Chosen

"You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.” (John 15:16 [NASB])

This Bible verse reminds me of when I was a child playing with the other children on our street. About 14 of us would get together after school and on weekends to play in the front yards of each neighbor. Sometimes, we would play football, ride our bikes, skate, skateboard, and play hopscotch or hide and seek. No yard was out of bounds. We had a carefree time just being kids, except for one thing. Choosing sides for the teams. I don’t know about you, but I was always nervous about the choosing of teammates. I was afraid a team captain would not choose me until last, when one of them had to choose me. For my fragile ego, this fear overrode the anticipation of fun.

Jesus explains throughout the Gospels that before He came to walk on the earth and we had the chance to hear, see, and be with Him, He loved us. Jesus loved us enough to lay aside the comforts of His heavenly home to live with us. That speaks volumes. What speaks louder to the child still in me is that Jesus chose me. He did not have to say, “Eeny meeny miny, mo.” I was not the first or the last, but I was chosen; I am chosen. What makes this child melt into God’s arms is what Jesus said in verse fifteen. He said, “I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.” Not only am I chosen, but I am His friend. An endearing title.

Time still remains for people to accept Jesus’ calling of their name to be on His team. No one will be the last chosen by Him until His return to earth to take His followers to His kingdom. Jesus will call His “friends” at that time to follow Him. He will make them perfect and complete. Right now, the captains stand opposite each other and call out the names of people to be on their teams. Only two options exist. Towards which captain will you walk and make your allegiance, Jesus or self?

Love Poured Out

“God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” John 3:16 [NASB]

For so many people, like you, whether Christian or not, who attended Sunday School at some time, this verse was the first one that struck home for you. It was the first one you memorized, and it may be the only one you memorized. For people who continued attending church and who gave their lives to Jesus Christ, a deeper understanding of the message of this verse occurred. This understanding goes like this, “God loves me so much that He sent His Son to die because of my sin, my badness, in my place so I would not have to endure eternal judgment.” God loves you so much He does not want you to be separated from Him forever but made a way to bring you back to rightness with Him by cleaning your sins and the guilt of sins from your life.

This understanding is correct. It really is about you…about me. But how often have we stopped there saying, “Yes, I believe. Thank you, Lord, for saving me”? How often have we not taken our blinders off to see beyond ourselves to what this verse could mean for other people. Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13 [NASB]) Was He only speaking about His loving people and so dying for them? Or, was He teaching others what they should also do?

Jesus’ life on earth was more than just coming to die for us and then going back to the Father. If that was all He came to do, He could have come down fully grown, and been crucified immediately. Instead, Jesus spent 33 years on earth. Why? So, He could be about His Father’s business. (Luke 2:49) He said this as a twelve-year-old child to his mother and father when they looked for him and found him teaching in the temple. Jesus came to earth to teach us about the Father, His love for us, His care, His heart, and His gift of salvation. A teacher never teaches just so the listener can have knowledge. A teacher teaches so the listener can have and use knowledge by which to live in this world. That was a big part of Jesus’ life. He began teaching at 12 and didn’t stop until his death 21 years later.

When Jesus said in John 3:16, “God so loved the world,” He taught about true love, which only comes from the Father because God is love. (1 John 4:7-21) He taught about God’s love so we would desire it for ourselves and come to know Him as our Savior. But Jesus also taught about true love, the love that comes only from God, to educate people so they would embody this love of God in their daily interactions. He wanted His followers to be intentional in loving other people, just as the Father was intentional and made a plan from the beginning of time to love people by sending His Son.

You see, John 3:16 is not all or only about You. It is about God. Since it is not all about you and since you have received His wonderful gift of love and salvation, you are compelled by His love within you to share it. The love God puts in each of us when we accept His gift of salvation is not for hoarding. It cannot be hoarded because it is too high, wide, and deep to fathom or contain. True love, God’s love, when it enters your heart, overflows abundantly. It rushes over the top and floods out of your life in words, actions, and thoughts. Yes, “God so loved you,” but hear Jesus’ words again. “God so loved the world.” True love, God’s love, is alive, active, overflowing, unending, uncontainable, and for all people. This love is about God and from God for all people.

Jesus came to bring us salvation and eternal life. He did it because of His love for us even when we were filthy with sin. With our dirty faces, darkened evil hearts, and blindness to anyone but ourselves, He saw our spirits and knew who we really are and He cared. Jesus loved us too much to let us stay that way, captive to the dark. Jesus’ love poured out to us, as He explained in John 3:16, allows us to see other people as Jesus sees people and allows us to love other people as He loves them. When this happens, we say, “God so loves them (the world) that He gave His only begotten Son so that whoever of them believes in Him will not perish but having everlasting life, and I so love them that I must tell and show them God’s love poured out in and through me.”

Jesus came to bring salvation and life. He also came teaching us to do as He did on earth. Jesus taught and commanded His disciples and followers to go and tell the world about Him and make disciples. Through Peter, He said, “If you love Me, feed my sheep.” “God so loved the world” is not just for you to hoard. With God’s love in you, you are to be like Jesus; go to all the nations and telling them about the love of God, His great plan from the beginning of time. See people through God’s eyes of love and go tell and show them His love. “God so loved the world” is for all people, not just you or me.

“Do you love Me?” Jesus asked.

You must answer that for yourself with your heart, your words, and your life.

How will you answer? In word only or in deed?

“So, when He had washed their feet, and taken His garments and reclined at the table again, He said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right for so I am. IF I then, the Lord and Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you.” (John 13:12-15 [NASB])

Our Identification

John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”

            What does this verse mean? So often teachers and preachers speak of the action of laying down one’s life and they speak of what it means. They use the example of Christ and use it as the motivation for us to do the same for Him. I want to look at the actors in this verse. There are three: Jesus, His disciples, and others.

            We each go through life as the child of our parents, the partner of our spouse, and the employee of someone else. Jesus came to give us life abundantly. That gift has given us a new relationship title. We become the children of God who serve the High King like the Levites served God in the temple. This allows us the title of co-heir with Christ. As we grow, we become disciples of Christ. Farther in this relationship, we become friends: to Jesus and to others.

In the first phase, we become as the Israelites were when God first chose them to be His people. He wanted a relationship with the people He created. He wanted to be their God. He required their reverence and worship. As His children, they also had to remember they were subservient to Him. They, as His worshippers, had to realize who they were in relation to Him – small and humble compared to His majesty and power. There was such awe that they feared being in God’s presence. Our relationship with God, when we are first re-born is like this. We see how small and insignificant we are in relation to how infinite and mighty He is. We come before Him in humility and adoration knowing who we are and what He has made us to be by His love. We feel as if we should serve our heavenly King through our subservience since we can never be as great and mighty as He is. The humility we feel is correct. God is mighty, powerful, and majestic. He should be worshipped for who He is and for what He has done: Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer, and Lord. We must go beyond this point though if we are to be in a growing relationship with God, though. We must never lose our awe and reverence for Him nor our perspective of Him and His might and majesty.

            In the second phase, when we grow beyond our initial gratefulness, subservience, and awe, we become aware that Jesus saved us for more than this. He left us with eyewitnesses who wrote His teachings down. We begin to see who the disciples are and become disciples ourselves. We walk with them through their three years with Jesus. We learn about the Son of God as foretold in the prophets of the Old Testament and as fulfilled by the coming of Jesus, God incarnate. We learn He has power over demons, illness, life, and death. We learn Jesus will be our judge on the last day. We also learn how to be His followers and what that means. Jesus is our Rabbi now, our teacher. We sit at His feet. We eat at His table. We walk in His footprints down the road with Him. In living with Him and learning to do these things, we learn to be like Jesus. As Jesus said, “He is able to do only what He sees the Father doing.” (John 5:19 [AMP]) As Jesus learned from His Father, so we learn from Jesus our Lord. We are His disciples. This growth phase includes the first phase of awe and subservience, but it includes discipleship now. It includes a commitment of our lives.

            The third phase of our growth in relation to God Jesus states in John 15:15, “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.” [NASB] It is this phase of growth where our joy is made complete. This phase is when the Son and the Father are pleased with us and count us worthy to be called friend. What does this new status in regard to Jesus mean? He states it Himself like this: a friend lays down his life for his friend. (vs.13) Just as Jesus could not act without having seen the Father, we cannot act unless we see our teacher, Jesus, do it. So many of us read verse 13 as God telling us how great love regards one’s self - as nothing in compared to the value of another friend’s life. What I am saying is this verse tells us how to act and gives us value because of who we are - friends of Jesus. According to Jesus, His friends abide in Him; they live in Him just as He abides in the Father. Jesus states that we know we are abiding in Him if we keep His commandments. He says twice in the chapter what a friend is: friends have love for one another (the brethren) just as Jesus loves us. He states this in verses 12 and 17.

            This is the point we are growing toward – to be like Jesus, to love as Jesus loves. When we see beyond ourselves and how an act will affect us, we are no longer just disciples, but are identified with Christ. Prior to this we counted the cost when we were young converts and learning at the feet of Jesus. We are now walking in the shadow of Jesus and becoming the cost without thinking and without hesitation because we are so identified with Christ. This phase does not mean we have stopped growing in Christ, but is a phase where the growth is unconscious because the life of Christ through His Holy Spirit within us guides us in the way of Christ so we are unconsciously doing as He did, being as He is, and speaking as He spoke. When we reach the phase of our growth when we are unconscious of our own selves and no longer desire anything for ourselves is when Jesus is most consciously visible to others in our words and actions. That is when Jesus calls us friends.

            Jesus calls us His children, His disciples, and His friends. There is nothing we can do to earn any of these privileged titles. The gift of faith, which God gives us, enables us to believe Jesus is the Son of God. The gift of salvation enables us to have eternal life with Him. The gift of the Holy Spirit enables us to follow Jesus and grow more like Him. The only thing Jesus says we can do is this, "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.” (John 15:10 [NASB]) Our part of all this is to keep Jesus’ commandments, His teachings. In doing this, we grow out of ourselves and into more unconscious Christlikeness. We do nothing to earn Jesus’ friendship other than lay down our lives for His. Be filled with His Spirit. Become a believer in Jesus as the Son of God. Become children of the Most High God. Be identified with the Messiah.