John 15:18-25 – Don’t be surprised by the world’s hostility towards us

We will be sorely mistaken if we think that by being a Christian, we will only experience health and wealth. Influenced by the prosperity Gospel, many think Christianity will ensure a smooth sailing life. For sure God is not here to make our life miserable. He still wants us to experience His miracles and will bring healing when we need them. He will meet the needs of our life when we live by Biblical principles. Living righteously can certainly help us to avoid some pain and tough hurdles in life. But spiritual life is not always a bed of roses. Many live in a world of make believe. What are some realistic expectations we must have in living as believers in a fallen world? We must expect trials and pressure in this world. We must know that the world is a hostile place. Every day we are besieged by hostile people.   

The Lord did not mince His words. He said that we believers will be hated. He gave several reasons for their hatred. Firstly, it is because they hate Jesus. Why do they hate Jesus? Verses 22-25 show us why. Jesus through His words and works has revealed how sinful humanity is. Thus, it comes as no surprise that those who would not accept Him would hate and detest Him for that. He had called off the bluff of their false religiosity and outward show to please God. His Word, like a mirror placed before them, showed them their true condition, but they could not accept it. So they turned extremely hostile toward Him.

In verse 19, Jesus gave us the second reason, why the world will hate us, believers. It is because we don’t belong to them. Jesus explicitly said, “If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.” The word “world” is referring to the sinful system of the world. Believers are hated because they are not part of the world system that opposes all who would not conform to it. Persecution do not always come in the form of violence. It shows itself through the attitude of disapproval or indifference. Other times believers are treated as a non-entity or be by-passed in promotions. Many times hatred would reveal itself through animosity.  

The third reason Jesus tells us is that if they did not spare Him, they will certainly not spare those who belong to Him. He reminded us that, “A slave is not greater than his master. If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also.” The degree we bear our testimony for Christ will be the degree we will be treated. The absence of trail is not an indication that God is pleased with our life. Neither does it mean that a tough life is a godly life. That’s because some trials are self-invited stupidity. We need to know that a life pleasing to God is one that demonstrates the righteousness of Christ, by obeying His word and walking in His footsteps.

How should we respond in a world of hostility? 1 Peter 2:12 exhorts us to “Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.” In other words, we don’t lose our focus in living for Christ. We keep faith with Him through difficult times. God can use our tolerance to their unkindness to create a thirst in their hearts, and cause them to turn to Him. Let’s be God’s faithful witnesses by living right! 

John 15:15-17 – Being a friend of the Lord

Jesus wants to share with us the deepest thoughts of His heart. He sees us not as servants but as friends. This is another level of relationship. A friend and a servant share different levels of relationship. The master has no obligation to disclose what’s on his heart to his servant. They are at the master’s behest because they are paid to do a job. They are often not told of the plan the master has. Theirs is just to obey instruction. Whereas a friend is given the privilege to know the master’s plan. And in verse 15, Jesus tells His disciples as well as us saying, “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.” 

What He is saying is this: “Do you know that I don’t consider you as servants but as friends? As such I am sharing personal information with you. Whatever the Father has shown me I am showing you. In our relationship there would be no barrier.” As our friend, Jesus wants to help us realize our thoughts. He wants us to freely confide and reveal our thoughts and feelings, without fear of being betrayed, just as He had freely made known His heart and thoughts with us. He wants to eliminate our loneliness. He wants us to take the time to meet with Him so that He can share with us His goals and aspiration for our life. He wants us to talk to Him and find comfort and encouragement in Him. In verse 16 we are shown the desire He has for us as His friends. He wants us to be fruit-bearing believers. He tells us that He had set us apart and appointed us so that we can go and bear fruit. Fruitfulness results as we share intimate friendship with Him.

Love is such a critical part of the friendship with Him and others that He reminded us time and again of the need to love. He reiterates it again in verse 17, “This I command you, that you love one another.” This kind of love starts with choice. It is making a decision to love not “because of” but “in spite of”. This is what the Apostle Paul identified as a fruit of the Spirit. It comes as a result of abiding in Christ. As we abide in Him we find strength to love Him as well as others, and even the unlovely. When our relationship with God is rightly aligned and we are walking with Him, resting in Him and relying on Him, there will be one visible result: we will be amazingly loving! 

John 15:12-14 – Genuine love is sacrificial

Relationship is one major theme that runs through the whole of John 15. Verses 1-11 emphasized the relationship between the vine and the branches, that is, Christ and the believers. Verses 12-14, the focus is on relationship between the branches, that is, a believer with other believers. In verses 15-17, Christ want us to know that we believers are not His servants, but His friends. Verses 18-27, Christ will deal with His relationship with the world.

The three verses we are reflecting on today suggest a subtle hint that between believers, there can also be mistrust. We know that mistrust of each other in the world is a common phenomenon, but for Christians this could not happen. And this is a major misconception. The reality is that we have come across Christians who had not spoken to each other for years. It is a fact that among believers, there are those who feel very lonely because other believers would avoid them like a plague. Like it or not, we need to find acceptance, approval and appreciation. There are those who would give anything for a good friend because friendship is important. John 15:12–14 show us how to have long lasting and deepened friendship.  

Verses 12-13 show us two principles to promote friendship. They are: sacrifice and love. Jesus said, “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this that one lay down his life for his friends.” Here the Lord reminds us again of the commandment to love one another that He had given in John 13:34. Christ’s emphasis is that we should love each other as He had loved us. His kind of love is sacrificial. He loves us so much that He laid His life down to save us. He exemplified this at the cross. In truth, He even tried to love Judas Iscariot back to the fold, although the latter had stoutly rejected His love. Here He is calling on us to display His kind of love, a sacrificial love that would make us willing to lay down one’s life for a friend.  One clear evidence that we are the friend of the Lord would be our obedience to His commandment to love. 

We need to cultivate unity, trust and obedience in the Lord and seek to see the best in our friends. We must also eliminate rivalry, suspicion and self-centeredness. As we do all these more and more, we will find it easy to accept, and appreciate others. Let us love as Christ has loved.

John 15:7-11 – Love and joy result from abiding in Christ

In John 15:7-11, Jesus mentioned one specific result when we abide in Him and allow His word to abide in us. It is an empowered prayer life. So He said, “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” We are assured that we can go deeper in prayer as we abide in Him. This is how it usually happens: as we pray we will be abiding in Him, and as we abide in Him we pray more and more. In all these the Father will be glorified in the process. This is because as our prayers are answered, they will reflect the reality of God in our life, and prove that we are truly followers of Christ. In other words, as we pray, God will answer them. This will be a display of a fruit bearing life and be the evidence of Christ-likeness. There are four aspect of relationship with Christ that are distinguishable: life in Christ brings salvation, life with Christ results in fellowship, life by Christ produces fruitfulness and life for Christ is all about service.

A Christ abiding life is a fruit bearing life. Jesus in this these verses referred to two of the three varieties of fruit. In verse 9, He talked about love, in verse 11, He talked about joy and we will see in verse 12 that He will talk about peace.  Christ loves us the way the Father has demonstrated His love for Him. So Christ exhorts us to continue in this manner of love.  He tells us that living a life of love is being obedient to His commandment. This is our obligation as followers of Christ, we need to demonstrate love. And in so doing we are being obedient to His words and commands  

In verse 11, Christ then talked about joy, an experience that result from abiding in Him. As we dwell in Him we find His joy flowing from deep within. It’s the joy of having communion with the Lord. If we are to experience joy, there must be continual fellowship with the Lord. That’s the reason Jesus told us to remain in Him. As we do so we will not only experience love, but also joy.

John 15:3-6 - Abiding in Christ is also needful to ensure fruitfulness

Be sure that God is constantly pruning us. Why? It’s because God wants to ensure that we are growing and glowing all the time. He wants us to be full of fruits so that we can be a constant reflection of His grace in our life. All of us who have experienced God’s pruning process know how painful it can be. To some, pruning may seem cruel and even wasteful but to us in Christ, it is one needful and a sure way to attain growth, and be constantly bearing fruit. So the main reason God prunes us is to ensure that we bear fruit. And we need to know that no matter how good we are as Christians, God will not stop pruning us, because without His pruning, we will never be in full bloom. God’s pruning will always leave us better than before. It is true that the more we are being pruned the more will Christ be seen in our life. The more the needless parts of our life are cut off, the more productive we will become. Verse 3 tells us that as far as the Lord is concerned, we who trust Him are already cleansed by His word and teaching. And although we are already cleansed by His word, we need constant purification. In other words, our daily flaws need to be dealt with. We must learn to keep short accounts with God.   

Just as a branch needs to remain attached to the vine, so also must we remain attached to Christ. And just as a branch that is severed from the vine cannot bear fruit, so also will a Christian be fruitless once he or she is detached from Christ. This tells us that we must abide or remain connected to Christ if we desire to be fruitful, for apart from Him we can do nothing. There must be an increasing awareness that without being connected to Christ constantly, we become barren. Earlier Christ reminds us that the vinedresser will cut off fruitless branches. In verse 6, we see Christ reiterating again that branches that are fruitless will progressively be removed and gathered for the fire. Hence as far as God is concerned, true believers are never fruitless and barren.    

This is a challenge to remain in Christ and His word so that we can be fruit-bearing believers. We must be connected to Christ through His word. We must be reading, studying and meditating on His Word consistently. And we must be engaged with Him constantly through prayer. We must make the time and be disciplined to do all that. Bear in mind that unlike Christmas trees, we are genuine trees in the Lord. Our fruit comes through abiding in Him. Unlike the decorations on a Christmas tree, our fruits are permanent. Let us remain genuine trees of the Lord!

John 15:1-2 –Pruning is required if we are to be more fruitful

Vine had figuratively been likened to Israel. Psalm 80:8 clearly illustrates this. God was said to have removed a vine from Egypt, drove out the nations and planted it. From the book of Exodus, we learned that God did precisely that. Then in Isaiah 5, the prophet revealed that instead of bearing expected fruit, Israel, as God’s vineyard, bore wild grapes. That had certainly brought much disappointment to God. Now here in John 15, Jesus declared Himself to be the true vine, and in saying that, He indicates that He in Himself is the true Israel. It is on Him the ultimate purpose of God now rests. Those who believe in Him are the true members of the people of God. And as we, believers in Christ described here as branches, truly continue to remain in Him, we will bear fruit.

John 15:1-2 speak of the relationship between Jesus, God and the believers. Christ is the true vine, believers are the branches, and the Father is the vinedresser. Taken together, this is truly the picture of a vineyard. When believers are healthily relating to Christ, God the Father would come lovingly caring for them, so that they will bring forth fruit. The emphasis in the vine, the branches and the gardener illustration, is about bearing fruit. Being fruitful is a hallmark of Christian living. The authenticity of faith in Christ is best determined by the fruit we bear. We need to be fruit-bearing Christians to show the reality of Christ in our life. Many have mistakenly liken evangelism alone as bearing fruit. As important as evangelism is, it cannot replace the need to build Christ-likeness in Christian living. A fruitful life is a Christ-like life. We all need the Holy Spirit of God to work in our life to bring forth Christ-likeness. When we, the branches of God, rightly relate with Christ the vine, we will bear the fruit of Christ-likeness. It’s a life full of the fruit of the Spirit. It’s a life of love, joy, peace, patience kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Verse 2 tells us two things the Father does to the vineyard. Firstly, He removes branches that do not bear fruit. This tells us that among the people of God, there won’t be believers that are fruitless. God would have progressively removed them. Secondly, the Father ensures that every fruit-bearing branch will bring forth more fruit. It suggests that every believer has the capacity to bear fruit. And as we bear fruit, we find the Father pruning us to make us more productive. Notice the pruning is not on branches that do not bear fruit, it is done to branches that bear fruit. The purpose of pruning is to enable more nutrient to flow to the right place, in a branch that’s already bearing fruit. This would then enable it to be more fruitful. Christ is talking about removing our other goals and ambitions in life that will hinder us from bearing more fruit. God wants us to stay focused. Though some activities in our life may not be wrong, they do demand and compete for the time we should give to the primary task cultivating a Spirit-filled life. The Father will help us to adjust our priority and then to prune those unimportant ones so that we can have time to concentrate on the needful part of Christian living. This will cause us not to be distracted from the primary purpose of life. Here is a call to allow God to help us remove the needless activities of life so that we can stay focused and be fruitful. Would we allow Him to prune us?  

John 14:28-31 – The love for the Father

In the previous verse, Jesus promised the disciples that they would experience peace. He was referring to the state of rest resulting from being reconciled with the Father. In verse 28, Jesus then show them how they could be assured of it. If they trust in what He had said, their cares and fears would disappear and joy would replace their sorrow. These verses give us the feeling that the disciples were overly occupied with their own grief and sadness, and were not able to see the joy that Jesus was about to enter. Had they truly loved Him, they would have greatly rejoiced with Him, and forget about themselves and their griefs.

The last part of verse 28 where the Lord said, “…the father is greater than I” had been misconstrued to mean that Jesus is inferior to the Father. Here Jesus was looking at the soon approaching state of exaltation being with the Father. In the light of that approaching glorious moment, His present state was something lesser. Jesus was acknowledging His lowly role as a servant so as to magnify the Father who had sent Him. Paul, in His letter to the Philippians, debunk that thought that Jesus was inferior. It’s clear that Christ was equal to God. But when He became man, He divest of His divine nature and chose to lean on God, and His strength was provided by the Holy Spirit. He chose humility and became man, and was found to be obedient even to the point of choosing to die in the most humbling way.

The reason He told them all these in advance was so that when they come to pass, they would know that He was indeed the long awaited Messiah. And in recalling, they would believe that He was their God-sent Savior. Then they would come to believe all that He had taught and promised were absolutely true. In a short while, Jesus would be going through the extreme cruelty ever imagined. He would soon undertake the work He had come to do and would not be able to speak as freely. He wanted them to ponder over all that He had said, and come to realize and believe in Him and His mission.   

When He was on earth, Jesus maintained His holiness. Hence the prince of this world had no part in Him. On the one hand the prince of this world refers to Caesar and His power.  But in a deeper sense, it refers to the dark power behind the power of Rome that was engineering Jesus’ demise. The point Jesus is making is this: Satan could not find a weak point in Him to cause Him to stumble. He was indeed the unblemished sacrificial Lamb of God. He came to do all these to demonstrate His love for the Father, by His perfect obedience to Him. This chapter closed with Jesus and His disciples making a move to make their journey to Gethsemane.

Like them, Jesus wants our courage and confidence in Him to be sustained by remembering what He had done. What He did demonstrated to all His love for the Father. He is calling us to follow Him in His steps to act in ways that will enable people to know that we love Him too.