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Jesus is talking about what it means to abide in Him. Just as He abides in the Father, so are we expected to abide in Him.
The topic of Abiding in Christ started with the questions:
Why can’t I see fruit in my life?
What should I do to really see the hand of God in my life?
How can I see results?
In short, to see results, we need to abide in Christ. But to abide in Christ we need to learn to love. Just as the Father loved the Son, and the son us, so should we learn to love one another (John 15: 9,12).
The answer is love! More specifically, the love of God. Take note of verse 9. We are called to love LIKE the Father & Son. Remember that it is possible for us to love in error. 1 John 2: 15 – 7 creates a clear distinction between two different kinds of love. The love of the Father and the love of the world.
According to the word, we’ll begin to see just how wrong our approach to love is. For most of us, our understanding of love is a selfish one. We think of love as a feeling, instead of an action and we think of it, mostly in terms of receiving rather than giving. Our past traumas and experiences has left us wounded and wary. Because of this we have closed ourselves of to giving as well as receiving love. We have adopted a disposition of trepidation. We have created a love that is highly conditional & as a result, we are very seldomly willing to give it out and require, often, an unreasonable standard to receive it.
But God! God’s love expiates! God’s love abounds! God’s love is not transactional, but a gift! All we have to do is look at the life of Jesus. Jesus loved sacrificially.
We’d like to think that loving other people is optional, depending on how they have treated us, but that’s not the case. He clearly states that we are to love one another as He has loved us. Gods ultimate act of love (and sacrifice) is the perfect example. He died on the cross for us. For our sins. We ought to love each other the same way. Sacrificially. The word says that God GAVE His only Son for our sins. This is another key characteristic of Godly love. God’s love gives. It will make you willingly give your time, attention, finances, skills. God’s love is putting another person ahead of yourself.
John 15: 13 says that there is no greater love than laying down your life for your friend. The ultimate form of love is giving. ( Note that ‘laying down’ in this verse doesn’t mean ‘to die for’, but according to the Greek word ‘tithémi’ it means ‘to set aside’ or ‘to lay off/aside’.) Jesus is saying that the greatest expression of our love for someone is to set aside our current problems for someone else and to place their need ahead of our own.
Learning to love is the first step to seeing God work in our lives like never before. The topic of love is vast and profound, which is no surprise considering the fact that ‘God IS love’ ( 1 John 4:8 ). So let us consider our ways and learn to walk in love.
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