FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Scripture Reference: John 15:12-25

From Last Lesson: Jesus did have to die for us. He died to reveal the Father’s compassion, not to appease the Father’s love.

That may be the first thing we need to make perfectly clear. Christian concern for peace is not an optional hobby of some softhearted people. It is not the product of a debatable reading of the accuracy of the technical assumptions built into a military’s established scenarios for preparedness.

Concern for peace, whether Jewish or Christian, is part of the purpose of God for all eternity. God is by nature a reconciler, a maker of shalom. For us to participate in the peacemaking purposes of that kind of God is not just morality. It is not just politics. It is worship, doxology, praise.

There are more ways than one for a person to do the will of another person. Jesus distinguishes here between two levels of relationship:

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:13-15).

The disciples, then, did not just obey orders. The word here translated servant means more literally slave. Sometimes that term is used to describe Christian obedience to God as master. But here the difference is that a slave is one who does not know the master’s purpose. He knows what his own orders are, and obeys them, but does not know the complete plan. He does not know why obedience makes sense. So when Jesus says, “I have given you the title of friends,” he means that we are in on what it is all about. We know the battle plan behind our service. This is the major point I want to make in this lesson. Jesus has revealed to us, the Father’s will and plan for mankind.

The apostle Paul was saying something similar in his letter to the Ephesians, when he wrote about the divine mystery hidden through the ages but now revealed through the apostles and prophets. We have the privilege of being in on God’s purposes. We are not pawns sovereignly moved about on a cosmic chessboard. We are the players.

Now we can grasp more fully the weight of the statements with which we began. “The world will treat you as it is treating Me,” Jesus says. The peacemaking work of the believer, in conflict, in suffering, is a continuation of the work of Christ. The apostle Paul said of himself, “I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Colossians 1:24).

John states in one of his letters:

“We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. . . . By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers” (1 John 3:12, 16).

Our teachers have often drawn the line separating salvation from obedience, dividing what Jesus did for us from what we are to do for Him. That line is real. It is appropriate for some valid religious and spiritual purposes. If the question were whether we can save ourselves, or whether God owes us some reward for our works, that line would matter. But that is not our question.

Our question is how we can honor God the peacemaker. Something we truly need to take time to meditate, contemplate and pray about is, how can we intelligibly participate in God’s purposes, as friends who are in on His battle plan? How can we knowingly and responsibly participate in His peacemaking project for the planet? It is something we truly need to consider as part of the Body of Christ.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture Reference: John 15:12-25

The arms race today, and the once called “cold-war” is like that. It is the cut that exposes the grain. The grain is national chauvinism, the assumption of moral superiority inherent in our kind of people and of the right to sacrifice the security of other people for the sake of our own. The grain that runs clear through the wood is trust in coercive power to bend others to our will. If we thought we could do that to our neighbors with crossbows or with slingshots instead of nuclear weapons, that would be no better morally.

But organization and technology have so multiplied the stakes that anyone can see the grain. Anyone can see that the evil is systemic. That is why a particular tactic, such as a nuclear freeze, even if it is a good political first step, is not enough. It was not enough in the 19th century to stop importing slaves.

One mistake we need to avoid is placing the blame on some evil people. Most people within “the system” are not necessarily “nasty.” They do not beat their wives and children. A few of them are brutal; some are selfish or venal, profiteers or racketeers, con-artists; but most of them are not. They may lack imagination or courage, just as many of us do. Most of the people who were and are underlings in our many wars are fairly decent people. They are gentle with their children, and they keep their files in order. They follow the rules and work hard. They are more hostages to the “system” than villains.

The second mistake to avoid is thinking that the response to all of this evil ought to be hatred. The world hates God and Jesus and His disciples, but God does not hate the world. He loves the world; that is why He sent His Son to be its willing victim. In that connection, with that goal of God’s in mind, there is and can be and must be no ditch between Jesus and ourselves. Jesus loved His enemies (including us), He came and died for them; therefore, we are to love our enemies. Jesus let that love cost Him His life. We can risk the things we value, most of which are much less than life itself, for the sake of our enemies.

We must be reminded that the context of the cross is what gives this Scripture passage its meaning. Jesus is present in order to give Himself willingly. He says that He is sent. His cause is not His own. The authority with which He acts is not His own. The Father stands behind His free choice to give Himself. His will is the Father’s will; His intention is the Father’s. The God of the gospel, the God whom Jesus calls “Father,” is a peacemaker, a reconciler.

This truth is not always self-evident. In some strands of Christianity it is not even affirmed—or it is sometimes even denied. In some strands of Christianity, the Father is strict and the Son is gentle. God the Father is a condemning judge, while the Son is an advocate pleading our cause, or even a substitute suffering in our stead under the anger and wrath of the Father. In that example, God the Father is a patriarch, whereas Jesus the Son is a feminist.

It is important that we should correct that view. It is deeply rooted in our culture. It has to do with some people’s views about death and war and enemies. The apostle Paul corrects that error when he writes:

“In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:19).

Jesus did have to die for us. He died to reveal the Father’s compassion, not to appease the Father’s love.

“Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil” (Luke 6:35).

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture Reference: John 15:12-25

The man who is speaking the words in our reference scriptures will be dead and buried approximately twenty-four hours later. He is preparing a small circle of His followers to be ready to live without Him. He warns them that in their future life they will be partakers of the same conflict about to claim His life.

“Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me” (John 15:20-21).

So the reason for the hostility is “not knowing.” This does not mean simple ignorance or lack of information. It means lack of acknowledgement. They do not recognize who sent Jesus.

“If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin” (John 15:22).

Who is this “they”? These verses name no one. They don’t name the Jews nor the Romans. The rejection Jesus describes is broader than that. He says it comes from “the world.”

“If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:19).

What then is this “world” whose hatred is to be expected? It does not mean the globe. It does not mean God’s good creation. It does not mean the rocks and streams and animal life. It does not mean “all the people.”

The Greek word cosmos which is used here might best be translated “the system.” It points to the way things fit together: to the networking, the organizing; to the way that God’s refractory creation, God’s rebellious creatures stick together for evil. Human solidarity is a good thing, but once solidarity has become nationalism, racism, collective selfishness, it is not. Human rationality is a good thing, but when it has been harnessed to destruction, it is not.

God made his creatures capable of organization through solidarity. When we use those capacities for evil, they still work. What is wrong with our world is not simply a matter of isolated individual ignorance or isolated evil will. It is not just that I am a sinner and you another, she a sinner, and they sinners, and it all adds up. The whole world is worse than the sum of its parts.

This is a first sobering truth about the task facing the move toward peace and peacemaking. What killed Jesus was a world. The men who joined in executing Jesus were the mere instruments of larger forces. This is what the apostle Paul meant when he wrote:

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

It all goes together. For instance what the late President Eisenhower once coined as “the military-industrial complex” is far more complex than that. It is not only the Pentagon and the owners of industry. It is not only also the banks, university researchers, labor organizers, political parties . . . it is all of us.

The “challenge of peace” is not, then, just a matter of fixing or fine-tuning a system of which the other parts are working well. We are not trying merely to correct one mistake in an otherwise adequate culture. We are dealing, rather, with an evil that is representative and prototypical. When you cut across a piece of wood you find a pattern of lines or circles that we call “the grain.” The grain is not only at the end of the wood; it runs all the way through the log. You see it at the extremity where the cutting exposed it.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture Reference: Acts 4:23-31

5. There Is Grace Abounding in the Lives of God’s People

Luke told us that “great grace was upon them all” (Acts 4:33). The word grace here could be exchanged for the word Christlikeness. These people had the Spirit of Jesus Christ because they imitated the prayer life of the Savior.

First, God gave them the grace of unity. The Bible tells us that they had one heart and one soul (Acts 4:32). Because they prayed, they experienced “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3). They knew from experience the meaning of the words “you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

Second, there was the grace of renunciation. The church members were unselfish. They were willing to share their possessions. “No one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common” (Acts 4:32). What a marvelous inflowing and outflowing there was of the love of Christ! How greatly this is needed today! How is it achieved? It comes about as a direct result of the people of God learning to kneel down and pray together.

Third, there was the grace of liberality. There is a great need for Christians to be generous in their giving through the church. The Jerusalem church “had everything in common” (Acts 4:32). In fact, Luke went on to report:

“There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need” (Acts 4:34-35).

Modern statistics show that in most churches 20 percent of the members give 80 percent of the money. How we need this grace of liberality in our churches today.

In his excellent book And Peter, J. Wilbur Chapman tells the following story:

A number of travelers were making their way across the desert. The last drop of water had been exhausted and they were pushing on with the hope that more might be found. They were growing weaker and weaker. As a last resort they divided their men into companies and sent them on, one in advance of the other, in this way securing a rest they so much needed. If they who were in the advance guard were able to find the springs, they were to shout the good tidings to the men who were the nearest to them, and so they were to send the message along.

The long line reached far across the desert. They were fainting by the way when suddenly everyone was cheered by the good news. The leader of the first company had found the springs of water. He stood at the head of his men, shouting until the farthest man had heard his cry: “Water! Water!” The word went from man to man, until the whole company heard the sound, quickened their pace, and soon were drinking to their hearts’ content! ¹

We live in a dry and desolate place, a world where souls are desperately in need of the Water of life. Since we as believers have found that living water in Christ, we have an obligation to share it with those who are dying of spiritual thirst. The cry should be ringing out from our lips, “Water! Water!” The invitation Isaiah recorded should be sounded everywhere, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters” (Isaiah 55:1). To do so is more than a solemn responsibility—it is an absolute necessity.

¹ J. Wilbur Chapman, And Peter (New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1895), 84.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.