Meditationen am Gnadenstuhl: Wednesday, June 15, 2022 - John 15:12-27
Wednesday, June 15, 2022
Proverbs 15:1-29
John 15:12-27
(1 Maccabees 13:31-53)
John 15:12-27
[12] “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. [13] Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. [14] You are my friends if you do what I command you. [15] 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. [16] 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, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. [17] These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
[18] “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. [19] If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. [20] Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. [21] But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. [22] If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. [23] Whoever hates me hates my Father also. [24] If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. [25] But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause.’
[26] “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. [27] And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning. (ESV)
Stop and think in light of conversations you may have had in recent times regarding faith. Have we all not felt a sense of pride for choosing to live a life of faith at one time or another? Imagine that all the belief systems and religions of the world were lined up leaning against the brick wall in the schoolyard. Time to pick who is on your team! Many options are arrayed before you, but you picked Jesus! How righteous and wise we are! After all, you choose Jesus, and you go to heaven! God is love, after all, and how He loves us is by rewarding us for making good choices!
Well, we know that is not right! Regardless, we all make this error in our hearts more frequently than we think. We know full well that the Bible teaches us that true saving faith comes about by hearing the words of the Word made flesh, our Lord Christ Jesus. Take another pause and contemplate the weight of that statement. We are saved not by our worthless and weak works, but through faith alone, by grace alone, for the sake of Jesus Christ's life, death, and resurrection alone. That is what Jesus has done for each of you out of His infinite and unconditional love for you. And talk about sacrificial love! Your Father in heaven willingly sacrificed His only begotten Son so that poor, lost, and condemned you could be restored and redeemed by His bloodshed on the cross. Such is God's gracious love for you.
This is the gift of God's love. It is the life-breathing and life-saving Gospel that first penetrates our dead hearts and reanimates the walking corpses of we sinners. In our sin, in our weakness, we forget this truth and try to rationalize that it was we who strove for our justification and salvation. We try to take credit for the gift of faith. But a dead man can not perform CPR on himself.
We Lutherans shy away from the word "choice" for this reason. But do we not, really, have a choice? After all, we have free will. But there is a proper order these decisions must be made. Where your being declared righteous before God is concerned, we call that justification. The Lord first chose you. You didn't choose Him. You did not choose to be saved. He decided to spare you despite yourself, just like that willful child who thinks mom and dad do not love him because they will not let him stay up all night eating ice cream and watching scary movies. Out of His great love and compassion for you, He chose you from before the foundation of the world.1 He chose to send you Jesus to die for you before you chose to love God. He chose to send Jesus because He knew you had nothing to offer Him, including your love.
As we confess, we are by nature sinful and unclean and therefore enemies of God.2 Despite all our rebellion and hate, Jesus loved you so much that He died for you, even we who so often take His love for granted or even reject it. The ability to love God in return for His great love for us is itself a gift.
The greatest temptation is to fall back to petulant child mode and choose ourselves over everyone else. But that gift of faith God gifted us in love clings to our salvation in Christ, and then it does something most extraordinary! Faith reaches out through you to touch the untouchable. That faith loves and cares for all those for whom Christ died and rose, forgiving others as you have graciously been forgiven.
There is the irony. We become able to choose to forgive, love, and care for our neighbors. It is a reflex. The truth is, it really isn't a decision you make. A good fruit tree bears abundant fruit because that is what it does. It cannot choose to have only barren branches. It is this gift of love that rends your heart and brings you to church, turns you to repentance, and gifts you in turn to the needs of others—love one another.
1Ephesians 1:4.
2Romans 5:10.