Abiding People - Abiding in Love

I. Introduction

A. What is Jesus trying to tell us through our passage this month? Are we abiding people no matter the circumstance? Whether it’s a season of harvest or cutting. Are we a people who make our home in Jesus and are we are suitable home for him?

B. If there is just one word, one value for our home with Jesus, it has to be the word “love.” Are we constantly abiding, making our home in the love of Jesus. A potent, powerful, unconditional love that is the only thing that can transform the world.

John 15:9 (NRSV) “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.” - How easy it would be for the disciples to misinterpret the events that are about to take place. “Jesus doesn’t love me, He has abandon me.”

II. Abiding in His Love

A. The command of Love

John 15:10–12 (NRSV) - “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love…. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

The one command, the one standard.

Jesus summed of all the ten commandments and 613 laws into two. Matthew 22:37–40 (NIV) - Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Legalism had choked out the heart of the OT; loving God and loving people.

In the New Covenant we can be guilty of doing the same with our church doctrine. The word “command” is used some 60 times in the NT. Many times speaking of the OT but half is in John’s writings, speaking of the new command in the new covenant to love like Jesus.

We need to spend the rest of our lives and eternity understanding, receiving, and then obeying the command to the love of Jesus….

Ephesians 3:17–19 (NIV) “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

May we never again be rooted in being right instead of being love.

B. The context of Joy

John 15:11 (NRSV) - “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”

Right in the middle of these verses talking about the command of love is the promise of complete joy. Your quest for true joy is only found in the love of Christ.

Remember these are preparations for what is coming in just hours: betrayal, arrest, trial, beatings, slander, and death - separation. If love is possible in trials so is joy.

There is a reason the word joy always seems to follow the word love in the NT. It is the context the atmosphere that true love creates. Why?

True joy can only be found when you are secure enough to let your guard down and get out of survival mode. Jesus is a safe place for your joy to come out. With His love hemming you in on both sides you can be yourself. We can truly live in joy.

C. The condition of Sacrifice

John 15:13 (NRSV) - “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

If the standard for love is Jesus, the example is clear. Love sacrifices for others. Jesus is about to display sacrifice in a literal, powerful way.

Jesus’ love in us sacrifices our own desires, comforts, and even dreams for God and others. Remember joy. People can’t walk in resurrection power, his true love and joy, because they can’t deny themselves.

In our document of independence it speaks of the independent rights of the individual. I think it is fair to state that this statement set the culture for the United States. “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness.” What we have done with those words is create an individualistic culture that is focused on our own lives, our own freedoms, and our own happiness.

You are connected to a vine that showed you the path to true life. Give up your life, give up your freedoms, and give up your own happiness for the sake of others. Only then will you abide in love and joy. .

John 12:24–25 (MSG) “Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.”

III. Conclusion and Invitation

A. A life of consistency and security is only found in one place. All of our heartaches, pain, emotionally and other wise can be traced back to our insecurity. Security can only be found in the love of God.

1 John 4:10 (NIV) - “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

B. I know we are all inconsistent in our love, but he is not. If you have never accepted Christ, are you ready for the consistency and security that can only come from His love. If you need prayers come and we stand and sing.