John 15:9-11, Abide in My Love

15:9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. 11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

One of the critical conditions for effective mission is love, and the Father and the Son set the standard. The disciples have witnessed the Father’s love manifested in Jesus and his loving, obedient response to the Father. Now they are to abide in this love from the branch that will nourish the vines in all circumstances and conditions.

One of the greatest stumbling blocks for the people of God is their inability to keep God’s commandments. However, a new day is dawning for the people of God when it comes to love. The love Jesus describes is a fulfillment of the great Old Testament prophecies from Jeremiah 31:31-34 and Ezekiel 36:25-27, which bear spelling out below:

31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31)

25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Ezekiel 36)

God’s promise is to write his law on our hearts, making it part of our interior being instead of an exterior set of rules, and he promises to do it by removing what keeps us from him and giving us a new heart of love through the power and work of his Spirit within us. There are exciting times ahead for the people of God.

Lord, fill me today with your Spirit that I may keep your commandments and abide in your love. Amen.