“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.” John 15:12.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
We are at the point where Jesus again is going to tell His commandment for you. And what is it? That you love one another, just as He has loved you. In the last Life Lesson, we talked about how I loved Jesus and today you find the same answer. Jesus told those who followed and believed in Him, “You are My friends if you do what I command you.” John 15:14. Obedience is the distinguishing hallmark of those admitted to Jesus’ inner circle and to Mine. Why is that? Because I can trust you to work with Me in love doing good and not evil and thereby increasing the Kingdom on earth and not in tearing it down.
Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” John 14:23.
You see though that obedience in My Kingdom is only genuine and validated before Me if based on three things: faith in Me (My Word), hope in Me (My Word), and love for Me and My love for you (My Word). And those three are focused on Me, NOT yourself, other people, or your possessions. That is how I know you are Mine and I am yours, when you are excited and delighted to hear, know, understand and do My Words.
And you know this is true for it is the same for those you love and admire in the world, those that you want to know personally and follow. When Rebekah heard from Abraham’s servant about Abraham’s wonderful, rich, and only son for whom he wanted a bride and she had met all the signs the servant had asked of Me to point out the one that was the perfect partner I had planned for him, she was delighted to immediately leave her home and all she was familiar with to go to know, make covenant with, and follow this precious son of Abraham. Genesis 24:58. And when Isaac heard how Rebekah had left all to seek him to be his bride, he loved her and took her for his wife. Genesis 24:65-67.
And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. Hebrews 11:6.
The young lions do lack and suffer hunger; but they who seek the LORD shall not be in want of any good thing. Psalm 34:10.
So let us look again at this command of Jesus (and you know that He only spoke what I told Him to say).
“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. John 15:12-13.
First, do not just read this out of context, let Jesus define this for you so you are not thinking it applies to every member of your family and everyone you meet that you must lay down your life for them, let them steal you blind, and be their slave for the rest of your life. It is important you know so you do not throw your life away for what is not fruitful. There are people I have told you to avoid and not to join your life up with.
“You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.” John 15:14-15.
So who are the friends Jesus is speaking of? Those who are faithful. Those who believe in Him, hear His voice, love His Word, and do His Word. And how does He love those who do these things? He lays down His life for them to take it up again and to give them eternal life. But there is a better answer here, He loves, cares, and nurtures those who are members of His own Body, the new creation in Christ, His bride and body, the Church. He and the Church are one.
How do I love you? I so loved the world I gave you the gift of My beloved Son so that all who believe in Him have eternal life and shall never perish. But like any gift, the gift is not completed until you receive it. If you reject it, the giver of the gift cannot force you to receive it. There is a choice here. You can believe or refuse to believe. I urge you to choose life, eternal life, in My Son but you can take a different path than I have planned for you and go your own way if you so determine.
Jesus is the good shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep, and His sheep, those who have received Him as Lord, recognize and know His voice.
I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd. John 10:14-16.
Those who have rejected Him have no ability to understand the Word, the Bible to them is a closed book, so to speak, in that as they hear or read it they do not receive the life, joy, light, and revelation that those receive whose spirits have been born again from above through faith in Jesus as their Lord and Savior.
Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe; the works that I do in My Father’s name, these testify of Me. But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” John 10:25-30.
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. 1 Corinthians 2:12-14.
Jesus called His disciples friends and He tells you why:
No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. John 15:15.
And He explained in His prayer to Me that night of the Last Supper how you became friends:
“The words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me. I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me; for they are Yours; and all things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine; and I have been glorified in them.” John 17:9-10.
Do you see? He did not pray for the worldly who reject Him but for those who have received and loved the Word and known it is My Word given to you. And after that night, Jesus went to the Cross, paid your judgment, took care of all your debts to Me by nailing them to the Cross as He paid for them in full, went to the dust of death for you, I raised Him on the third day, brought Him home to Heaven, and I raised you and brought you who believe in and receive Him as your Savior and Lord to seat with Him even now in the spirit, for I see the end from the beginning. And now with My Spirit in you, you should too.
How could I raise you with Him and seat you with Him? Because as a born-again believer you have joined as one spirit with Him as His bride the church and you are now in Him as members of His body and named with My Name as one with Me in Him. You are members of His body and He is the head of the body. And where the head of the body is, so are you, and where the body is so is the head. His body rises with Him. His body is seated with Him. I treat His body as Him.
And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20.
Whatever you do to the least of His brethren you do to Him. And that is why you would lay down your lives for your friends (friends are obedient believers) because in them you what you do is touching Jesus. They are members of your body, which is a member of the body of Christ. You take care of your own body, not another’s body. You serve your own body not someone else’s body, just as Christ does for the Church.
Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. Ephesians 5:23.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Ephesians 5:25-32.
You, like Jesus, have a responsibility to your fellow believers in the body of Christ. But other then seeking their conversion do not join your lives up with unbelievers. Discern whether someone holding him or herself out to be a believer is not in reality a wolf in sheep’s clothing. There are many sons of the devil today known as scammers. They are covetous of your goods and/or your service to support them no matter how they can get you apart and enslave you. Know who your friends are. You will know them by their fruit, i.e., it does not take long to discern if they are really attached to the Vine or are one of the dead branches that have no other use than firewood. And the quickest way to know is whether they keep My Word and whether they love and respect My Word. If they fail in either respect, keep your distance. Let the dead bury their dead, you come and preach the Kingdom.
I love you. Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God. 2 Corinthians 6:14-16.
Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king. 1 Peter 2:17.