may not be lost, rather restored to the Lord with passion and fervour, so that the fullness and power of His purpose laid in His word will be revealed in all its glory, and the Lord can receive the full extent of our love for Him. The degree and standard is not to love one another as we would, but love one another as the Lord loves us. For in the imitation of Jesus, we are to also imitate the way He loves others. It is a different command from the one He gave to the people when He said in Mk 12:29, “Hear O Israel…‘Love your neighbour as yourself’. The new command to love one another was given to the disciples the last night before the crucifixion, for they had already known Him after spending time with Him, and they had to know Him in order to love one another as He loved them.

The prime purpose of the new command is not so that we can have a warm, fuzzy fellowship, but so that whatever plans He has for the fulfilment of each single command may be brought forth into the light - that the light will shine into the darkness, bringing out the treasures of the darkness and riches stored in secret places - so that all may know that He is the Lord and apart from Him there is no other, and it is He who summons us by name (Is 45:3). For He says (Is 45) “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things”.

The Lord’s command leads to eternal life, and eternal life is knowing the Father and the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Everything that the Lord says and does and writes carries with it layers of His purpose and plans and timing and eternal pleasures, that if we bury it in our prejudice and our self-righteousness and worldly wisdom, we will never find the hidden treasure that is behind His every thought, gesture and command. There is no command too small or seemingly trivial because we tend to judge by mere appearances. A simple command as “Take away the stone” to Martha may seem ludicrous to men, but a simple following of the command brought forth life out of death for He is the resurrection and the life. So too, a simple command “Love one another as I love you” can be so simplistic that we may casually dismiss it or worse, casually follow it, and by doing that, burying deep the plans and purposes that the Lord has for its fulfilment. By doing so, we deprive the Lord the pleasure and the glory, casting away His perfect plans from His river of delights.

Paul says that the weapons we fight with are not weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds: 2 Cor 10:10. Just as the love Jesus has for the Father and the world which the Father loves caused Him to overcome the world and He is now sitting enthroned at the right hand of God- the love that blossoms from us through remaining in Him and by following His commands about love:
1. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.
2. And the second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself.
3. Love one another as I have loved you.
and the purpose that He has destined for the united fulfilment, is the most powerful weapon the world has yet to see - a weapon that cannot be demolished nor imitated, but a weapon so bright and righteous, deadly yet non-violent, that the enemy will be scattered and divided just by being in its presence, and as it manifests through us by the power of the Holy Spirit, all people will bow down and confess that He is?

Did not the Lord say to us, “Love your enemies”’? Do we see now that the layers of His plans and purposes are hidden in His every word, and it is up to us to receive them and bring them forth in His Holy Name?

Amen Holy Spirit