The church can be known for a number of things can’t it? It can be known for its care for the poor. It can be known for its moral teaching. It can be known for its liturgical expression. Sadly, it can sometimes be known in a negative way –for its scandal, anger, and greed. But what should the church be known for? When people outside the church see us, what should they see?
Chapters 13-20 of John’s Gospel are often called Jesus’ Farewell discourse. This long section of John’s Gospel covers the events of Jesus’ final night with His disciples and His final instructions to them before his betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion. In the midst of this discourse, Jesus speaks to His disciples about this new community He has formed, including their calling and what should mark it as authentic.
John 13 begins with Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. This is a tremendous example of servant leadership and humility sets the tone for the entire discourse. Jesus gives his followers a new commandment. This commandment is not abstract theology, but applied theology. John 13:34-35, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35, ESV).
Jesus knows his time is short. He knows Judas’ betrayal is imminent. The cross is growing closer. His time to teach his disciples is very limited. So how does he spend this final evening with them? It may surprise us that Jesus does not focus on their understanding of doctrine. He doesn’t clarify His divinity and humanity. He doesn’t seem to be worried to insure they are all in agreement on the virgin birth. He’s not teaching them about the atonement and the justification which will be achieved on Good Friday. What Jesus spends the bulk of his time on this night teaching the disciples is how to live as disciples. Jesus’ final instructions to his disciples is less about what to believe, and more about how to live. Forming the core of this teaching is love for one another. That’s the way they must live in order to take his saving message to a lost and broken world.
There are many organizations we know by their work. Alcoholics Anonymous is known for helping men and women overcome addiction. Toastmasters is known for their work in helping people develop confidence in public speaking. The Red Cross serves those in need during tragedies. So what does Jesus want his community to be known for?
The Community that Abides in His Love
The first thing Jesus’ new community must do is abide in His love. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.” (John 15:9, ESV). The “you” here is not singular, it is plural. As the Father has love me, so I love you all. This is to help us see that Jesus loves his church. He loves the Church of believers all over the world, and he loves the local church. He loves the Baptist church across town, the Presbyterians down the road. He loves your local church too. Anywhere his followers are living faithfully and authentically, He loves them. This removes from us any sense of superiority. Rather it calls us to humility and, where possible, cooperation. Remember when Saul is persecuting believers and he is struck down on his way to Damascus? The Lord Jesus appears to him and says, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4, ESV). Jesus takes that persecution personally, because of his love for the church. And in Ephesians 5, when Paul is talking about marriage he says, “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…” (Ephesians 5:25). Jesus loves the Church.
So the community that Jesus established, whether we are talking large-scale denominations or the local congregation, is called to abide, or live, in this love of Jesus. J.C. Ryle says that to abide in Christ means, “to keep up a habit of constant close communion with him, –to be always leaning on him, resting on him, pouring out our hearts to him, and using him as our fountain of life an strength, as our chief companion and best friend.” (Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels John Vol. III, 78)
The Community that Loves as Jesus Loves
Secondly, the church is called to be the community that loves as Jesus loves. That is, to live in imitation of His humble, foot-washing, self-effacing, self-sacrificing love.
In John 15:12 Jesus says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:12, ESV). Jesus is looking head-on at the cross he will soon embrace. It is the model for His love and ours. We can hear this also in 1 John which says, “Beloved if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” (1 John 4:11, ESV)
This love is the defining mark of the church of Jesus Christ. Or it should be. So the question we must ask is first, do we recognize the love of Jesus for the church? Second, do we seek to abide in that love? And third, do we take seriously Jesus’ command to love as he has loved us?
As much as I love doctrine and believe right doctrine is vitally important to a healthy church, it is no less true that authentic gospel culture is crucial to the church’s witness in the world. The core of Jesus’ commands for this, his church, center on living out the faith by love in the community. Again, I like how J.C. Ryle puts it, “Sound views of doctrine, and knowledge of controversy, will avail us nothing at last, if we have known nothing of love. Where there is no Christlike love, there is no grace, no work of the spirit, and no reality in our religion.” (Ibid, 83)
The Community Called to Friendship with Jesus
Thirdly, the community of the church is called to friendship with Jesus. This is an amazing promise! Following Jesus’ statement about laying down his life and our call to do the same, verses John 15:14-16 say, “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.”
Friends. Friends of Jesus. Do you realize how revolutionary and powerful that status is? What a privilege! He not only saves us, loves us, teaches us, but calls us friends. In his commentary on John, Bruce Milne says, “No greater dignity could be conferred upon us, or greater evidence of love show us, than Christ’s dying for us.” (Milne, Bruce, John: Bible Speaks Today, IVP, 223) Then Jesus reminds us that he has relayed truth to us –the truth we literally perish without. Jesus says, “All that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:16, ESV). Milne continues, “His truth shared is an evidence of his love given.” (Ibid, 223)
This friendship with Jesus is a treasure and a comfort to us. In the challenges of this life, you not only have a Lord and Savior, but a Lord and Savior who calls you His friend. You have a Lord who walks with you in the ups and downs of life, who sees your struggles and your doubts, your worries, griefs, and missteps –yet never leaves your side. He loves you. He speaks truth to your troubled soul. So his community is built on His love and rooted in a friendship like no other.
The Community that was Chosen to Bear Lasting Fruit
Finally, the Lord establishes this community by His initiative and grace. He says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide.” (John 15:16) Any sense of self-importance or arrogance that might tempt us is removed by this verse. None of this is our own doing. It is the doctrine of election which the 17th Article of the 39 Articles of Religion says is “full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort” (Ibid, Ryle, 85)
Jesus calls this community of love to go -to go and share this message, to grow and increase that more may know the love, joy, and friendship with Christ. But it is not due to any merit of our own. Once more I think Milne is helpful when he says, “Their [and our] standing and relationship with him [Jesus] is a matter of grace…We go not because we are worthy, or equipped, or attractive or skilled, or experienced, or in any way suitable and appropriate. We go because we have been summoned and sent.” (Ibid, Milne, 223). And that is the way, the only way, we develop any lasting fruit.
Conclusion
So, what does all this mean for us? Well, primarily it means that the sign of the Church of Jesus Christ is real, authentic, truth-valuing, self-sacrificing love expressed in the local church community. On the night before Jesus’ crucifixion, this is the type of community he is calling the apostles, and us, to be. We are called to be known for our radical, Christ-imitating love.
Jesus’ design for His community is one that: Abides in His love, loves as He loves, is called to friendship with Him, and is chosen by grace to bear lasting fruit for the kingdom.
So, we have a choice. Will we live into Jesus’ vision for the church? I sincerely hope so. My hope is that we will embrace this call with our whole heart. I want people to come to church that are hurting, and lost, and broken by life. I want people to find a home at in the local church that is unique and welcoming and warm. If you have doubts and fears and grief and questions, please know you are welcome. If you struggle and wonder, the church should (and I hope it will) be a place where you can know the freedom to struggle and wonder.
Let us do our best to love as Jesus loves, to tell the truth as Jesus did, and welcome others as Jesus welcomed us. As we live into His vision for the church, we discover His joy! In John 15:11 Jesus says, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” (John 15:11, ESV)
In their book on the balance between Gospel Doctrine and Gospel Culture, called You’re Not Crazy my friends Ray Ortlund and Sam Allberry say, “What will most clearly show the presence of heaven on earth—that God is alive and well and right here—is our love for one another. The quality of our relational life in our churches is to be an apologetic for the world around us. As Francis Schaeffer once wrote, “Jesus is giving the world permission to judge whether we are true Christian Disciples on the basis of whether we love one another.” (Ortlund & Alberry, You’re Not Crazy, Crossway, p 124-125).
May we seek to live into Jesus’ vision, his command, for His church.
May others look at us and say, “There is something about the way they love, that shows me Jesus.”