1“I am the true vine, and my Father is the farmer. 2Every branch in me that doesn’t bear fruit, he takes away. Every branch that bears fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3You are already pruned clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. 4Remain in me, and I in you. As the branch can’t bear fruit by itself unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you, unless you remain in me. 5I am the vine. You are the branches. He who remains in me and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. 6If a man doesn’t remain in me, he is thrown out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them, throw them into the fire, and they are burned. 7If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, you will ask whatever you desire, and it will be done for you.
8“In this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; and so you will be my disciples. 9Even as the Father has loved me, I also have loved you. Remain in my love. 10If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, even as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. 11I have spoken these things to you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be made full.
12“This is my commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do whatever I command you. 15No longer do I call you servants, for the servant doesn’t know what his lord does. But I have called you friends, for everything that I heard from my Father, I have made known to you. 16You didn’t choose me, but I chose you and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you will ask of the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
17“I command these things to you, that you may love one another. 18If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, since I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 20Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his lord.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. 21But they will do all these things to you for my name’s sake, because they don’t know him who sent me. 22If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have had sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. 23He who hates me, hates my Father also. 24If I hadn’t done among them the works which no one else did, they wouldn’t have had sin. But now they have seen and also hated both me and my Father. 25But this happened so that the word may be fulfilled which was written in their law, ‘They hated me without a cause.’
26“When the Counselor has come, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will testify about me. 27You will also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.
Laying Down Our Lives for Our Friends
12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you.13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
It has been said that near the end of his life, when the disciple John was asked to speak to various congregations, he would stand up and just say, “Children, love one another.” Much of what John writes centers on love. Biblical love is not an elusive kind of love. It is concrete. It is identifiable. It is an action. In the Jewish mind, love cannot be separated from action. It doesn’t exist apart from doing. And love is altogether about giving.
The Hebrew word for love is ahavah, which is rooted in the more molecular word hav,[1]which means to give, revealing that, according to Judaism, giving is at the root of love. We forget that Jesus and all of His disciples were Jewish, and they lived and operated with a Jewish mindset. When Jesus talked about loving God, oneself, or a neighbor as oneself, it is all about giving. The implications of this etymological discovery are tremendous. It gives great clarity to this whole business of love. In English, the grammatical water is muddied horrifically. I can say that I love salmon, I love my grandchildren, and I love my wife, and each of them means something different. It begs the question: “What is real love?” It’s no wonder that so many people in our society run around trying to discover and find “true love", whatever they imagine that to be. The problem is that they focus on the lover rather than the other. In other words, they are focused on themselves and how something or someone MAKES THEM FEEL.
Jesus is clear. We are to love one another as He has loved us. And that involves giving. Jesus gave us His all when He laid down His life for us. He went to the cross, giving Himself as the sufficient and full payment for our rebellion, our sin, our wrongdoing. So how do we “lay down our lives for our friends”? I think we do so when we love others, and this is done through the giving of our time, our talents, and our treasures to others. Few of us will ever have to step forward and take a bullet for someone we love. But, every time you lay down your own agenda and give of your time, talents, and treasure to another, you are laying down your life for a friend. The span of our lives is made up of time. It can be measured down to the second. When you’re giving up even a minute of your time, you are giving up a fraction of your very life. When you give of your money, you’re giving of stored value that was acquired by someone who gave their time and effort to provide a product or a service to another. Effort was expended. Treasure was acquired. Reader, this is a call for an agenda shift. In loving others, we must shift from being primarily focused on our own agenda and turn our attention to God’s agenda. How will that look in your life? I really don’t know, but God does. Ask where to focus your effort, then lay down your life for others.
[1]See R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, Chorev, Bereishit 22:2; Michtav Mei’Eliyahu Vol. 1 Kuntres Hachesed; Lev Eliyahu Vol. 1, p. 110