“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. 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. 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. These things I command you, so that you will love one another." (John 15:12-17)
This was quite the
eye-opener for me this morning. I had never noticed before that Jesus had just
told the apostles that they were his friends, but he never used the word for
friend-love to describe the aim of all his teaching. The "love one
another" was agapè-love, which means the same kind of love we receive from
God.
This makes sense
that, if Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, the love that flows through
us to others is the love that flows into us from the Triune God. And this is
why Jesus has repeated the “agapè-love one another” command so many times!
And yes, agapè-love
is a “command” (friendship-love is not). So why do churches sacrifice agapè-love
for friendship-love, or family-love?
Part of the answer
is that we have not been taught “the gospel OF THE KINGDOM”. People always hear
about “the gospel”, and that this is a one-on-one interaction between us and
Jesus. But Jesus and the apostles taught “the gospel of the kingdom”, meaning
that the good news of salvation is not a solitary experience of Jesus coming to
us, but an individual’s experience of coming to Jesus IN his kingdom and
becoming one of his brothers in the brotherhood of believers.
That’s why Jesus
taught so many parables about “the kingdom”. It’s why he would tell the
religious hypocrites, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the
prostitutes GO INTO the kingdom of God before you” (Matthew 21:31). Everyone
understood that Jesus was calling people out of the kingdom of the world and
into the kingdom of God.
This is also why
Paul would remind the churches, “He has delivered us FROM the domain of
darkness and transferred us TO the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have
redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14). When someone is born
again, they are born INTO Jesus’ kingdom. When someone “comes” to Jesus, they
come to him IN his kingdom. When someone “receives” Christ, they receive him as
their King IN his kingdom.
What Jesus kept
telling his disciples (constantly affirming that he would need to be alive for the
things he taught them to be experienced) was that agapè-love was the love of
his kingdom. You could leave all your friends behind and come into the agapè-love
of his kingdom. You could leave your whole family behind and come into the agapè-love
of his kingdom. You could have friendships in the kingdom that were under the
authority of the agapè-love of his kingdom. You could have family relationships
in the kingdom that were under the authority of the agapè-love of his kingdom.
But you could NOT
cover your relationship with Jesus and his kingdom with friendship-love, or
family-love, or self-love. When those lesser loves have authority over agapè-love,
we end up with the divisions and schisms based on friendship, family, and
self-rule that Satan freely promotes amongst church-goers.
At my six-decades-of-knowing-God
stage of life, I have come to cringe when people talk about their friendships
but not their agapè-love for Jesus’ church. When I see people act as if the
church is about friendship or family, but there is no talk about “the kingdom
of his beloved Son”, I know we are in trouble.
The fact is that we
either topple the idols of friendship and family (as Gideon was required to do
with his own father’s idolatry), or those idols of friendship and family will
topple the agapè-love focus of Jesus and his kingdom. If a friendship has more
authority over how we follow Christ than Jesus does, we are not following
Christ. If family members have more authority over us than Christ the Lord,
then they are the ones we are confessing as Lord.
Some of us will
know what it is like to lose family and friends in our determination to follow
Jesus wherever he leads. We understand that the agapè-love of Jesus still
covers how we relate to those people when we see them, but we must keep
pursuing the agapè-love of Jesus in his kingdom even if they keep rejecting us
for doing so.
When I look back at
all my church experiences in both the institutional and home churches, when
people changed from seeking the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace within
the church to building private friendships and family alliances behind the
scenes, we were already past the point of no return. I have some painful
lessons of trying too hard to salvage what people had already rejected.
Others of us may realize
that we are the ones whose devotion to friends and family have kept us from
following Christ in his kingdom. As Jesus said to the church of Ephesus when
they had “abandoned the love you had at first” (the agapè-love of Jesus’
kingdom), “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the
works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand
from its place, unless you repent” (Revelation 2:5).
Yes, that’s how
seriously Jesus takes it when we turn from agapè-love to any other kind of
love. We cannot be his church (lampstand) unless we are receiving and
expressing his agapè-love.
When Peter wrote, “Above
all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins”
(I Peter 4:8), the “loving” and “love” are the agapè-love of his kingdom. Only
when Jesus’ command to pursue THAT love is obeyed, can we “Therefore be
imitators of God, as beloved (agapèd) children. And walk in love (agapè), as
Christ loved (agapèd) us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and
sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:1-2).
I have heard so
many stories of what it is like for someone to come to Christ in Muslim
countries. They know that their family and friends will hate them, and maybe
even be the ones trying to kill them if they confess Jesus Christ as Lord. But
here in North America, if a young person can’t follow Jesus because they are
afraid of losing friends or upsetting family, we just change our youth
ministries to accommodate them. And then we wonder why they leave the church as
adults when we never actually brought them to believe “the gospel of the
kingdom”. They didn’t repent and trust in Jesus in the way described in God’s
word, so once all the fun of youth group is over, the fun of the world awaits.
For those who hear
Jesus when he says, “These things I command you, so that you will love one
another”, walk in “the obedience of faith” and leave the lesser relationships
to him. This is part of the “seek first the kingdom of God and his
righteousness” characteristic of relationship with God. Friendship and family
are optional; agapè-love is not.
So look in the
mirror of truth, admit any ways lesser loves constrict your agapè-love, repent
if and how much is needed, and deliberately “pursue righteousness, faith, love
(agapè), and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart”
(II Timothy 2:22). It’s a command from Jesus.
© 2026
Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
No comments:
Post a Comment