Scripture Introduction
We say, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” because an image conveys information which would require pages of writing to explain. Well if a picture is worth a thousand words, then maybe a parable is worth ten thousand! And one of Jesus’ most loved metaphors for himself and our relationship to God is: “I am the true vine.”
In three sermons I have used about 8500 words trying to explain and apply this rich analogy. Today, by God’s help and mercy, we will add another 2900 and complete our survey of these 11 verses in John 15 as we see how remaining in the vine allows us to know God’s love and experience his joy.
[Read John 15.1-11. Pray.]
Introduction
Paul Gustave Doré was born in Strasburg, January 10, 1833. He was well-known for illustrating many works, including a version of the Bible. (You can download the set of pen and ink drawing from Project Gutenberg.) The story is told that on one occasion he was putting the finishing touches on the face of Christ in one of his paintings, when an admiring friend stepped quietly into the studio. She stared with delight at his work, mouth open at the beauty and lifelikeness.
Doré sensed her presence and said graciously, “Pardon, madam, I did not know you were here.”
She answered, “Monsieur Doré, you must love him very much to be able to paint him so truly!”
“Love him, madam? Oh, I do love him, but if I loved him better, I would paint him better!”
Something similar is true of each of us. If we love Christ better, we will serve him better; we will delight in his will and his ways; we keep his commandments. The deeper our love for God, the greater our fellowship with God – a fellowship which is not a thing of mere intellect or sentiment, but a living communion with Christ by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Through God’s Spirit, the life of Jesus fills and animates our life. From the fertile soil of love for Christ grows the beautiful fruit of obedience. Love deepens the fellowship which necessarily produces faithfulness.
That is why I believe a primary purpose of preaching is to instill confidence in God’s love for us and to excite and encourage our love for God. As Jeremiah reminded Israel in exile: “Thus says the Lord: I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you” (Jeremiah 31.2-3).
And I think the hymn by Elizabeth Prentiss is a both a beautiful and wise prayer: “More love to Thee, O Christ, more love to Thee! Hear Thou the prayer I make on bended knee; this is my earnest plea: more love, O Christ to Thee, more love to Thee!”
I think that is what Pastor Steve Brown means when he says, “The only people who ever get better are those who know that if they never get better, God will still love them.” True abiding in God’s love results in a life conformed to his will.
It reminds me of the little boy who told his Sunday School teacher: “I love my mommy with all my strength.” That seemed an unusual expression for a young boy, so the teacher asked what that meant. He said, “Well, we live on the fourth floor of this tenement; and there’s no elevator; and the coal is down in the basement. Mother is busy, and she isn’t very strong; so I keep the bin filled with coal. It takes a lot of trips, so I fill the pail as full as I’m strong enough to carry. I love my mommy with all my strength.” Love produced works in keeping with the profession. As we consider this morning how God’s love for us and ours for him strengthens us for obedience and joy, note first, that…
1. We Must Strive to Remain Under the Assurance and Influence of Jesus’ Love for Us (John 15.9)
Will you listen to the Lord? “As the Father loves me, so I love you.” Could there be three more beautiful words coming from the mouth of God? “I love you.”
God loves his people with an electing love: “The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you…” (Deuteronomy 7.6-8).
Additionally, the Lord Jesus loves his people with a leaving love: a man leaves his father and mother to hold fast to his wife because he loves her. So the Son left the Father’s home in heaven to woo and win a bride, the church.
Third, Christ loves his people with a sacrificial love: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15.13). This death was not forced upon Jesus, nor would it have arrived anyway (in the fullness of years). He freely gave up his own life, so that those who place their faith in him might live forever.
John Calvin, “Christ wants to lay in our hearts a sure pledge of God’s love to us…. The love of God was poured out on him so that it might flow from him to his members so that God may be pleased with us.”
Jesus clearly declared his love for his people. He also encourages you with the magnitude of his love: “as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” If Jesus had not said this, you might be tempted to charge me with sacrilege. For the Son to love sinners at all overwhelms the imagination. I think I should be content if God tolerated me. But such is not the measure of Christ’s love; he loves us as the Father loves him, with a perfect, divine affection, unsullied and unrestrained.
So, first, Jesus declares his love; then, second, he describes his love; now, third, he demands that we remain under the assurance and influence of his love: “Abide in my love.”
When you worry about the problems of tomorrow, remember Jesus’ love. When you fear the trials and troubles you must face, meditate on Jesus’ love. When you wonder if God still cares after you have again fallen short, soak in Jesus’ love.
John Calvin: “He means for us to enjoy continually the love he has for us, and so he warns us to be careful not to deprive ourselves of it.”
The certainty and sufficiency of God’s love is beyond question – faith remains under the assurance and influence of that love. When we abide in Christ’s love, God provides the power for obedience.
2. We Must Strive to Cheerfully and Fully Follow and Obey Jesus’ Commandments for Us (John 15.10)
Sometimes Christians get confused when Jesus tells us to remain in his love; we may mistakenly assume that he only seeks to excite strong feelings. Make no mistake: there is great good in an emotional component to our relationship with God, something which some of us may be missing.
But here Jesus defines “abiding in his love” as keeping his commandments. Love from Jesus and love for Jesus are the source and power for obedience; and, our obedience to Christ is the demonstration of the reality of our love.
That is not the same as legalism or moralism. Those errors suppose that God loves those who conform themselves to his will. But the truth is that God conforms to his will those whom he loves, and those who love him long to obey his word.
Andrew Murray, Abide In Christ, 135: “The will of God is the power that rules the whole moral as well as the natural world. How could there be fellowship with him without delight in his will? It is only as long as salvation is to the sinner nothing but personal safety, that he can be careless or afraid of the doing of God’s will. No sooner is salvation revealed to be the restoration to communion with God and conformity to him, than he feels that there is no law more natural or more beautiful than this: ‘Keeping Christ’s Commandments The Way To Abide In Christ’s Love.’”
John Calvin: “The faith which grasps the free love of Christ is forever joined with a good conscience and newness of life. Indeed, Christ does not reconcile believers to the Father for them to live licentiously with impunity, but so that he may keep them under his Father’s rule and dominion, governing them by his Spirit. Hence it follows that Christ’s love is rejected by those who do not prove by true obedience that they are his disciples. If anyone objects that the safety of our salvation then depends on ourselves, I reply that it is wrong to give this meaning to Christ’s words; the obedience which believers give him is not the cause of his continuing love to us but is the effect of his love.”
These verses can create heartburn in true believers because it appears we are offered only an absolute alternative: prefect obedience or utter apostasy: “I love the Father and I obey perfectly. So if you love me, then you also will obey. End of discussion.”
But there is a sense in which no one can keep Christ’s commands. Our best deeds are defective, and when we have done all we can, we must cry: “God be merciful to me a sinner.” That is why our confession of faith reminds us that a Christian’s “ability to do good works is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ” (WCF 16.3). And even “our best works,… as they are wrought by us, are defiled, and mixed with so much weakness and imperfection, that they cannot endure the severity of God's judgment” (WCF 16.5).
Yet we must not run to the other extreme, and complain that we can do nothing at all. By faith, we make Christ’s laws the rule for our life, and show daily that we desire to please him. We may have reason to be ashamed at our self-satisfaction and self-promotion and feelings of self-righteousness. It could be that some are guilty of trusting in ourselves that we are righteous, and treating others with contempt. Maybe we have desired to justify ourselves before God and other men, and said in our hearts, “God I thank you that I am not a sinner like so-and-so.” These are reasons to be ashamed.
But let us never be ashamed of diligence and faithfulness and fruitfulness and watchfulness – in a word, of true obedience to the commands of Christ. Such is fully and perfectly consistent with salvation by grace and justification by faith. Jesus unites abiding in God’s love and obeying his commands.
John Calvin: “But it may seem too hard that the condition imposed on us is to obey Christ’s commands, which contain the absolute perfection of righteousness — a perfection far above what we can manage. It would seem that Christ’s love will be useless if we are not granted angelic purity. The solution is easy: when Christ speaks about the desire to live a good and holy life, he includes the main point of his teaching — namely, our being freely credited with righteousness; and hence, by his forgiveness our service pleases God even though in itself it deserves to be rejected as imperfect and impure. Believers, therefore, are regarded as obeying Christ’s commands when they apply themselves to them, even though they fall far short of the mark, for they are set free from the rigor of the law which says, ‘Cursed is the man who does not uphold the words of this law by carrying them out’ (Deuteronomy 27.26).”
So how do we determine whether our efforts at obedience spring from an abiding in Christ’s love, or from a dangerous and damning self-righteousness? I believe one way is to analyze our hearts when we fall short. When you fail again in front of the computer and look at that which defiles your mind and soul, when you nurture bitterness and anger until they consume your thoughts and control your actions, when you grumble and complain while knowing that God would have you pray for the grace to count this trial a joy – whatever sin leads you into the far country, when you come to your senses and think about returning to the Father, where do you start? Is it with law and your failures, or love and God’s grace?
I beg you to beware placing a greater focus on your failures to obey that upon Jesus’ perfect love. Think of how the Lord himself restores Peter after his three denials: “Peter, do you love me? Then feed my sheep.” Love before law.
“The only people who ever get better are those who know that if they never get better, God will still love them” (Steve Brown).
And when we abide in Christ’s love and obey his commandments, then…
3. We Will Experience Godly Joy in Increasing Measure (John 15.11)
Some people imagine that the Christian faith is to be a gloomy and depressing burden. The only religious works that are of value are those which are somber and serious and sullen. These folks only appear to be happy when they are depressed.
That is unbiblical. No, we are not to be “Pollyannaish,” unrealistic about life’s troubles or silly in the face of suffering. But the Holy Spirit fills the faithful Christian with a “joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1Peter 1.8). All this comes from Christ, who himself is full of joy. He is joyful because he completed the work the Father gave him and he won salvation for all his adopted brothers and sisters.
And he places his joy in his beloved friends. The true believer does not spend all the day trying to fabricate feelings of happiness – the word of Christ purifying his or her thoughts and desires and hopes – this brings joy.
Think of this: one of the commands of Jesus that we are to obey is to be joyful! “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice” (Philippians 4.4). It is the will of God that his children should continually rejoice in his Son. “The joy of the hypocrite is but for a moment, but the joy of those who abide in Christ’s love is a continual feast.” The word of the Lord endures forever; and the joy of the Lord, which is founded on the Word and flow from it, endures forever also.
4. Conclusion
Dr. Alexander Maclaren used to tell of a man of great intellectual power whom he longed to win to Christ. To do so the famous preacher preached a whole series of sermons dealing with intellectual difficulties. To the doctor’s delight, the man came shortly afterward and said he had become a convinced Christian and he wanted to join the church.
Overjoyed, the doctor said, “And which of my sermons was it that removed your doubts?”
“Your sermons? It wasn’t any of your sermons. The thing that set me thinking was a poor woman came out of your church beside me and stumbled on the steps. When I put out my hand to help her, she smiled and said ‘thank you’ and then added, ‘Do you love Jesus Christ my blessed Savior? He means everything to me.’ I did not then, but I thought about it. I found I was on the wrong road. I still have many intellectual difficulties, but now He means everything to me, too.”
When Jesus means everything to you, people will notice, and our love will overflow in obedience and joy. You think about that. Amen.
