“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other.” ~John 15:9-17
Recently I was reading John 15 and Holy Spirit whispered to me these words: “graduation” and “marching orders”. The graduation meal was the Passover Seder aka “the Last Supper”…I imagine the scene as a quiet one, the seder meal finished, the disciples silent and inclining their ear to hear the Master. In my spirit man I felt as if I was also there. Yeshua had much to say to these rather ordinary men, men who were constantly putting their feet in their mouths. The Teacher saw the great potential in them –in us – potential to do extraordinary feats each in their kairos moments, just as He sees the same potential in each of us. Love. Such an easy word to say, a word that emotes joy and “warm fuzzies” when we are on the receiving end, but to be the one who is called to “live out and give out” love (all of us)- as Yeshua is commanding here, is often anything but easy. Sure, it’s so easy to love someone who loves you, but what about those who annoy, who are dysfunctional, the broken and wounded, those who would inflict emotional or even physical wounds, those who are different from us…even our enemies…? Yet His meaning was -and is– clear. We are commanded to love -God first and foremost, to remain in His love and (here comes the hard part) to love one another. These two commandments are the sum total of the teachings of the Tenach- the Law and the Prophets. Yeshua said so. And guess what? He wouldn’t have charged His followers with such a task if it wasn’t attainable, as He Himself demonstrated. Not easy, but attainable. The Rabbi Shaul from Tarsus (aka the Apostle Paul) proclaimed, “I can do all things through Messiah Yeshua who strengthens me.”… with God’s help this man was changed from a hater to a lover who turned the world upside down ( or maybe right side up).
If he can do it then why not us?