John 15:1-17
Jesus on LOVE
1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also 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 you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 This 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. 10 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. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 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. 16 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. 17 This is my command: Love each other.
Matthew 21:12-17
Jesus is Angry With the Money Changers
12 Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”
14 The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. 15 But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant.
16 “Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him.
“Yes,” replied Jesus, “have you never read,
“‘From the lips of children and infants
you, Lord, have called forth your praise’?”
17 And he left them and went out of the city to Bethany, where he spent the night.
Matthew 5:43-48
Love for Enemies
43 "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Mark 14:49-52
Jesus Disciples Flee From Him When The Soldier's Seize Him
49 Every day I was with you, teaching in the temple courts, and you did not arrest me. But the Scriptures must be fulfilled.” 50 Then everyone deserted him and fled. 51 A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, 52 he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.
Matthew 22:34-40
The Greatest Commandment
34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
36 "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37 Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Jesus taught us to love our enemies...And in Greek the New Testament definition of love as Jesus describes above is Agape LOVE, the highest form of love...So it seems that love takes more than one form...And Agape LOVE is the type of LOVE God and Jesus have...This makes sense as we read about Jesus and how quickly and immediately they are to LOVE and are able to forgive others...And they have a conscious and immediate mercy for others...Because forgiveness and mercy are a big part of loving others...
So we can learn about love in how we treat our neighbors...Dr. Martin Luther King wrote about love and enemies as he worked hard in the civil rights movement to get everyone to see that everyone needs to be treated equally and we have a great need for equal and civil rights...Dr. King said, "Why should we love our enemies?...The first reason is fairly obvious...Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars...Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that...Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that...Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction...Another reason why we must love our enemies is that hate scars the soul and distorts the personality...Mindful that hate is an evil and dangerous force, we too often think of what it does to the person hated...This is understandable, for hate brings irreparable damage to its victims...We have seen its ugly consequences in the ignominious deaths brought to six million Jews by hate-obsessed madman named Hitler, in the unspeakable violence inflicted upon Negroes by bloodthirsty mobs, in the dark horrors of war, and in the terrible indignities and injustices perpetrated against millions of God's children by unconscionable oppressors...But there is another side which we must never overlook...Hate is just as injurious to the person who hates...Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity...Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity...It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true."...
Hate puts the world in a disharmony...Hate divides the world...So if we cannot and do not love our enemies over time things get worse in our communities, and things look bleaker as the unchecked hate corrodes at different people and our different communities...When we lose the sense of the the Light, then we might see the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful...Life then does become confused and confusing, because we have lost the Light and we are in the darkness...We might not even see the things going on around us...We might from the lack of love suffer a blind spot...We have this blind spot in our sight and in our heart that blinds us to see the Light...After a long period of time we become callous to this blind spot, and maybe we even think we see all the good things in everyone, when we really don't...But if we have this blind spot and can admit and recognize that we have it, we can get better at loving our enemies and better at treating people equally...But when we are not seeing the Light and are hurting the cause and trials of others, because we lack love for our acquaintances, and our enemies, a life of disharmony happens for all involved...Because when our circumstances are done in an oppressed way, things get distorted for all parties and we do confuse the beautiful as ugly, and the ugly as beautiful...Love is lacking on all sides when this happens...And all of us have this persistent civil war inside us, wanting to be good, as we struggle with our sinful nature...And if we believe this, that there is some evil in us, yet also some good in all of us, maybe we can look for that goodness in others and be more loving, more merciful, and more forgiving of others..Then we are closer to loving our enemies, than we think...
We can try to ignore the happenings around us and hope they go away, but they will not go away until the love for God and the love for neighbor, all neighbors comes into our lives...One of Jesus's Great Teachings is telling us to love God and to love our neighbors...Many Books of the Bible hang off this command...And yet we may ignore it out of culture, the way we were raised, or the shared experiences with others...But ignoring life with a lack of love is harmful to the entire world...
But Jesus goes much deeper into the the subject of love, when He teaches us to love our enemies...And He never said this would be easy...Their might have been some distrust in the disciple group, because Jesus had zealots, fishermen, tax collectors, and others...So the disciples were a diverse group in some respects...So Jesus wanted His disciples to know more about the subject of love and more of what He knew about love, and His experiences with His Father on LOVE...So Jesus said, "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."...
Jesus, whose Father is God, has a selfless LOVE and no matter what happens in life and how hard and troubled life gets, He is willing to continue His LOVING relationship regardless of any situation, with God...We must remember that He was tortured, suffered greatly, and died on a cross in a Plan that was His Father's Plan, God's Plan...And Jesus grieved in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before His arrest...So when Jesus was talking to His Disciples about love, He LOVES us in a Complete Understanding of all things, all experiences, which includes all of our experiences...Because He knows everything about us, our history and all the experiences we have been through in our lives...And He did lay down His life for us to forgive us of the sins we have committed and will commit in the future...
Jesus tells us to love thy neighbor...We probably have heard the expression we should love thy neighbor, but dislike his sinful behavior...So it is that we can love the man, but forgive the sinner's behavior when they sin...Yet we may not love the sin or the behavior that one is doing...An example of this was when Jesus was angry with the money changers outside the Temple...But He still LOVED these money changers...This is an example of loving one's enemies...We can love our enemies, but we can dislike or loath their behaviors and what they do...An understanding of people and these money changers helps in many of these situations..And Jesus knew the money changers...He went to the cross for the money changers...
So Jesus wants us to love selflessly, with a great understanding the ones we love (because He knows what has happened in their lives and their experiences they have been through)...Jesus saw all His disciples as they were and understood, each and everyone of them, because He Completely Understood them and all the experiences of their lives and what they had done and were going to do...Jesus loves in forgivingly...He forgave His disciples for what they did and had done in their lives...Jesus predicted that Peter would deny Him three times...And even though Jesus knew Peter would deny knowing Him, Jesus still forgave Peter for denying Him three times...
Jesus LOVES His enemies...It is one of His first teachings...Jesus LOVES the people in this selfless way, with open understanding of everyone who wants to know more about the ones they love so they can better understand what one does and what one has been through...Jesus LOVES forgivingly...And He forgave everyone when He was on the cross...
So this is one of Jesus' Great Last Commands to His disciples, who one would have thought after being together for three years working and being with Jesus -there would be love permeating through the ranks of the original twelve disciples...But there wasn't...You would have thought they were all friends, and like a family...But His disciples flee Him when the Roman soldier's seized Him..And we know one of His own disciples would betray Him...And Jesus one of the last commands to His disciples sounds very simple, and simple to do (but it is not): Love each other...
Harmony in this world is obtained only by love, and that includes loving not only God and neighbor, but also praying for and loving our enemies...