John 15:14-17 You are my friends, if you do whatever I command you.… Notice — I. WHAT CHRIST'S FRIENDS DO FOR HIM (ver. 16). In the former verse, "friends" means chiefly those whom He loved. Here it means mainly those who love Him. 1. He lingers on the idea, as if He would meet the doubts arising from the sense of unworthiness, and from some dim perception of how He towers above them. How wonderful that stooping love of His is! Every form of human love Christ lays His hand upon. "He that doeth the will of My Father, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother." That which is even sacreder, the purest and most complete union that humanity is capable of, receives a new sweetness when we think of the Bride, the Lamb's wife. And, passing from that Holy of Holies out into this outer court, He lays His hand on that more common and familiar, and yet precious and sacred, thing, the bond of friendship. The Prince makes a friend of the beggar. 2. This friendship lasts today. The pecularity of Christianity is the strong personal tie which binds men to this Man that died nineteen hundred years ago. We look back into the wastes of antiquity: the mighty names rise there that we reverence; there are great teachers from whom we have learned, and to whom we are grateful. But what a gulf there is between us and the best and noblest of them! But here is a dead Man, who today is the object of passionate attachment, and a love deeper than life to millions of people, and will be till the end of time. 3. There are no limitations in that friendship, no misconstructions in that heart, no alienation possible, no change to be feared. There is absolute rest for us there. Why should I be solitary if Jesus Christ is my Friend? Why should I fear if He walks by my side? Why should anything be burdensome if He lays it upon me, and helps me to bear it? What is there in life that cannot be faced and borne — aye, and conquered — if we have Him, as we all may have Him, for the Friend and the Home of our hearts? 4. But notice the condition, "If ye do what I command you." Note the singular blending of friendship and command, involving on our parts absolute submission and closest friendship. For this is the relationship between love and obedience, in regard to Jesus Christ, that the love is the parent of the obedience, and the obedience is the guard and the guarantee of the love. II. WHAT CHRIST DOES FOR HIS FRIENDS (ver. 15) The slave may see what his lord does, but he does not know his purpose in his acts. "Their's not to reason why," If the servant is in his master's confidence he is more than a servant. But, says Christ, "I have called you friends"; and He calls them so before in act, and and He points to all His past relationship, and especially to the heart outpourings of the upper room, as the proof. 1. Jesus Christ, then, recognizes the obligation of absolute frankness, and He will tell His friends everything that He can. When He tells them what He can the voice of the Father speaks through the Son. 2. Of course, to Christ's frankness there are limits. He will not pour out His treasures into vessels that will spill them. And though here he speaks as if His communion was perfect, we are to remember that it was necessarily conditioned by the power of reception on the part of the hearers. 3. That frank speech is continued today. By the light which He sheds on the Word, by many a suggestion through human lips, by many a blessed thought rising quietly within our hearts, and bearing the token that it comes from a sacreder source than our poor, blundering minds, He still speaks to us, His friends. 4. Ought not that thought of the utter frankness of Jesus make us for one thing very patient of the gaps that are left in His communications and in our knowledge? There are so many things that we should like to know. He holds all in His hand. Why does He thus open one finger instead of the whole palm? Because He loves. A friend exercises the right of reticence as well as the prerogative of speech. "Trust Me! I tell you all that is good for you to receive." 5. And that frankness may well teach us the obligation of keeping our ears open and our hearts prepared to receive the speech that comes from Him. Many a message from your Lord flits past you like the idle wind through an archway, because you are not listening for His voice. If we silenced passion, ambition, selfishness, worldliness, if we took less of our religion out of books and from other people, and were more accustomed to "dwell in the secret place of the Most High," and to say, "Speak, Friend, for Thy friend heareth," we should more often understand how real today is the voice of Christ to them that love Him. III. HOW CHRIST'S FRIENDS COME TO BE SO AND WHY THEY ARE SO (ver. 16) 1. In all the cases of friendship between Christ and men, the origination and initiation come from Him. "We love Him because He first loved us." The apostle said," I was apprehended of Christ." It is because He lays His seeking and drawing hand upon us, that we ever come to love Him. His choice of us precedes our choice of Him. The Shepherd always comes to seek the sheep that is lost. We come to be His friends: because, when we were enemies, He loved us, and gave Himself for us, and ever since has been sending out the messengers of His love to draw us to His heart. 2. And the purpose is two fold — (1) It respects service or fruit. "That we may go." There is deep pathos and meaning in that word. He had been telling them that He was going; now He says them, "You are to go! We part here. My road lies upward; yours runs onward. Go into all the world." "That ye may bring forth fruit." "Keeping His commandments" does not explain the whole process by which we do the things that are pleasing in His sight. We must also take this other metaphor of the bearing of fruit. There must be the effort; for men do not grow Christlike in character as the vine grows its grapes, but there must be, regulated and disciplined by the effort, the inward life, for no mere outward obedience and tinkering at duties and commandments will produce the fruit that Christ desires and rejoices to have. "That your fruit should remain." There is nothing that corrupts faster than fruit. There is only one kind of fruit that is permanent, incorruptible. The only life's activity that outlasts life and the world is the activity of the men that obey Christ. (2) It respects the satisfying of our desires, that "whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name He may give it you." Make your desires Christ's, and Christ's yours, and you will be satisfied. IV. THE MUTUAL FRIENDSHIP OF CHRIST'S FRIENDS (ver. 17) This whole context is enclosed within a golden circlet by that commandment which appears in ver. 12, and reappears here at the close, thus shutting off this portion from the rest of the discourse. Friends of a friend should themselves be friends. We care for the lifeless things that a dear Friend has cared for. And here are living men and women, in all diversities of character and circumstances, but with this stamped upon them all — Christ's friends, lovers of and loved by Him. And how can we be indifferent to those to whom Christ is not indifferent? We are knit together by that bond. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. |
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