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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this text comes from the Gospel reading as well as some reference to the Epistle. You may be seated. Let no one say they haven’t heard the Gospel message. You just sang it. Luther, the beauty of Luther and his hymnody that was so different than in previous generations, is that he laid out the entire salvation story. Yes, I realize it takes 10 verses, but it would be kind of hard to summarize that in four. But the point being is that no one can say they didn’t hear it because it’s very clear in that hymn.
But that was a commercial. Here’s the text. So one of Jesus’ most memorable parables that you remember him telling you is the parable of the Good Samaritan. Now, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, I need you to remember which one of the characters in that parable you are supposed to see yourself as being. Bad news, you are not to see yourself as the Good Samaritan. That would turn that parable into nothing more than a moralistic teaching. Now in that parable, you are supposed to see yourself as being the man left half dead and naked on the road that could not choose anyone, that could not raise a finger and say, “I need help.” And the Good Samaritan is none other than your Lord Jesus Christ.
In that text this morning, Jesus makes it very clear, “You did not choose me. But I chose you.” That’s why that parable of the Good Samaritan is to be seen as I just explained it. If He’s the Good Samaritan, He chooses to serve you. He gives you value. He gives you honor. He gives you a place and an identity that you would not have without Him choosing you. That is what Jesus is reminding you of in this text this morning. “I chose you, I appointed you to bear fruit.”
A little bit later in the text, he makes this relationship with you very, very intimate because he says, “I don’t call you slaves or servants. I call you friends.” Now, you and I use that term fairly broadly because we use it to describe the people we love to spend lots of hours with, as well as people we use it to describe whom we have an acquaintance with. That is not how Jesus is using it here. He is using it in the narrow sense of people He loves to be with for hours on end—people whom He has opened His heart to, fully laid everything out on the table, hid nothing from you of His great love, of His unending mercy, of His boundless fidelity to you. So that you know by faith, the will of my Father toward me is nothing but love and mercy and forgiveness.
Because Jesus has revealed the will of the Father to me, and the will of the Holy Spirit is exactly as Jesus gave it to the Holy Spirit to reveal it to me from the Scriptures—that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit’s will toward me is nothing but full and free love, forgiveness, and mercy. There is no judgment. That was reserved for that. He’s paid the judgment. The price has been paid, which is why His words were, “It is finished.”
Therefore, this is very important for you to burn in your brain: that fact of what He has revealed to you. Satan cannot alter that fact or that revelation, and Satan cannot annul that fact or revelation given to you. He can make you doubt it, He can tempt you to disparage it, but it will not change its validity.
This relationship that He has with you is likened unto a marriage. Elsewhere in Scripture, Jesus proclaims Himself to be your bridegroom and proclaims you to be His bride. When you got married, you were given a death sentence on that day because you were proclaiming to that woman, and you were proclaiming to that man, and you both were proclaiming to God and to everyone else, “I’m going to begin to die daily, that I may live for the us and not the me.”
In a much more profound way, the moment you were baptized, you were given a death sentence. Every single day, you wake up and I wake up being a baptized child of God, saying, “I’m going to die more today that you may be more important to me than me.” Having such an intimate relationship with your Lord who calls you friend, He is saying the same thing.
Make no mistake, your flesh must die daily. It is not an option. It is not when it’s easy. It is not when it’s hard. It is to die daily. John said it another way in the epistle reading. He said, “This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.” Now John knows where you’re thinking. That’s why he added that next statement that God gave to him: “And His commandments are not burdensome.”
When someone you love asks you to do something for them, none of you are going to go, “Well, I’ll think about it.” When someone who loves you asks you for a favor or for help or needs something, you’re going to bend over backwards to do it for them because of your love for them. That’s why. Men, we would give our wives the end of the world if we knew that’s all they wanted. Same with you ladies. Same with you parents to your children.
It is that way for your Lord toward you because when He calls you friend and He says in this text, “I reveal to you everything,” He laid out on that table all of His feelings toward you, for lack of a better word, all of His will toward you to be nothing but love. He held nothing back. There are no other shoes to drop. There are no other revelations to be given at your worst day. That’s why His commandments are not burdensome.
John in his epistle also adds, “Every one of you who have been born of God,” and you have, having been baptized into Christ, “every one of you who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—your faith.” And who gave you that faith? The same one in whose name you’ve been baptized. The same one who says, “You’re my bride, I’m your bridegroom.” The same one who finds you and I when we haven’t been faithful to our bridegroom as we ought, when we haven’t destroyed and died in our flesh daily and lived for Him.
Now, does your Lord demand anything of you as His child? Does your Lord demand anything of you as His child? Survey says… No! He demands nothing of you. That’s love. He does ask one thing of you, and it’s said so in the text. He said, “I give you one commandment: Love one another as I have loved you.”
This is not new for God to only give one commandment. Adam and Eve in the garden, before sin came into the world, how many commandments did God give them? One. “You shall not eat of the tree.” That’s it. You can eat every other tree out there, but don’t eat of that one. That’s it. Give Him one commandment. Commandment is one way you can say this, but if He calls you friend, it’s not a commandment, is it? It’s a request: “Love one another as I have loved you.”
Follow-up question. Does God need your love? No! He’s God. He doesn’t need anything from you. If He doesn’t need anything from you, who needs your love? Everyone else in this world needs your love. That is why God placed them in your life—to give them love.
And before you and I become too self-centered in this conversation, remember you were also placed in their life to receive their love. But Satan… Satan loves to constantly and continually sow seeds of discord between brothers and sisters in Christ. He constantly and continually loves to sow seeds of anger, impatience, hatred, envy—all so he can divide up fellow believers in Jesus Christ.
And the devil, he’s a master of this. He diligently devotes himself to sowing those seeds among you, and among me, and among us as the body of Christ. And why is he so continually and constantly and so diligently devoted to such things? His desire is to destroy God’s children’s love for one another.
Because Satan knows very well the church is built upon, first and foremost, the Good Samaritan’s love for you whom he found. And then you, having received that love, the church is built on your love for the other. That’s why Satan knows that’s how he can divide and conquer the children of the Father.
You and I need to repent. We drank the Kool-Aid, brothers and sisters. We can think, oh, well, it’s easy to love. Oh, it’s easy to start to love someone. Anybody who’s been married for a while knows it’s difficult and strength-taxing to remain practicing that love toward another human being. And only you who have faith can do it.
Because what did John say? “This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.” Faith. And who gave you that to begin with? Christ, who said you’ve been born of God. In other words, Jesus is saying allow my love for you to be reflected in your love for one another.
If I held up before your eyes a rock and said, “Can that rock produce a light?” you would all say, “No, pastor, that rock can’t produce a light.” Well, if all of a sudden I enlarge that rock and throw it up into orbit around the earth, now that dead rock that has no light of its own can produce light by reflecting the light of the sun.
Isn’t that what you are? Nothing but a rock. Only you can reflect the light given to you from the Son, S-O-N, to reflect upon and give love to one another. That’s why Jesus said, “Remain in my unconditional and boundless love for you in order to sustain you to love one another, to provide for you in loving for one another.”
You ever thought about the context of this? We’ve been talking about this kind of out of context. When Jesus spoke these words, consider when in the chronological time frame of His life that these words were spoken. He didn’t speak it to them when He was out fishing with them. He didn’t speak it to them after He had fed the 5,000, when He had raised Lazarus from the dead. He spoke it to them in the upper room a mere hours away from showing them the extent of His love by dying for them.
Now you and I can think, well, that might not have been the most opportunistic time for Him to teach that. It was the most important time for Him to teach that. Why? What would Satan be doing to those apostles the moment Jesus died, rose again, and went to heaven? Turn them against one another.
The first one they should turn on would be Thomas. “Thomas, where were you? We were all here. Were you afraid? Why did you doubt? Why are you saying those things, Thomas?” That would have been what Satan would have been throwing those seeds of discord. Which is why Jesus spoke those words. So that they all could repent. Repent. So that they all would see themselves as not being better than one another, but the same. And that they are capable of loving one another.
In fact, how in the world did you even get into God’s kingdom? But by God loving you into His kingdom. That’s how the Good Samaritan loved that half-dead man on the road. He loved him into existence. So how does God reach other people but by loving them into the kingdom through you and me? Loving them into the kingdom through you and me.
It’s never a perfect work of love. Get over yourself. Don’t let Satan have that glory. You and I will never love perfectly. So get over it. Repent. Go back to loving. It’s a practice. No different than, do you beat yourself up over and over with your marriage? Maybe you did at the beginning, but then you begin to realize, you know what marriage is? It’s nothing but a life of confession and absolution. Asking for forgiveness and receiving forgiveness.
That’s your life in Christ as you’re learning to love one another. It’s a practice. You’ll never be perfect at it, but you are to practice it because you’ve been married to the one who gave you it at the very beginning, finding you on that road, choosing you to bear fruit, that you may bear it abundantly, and that this fruit of love endures to eternal life.
Remember, Paul talked about faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love. Then there’s that last statement of Jesus: “So that whatever you ask the Father in my name, He may give it to you.” Keep it in the context. What is the number one thing He must be pushing you to ask for in the context of these verses?
And that is, He wants you to ask the Father in His name, “Lord, help me to love my brother as myself.” And guess what He said? He will give it to you. Ask Him to help you love. He will give it to you. And rejoice in His love over you as the one found along the road. And you know what He does over you? He rejoices over your love for one another like only a proud father could. “Ah, that’s my boy. That’s my girl.”
Christ is risen! Rejoice in His love over you and know that He rejoices over your love for one another.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Peace of God which passes all understanding. Keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
