9 "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because servants do not know their master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.
My thoughts -
We sure love our freedom, don't we? We want to be self-sufficient, self-made, and self-directed people. We don't want to be told what to do. That's just not who we are.
In this passage Jesus keeps talking about commands. Now people who follow commands aren't necessarily free, right? I mean, a request is one thing, but a command? Well, the very word implies a lack of choice in the matter. And then he flips the script a bit and says that if we follow his commands we are not his servants but his friends. Why? Because we know his business.
Well sign me up for that! What do I have to do? Love others as Jesus has loved me.
Gulp.
There's a lot of sacrifice there. Didn't he subvert his own will in order to reconcile us with God? Didn't he die for us? How am I supposed to love others like that?
If I keep asking God to help me, if I keep praying to be able to do God's will, then I suppose that anything is possible. On my own there's no chance. But with God all things are possible.
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