Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary
Today’s lection, John 15:9-17, continues and completes the Vine discourse of 15:1-8. Today’s reading is best understood in relation to those verses. Two verbs tie the two sections together: “to abide” and “to bear fruit.” Yet, verses 9-17 introduce fresh language, most notably, “love.” Occurring 9 times in today’s lection, love is the text’s unifying motif. We need to be clear about what love means here. Contemporary culture’s notion that love is a dazzled obsession with another person will need to be deliberately set aside early in any sermon on this text! Jesus speaks of love neither as an emotional state, nor a virtue in the classic sense. Here, love is deliberate, self-giving action taking place within the life of God (between Father and Son), between Jesus and his disciples, and disciple-to-disciple. God’s active, self-outpouring love is embodied in Jesus and, in turn, replicated in Jesus’ followers.
It is crucial to grasp that throughout John 15:1-17, divine action is the model and source for human action. As the Father loves Jesus, so Jesus loves his disciples (cf vv 1-3, where we find a similar divine-human analogue). Jesus reveals a dynamic cascade of self-giving love: the Father in love gives the Son; Jesus gives himself to and for his disciples; his disciples give themselves to and for one another and the world. Inasfar as we abide in the divine source (Jesus), we shall keep his “commands.” What are these “commands,” exactly? If we read today’s lection as analogous to vv 1-8, the phrase, “my commands” correlates with “my words” (vv 1, 7) in the Vine metaphor. Jesus gestures toward all that he has said and done, particularly on this disquieting evening, beginning with the foot-washing (13:1-11) and all that he has been saying to them in light of it (13:12ff).
The inclusio of v 12 and v 17 suggests that one commandment is summative of all the rest: “love one another.” Verses 13-16 lay out a more fine-grained portrait of active love. Love of one another will be a laying down of our very lives, as Jesus will lay down his life (v 13; cf 10:11, 15, 17-18). This will be the evidence that we are Jesus’ “friends.” Jesus clarifies that we do not earn the title, “friend of Jesus.” Rather, Jesus chooses to call his disciples not servants, but friends; we live into that honor. Again, divine action is model and source for human action. Jesus’ friends are those who act as he acts.
Verse 16 is brief, but can easily bear the weight of a full sermon – or even several. We have here a miniature sketch of the community formed by Jesus’ initiative, embodying into the world his active, self-giving love. Jesus’ message is not only for his disciples, but also for John’s beleaguered 1st century community, and for us, his disciples twenty centuries later. In love, Jesus has deliberately chosen us, deliberately called us, and now, confidently appointed us to “bear fruit” (cf vv 2, 4, 5, 8). What is fruit? It is the extension and replication of the life of the vine that produces it. Jesus assures us that when disciples embody his own, self-outpoured love into the world, love’s fruit will “last.” Love as life laid down will—paradoxically—endure. We shall ask whatever we need to embody God’s self-relinquishing love into the world, and it will be given. When we need boldness to speak truth to power, God will give it. When we need the humility to stand corrected, or patience to bear the world’s dismissiveness, God will give it. When we need courage to lay down our very lives, God will grant it. This is the paradoxical, abundantly fruitful dynamic of divine love. The love of the Trinity embodied in human lives is life poured out. And life laid down, given away, produces life abundant.
Insights into Biblical Greek Grammar and Syntax 