John 15

On to John 15, perhaps with a nod to something I didn't talk about in John 14 with Jesus being the Way, Truth, and Life.

he Vine and the Branches

1"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes^[a] so that it will be even more fruitful. 3You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

5"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. 8This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

9"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. 11I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command. 15I 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. 16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 17This is my command: Love each other.

I feel like there are so many different definitions of love out there, that the term 'love' has almost become meaningless. Does love mean never having to say you're sorry? Is it as simple as just enjoying being around a person a lot? Maybe it's how multiple people can join forces to form something that none of them could ever be without the others. Is it giving of yourself without expecting anything in return? I'm more convinced that Jesus is talking about the latter. This is not a mushy kind of love, the kind that tells you your poetry is the best ever or that your song sounded swell. It's the kind of love that pushes you out of the way of a speeding bus. It's the kind that sternly says to go outside. Amy Adams has no place in this love.

One other motif on this section is bearing fruit: you're supposed to get something out of this Christianity thing. There's supposed to be a change in behavior. This is not an obligation, simply a description of the process. The things that I do come as a response to Christ's love, not as a payment for it. This fruit section has in it the seeds of some of the biggest divisions in Christianity. Surely, some would argue, if Jesus says that good branches and bad branches can be operationally identified by their fruit, Christians can be operationally identified by their good actions. Therefore, the good actions are what some would have you focus on. This is a mistake. Fruit is the proof of a good vine, an outside proxy that is easy to measure when you cannot look inside the vine itself. The vine should be the focal point.

The World Hates the Disciples

18"If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. 20Remember the words I spoke to you: 'No servant is greater than his master.'^[b] If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. 21They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the One who sent me. 22If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin. 23He who hates me hates my Father as well. 24If I had not done among them what no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen these miracles, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. 25But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: 'They hated me without reason.'^[c]

26"When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. 27And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.

Not a super-cheery section, either. Jesus is saying to expect persecution in his name. This brings up a point discussed in a Bible study between services on Sunday about Truth. It's very chic and postmodern to deny the existence of truth. We could all be brains in jars, man. Perception is reality. This went over into a discussion of persecution that people face when they try to say that there is real religious truth: Jesus Christ. And what persecution did people list? Would it be the martyrs of the faith? The men and women around the world who are killed for their faith? No. It's being greeted at Wal-mart with a 'happy holidays' instead of 'merry Christmas'. It's those nasty Democrats who want to take In God We Trust off our money.

Sidenote: How completely ticked will Jesus be when he comes back and finds God written on our money and not on our hearts? What was the point of him driving out moneychangers from the temple again?

If I go through life as a Christian, and the only persecution I have to deal with is people in class thinking I'm a moron for believing in Creationism, I'll consider myself incredibly lucky.

One last thought on this section is Jesus saying how people have no excuse for not knowing that he was the son of God. No one gets to go before God on Judgment Day and say they never knew they were breaking any rules. No one gets to say that it's not fair. In fact, Jesus is being more charitable than he has the need to be. That's what grace is.