As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. (10) If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love. (11) These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. (12) This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you. (13) Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. (14) Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. (15) Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth; but I have called you friends: for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. (16) Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. (17) These things I command you, that ye love one another. (18) If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. (19) If ye were of the world, the world would love his own, but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. (20) Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord: if they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you: if they have kept my saying, they will keep your's also. (21) But all these things will they do unto you for my name's sake, because they know not him that sent me. (22) If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin. (23) He that hateth me hateth my Father also. (24) If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father. (25) But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause.
Some of the many blessed things here spoken of by our Lord, are so sweet and plain, as to need no comment: indeed their beautiful simplicity, would suffer by one. I shall only therefore venture to offer an observation or two, which may not at first view appear so obvious as others.
When our Lord saith, in the opening of this passage, that as the Father hath loved him, so hath Christ loved his Church: it is very proper that we should consider, in what sense Jesus meant it. The love here spoken of in relation to the Father's affection towards Jesus, cannot be supposed to be the love he bears to the Son, as God. For in this sense, none but God himself, can apprehend the nature or extent of it. We must be blessed with infinite capacities, before that we can have the smallest conceptions, concerning any one thing, that is in its nature infinite. This, therefore, is not the love to which Jesus refers. Neither is it to be supposed, that the Father's love of Christ, in the Personal glory of God-Man-Mediator, as Christ, is the love here meant This must far exceed Christ's love of the Church. But the sense seems to be, that the love Jesus here speaks of, in relation to his Church, is of the same nature and kind, though not in equal degree. Under these limitations, and with an eye to Christ, as the predisposing cause, in whom, and for whose sake, God the Father loved the Church before all worlds, and chose the Church in Christ before all worlds; there is nothing upon earth can be more blessed, than the assurance Jesus hath here given: both of his Father's love of Him, and his love of the Church in Him. It is blessed, yea very blessed, to ponder the subject in this point of view! Jesus desires the Church to keep always in remembrance, that as the Father loveth Him, in this precious view, as the Head of his body the Church, and as such Christ hath been from everlasting infinitely delightful in his sight: so, saith Jesus, is my Church dear to me, as my Father's gift, and as the several members of my mystical body. Reader! fold up in your bosom those precious words of Jesus, for your unceasing meditation and delight!
I beg the Reader next to notice, what Jesus hath said, in respect to the keeping his commandments, by way of abiding in his love. Not, as if the love of Jesus was suspended on any act of his people: for this would be to subvert the whole plan of the Gospel; and to make the grace of God to depend upon the free will of man. In this case, human merit, and not divine favor, would become the standard of acceptance. Reader! I hope that you have not so learned Christ! Christ's love, is the sole cause of ours. And as we never obtained that love, because we kept his commandments: so our continuing in that love doth not rest, or depend upon, our present or future deservings, more than our past or original merit. The word If, in the beginning of the verse, if ye keep my commandments, seem to be used by Christ in a similar way and manner to the words of his servant the Apostle Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews: not as forming a cause, or condition, but rather as the consequence. For speaking of Christ and his house, he saith, whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence. Hebrews 3:6. So again, Hebrews 3:14, We are made partakers of Christ (saith he) if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end. In both those instances, it is our mercy, that neither our being of the house of Christ, built on Him the foundation, nor our being made partakers of Christ as part of himself; depend upon the least act of ours. These things were all settled before the foundation of the world; being chosen in Him, that we should be holy, and without blame, before God and our Father in love. Ephesians 1:4. But the Apostle in both places is speaking of the result of things, and not the cause, or condition of them; but as of a thing actually enjoyed. It is, as if he had said, we manifestly prove that we are Christ's, because we remain on the foundation: and we shew to all the world, that we are made partakers of Christ, because the sweet fruits of his grace, and love, are manifested in our lives, and conversation. In like manner, the keeping Christ's commandments are not meant as the cause, of abiding in his love; but his love is the cause, how his people are enabled to keep his commandments, and abide in him: and these become so many proofs and evidences that they are His, and who continue in his love.
I hope the Reader can, and doth, enter with me, into a suitable apprehension of the sweet character, Jesus makes use of, as a friend. Jesus is indeed the friend that loveth at all times, and one that sticketh closer than a brother. Proverbs 18:1-24; Proverbs 18:1-24. And who that considers, how from everlasting, Jesus engaged for his Church, as a surety; how he died for us; paid all our debts for us; bought us out of the hands of infinite justice; married our nature; is gone to heaven, to take possession of it in our name; will come again to receive us to himself, that where he is, we may be also: and in the mean time, supplies all our wants, answers all our necessities; and in every circumstance of life, is a constant friend, a faithful friend, an unchanging friend, an everlasting friend: who that thinks of these things, but must enter into a proper apprehension of what the Lord Jesus saith, when he calleth his children friends? Dearest Jesus! how shall I enumerate the thousandth part of the acts of the most disinterested friendship, which thou hast manifested to my soul? What a Friend was the Son of God to our nature, when he passed by that of angels, and took on him the seed of Abraham? What friendship was that, when Jesus became poor, that we through his poverty might be made rich? What love, so unequalled, to die, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God! And what love like thine; when though all forsake us, Jesus will never leave nor forsake his redeemed? Yea, Lord! though we so often believe not, yet thou abidest faithful: Jesus cannot, will not, deny himself. Shall I not say then as the wise man; Thine own friend and thy Father's friend forsake not! Proverbs 27:10. Yes! blessed Lord, everywhere, and in all things, I will speak of thee, with the Church of old, and say, This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem! Song of Solomon 5:16.