Introduction
Since the
end of the Revolutionary War in 1783, the United States has been involved in
eight other major wars including our current military involvement in
Afghanistan. Added together, these wars represent nearly 1.4 million American
casualties, 1.5 million wounded Americans and another almost 40,000 missing
Americans. Here in America we just commemorated another Memorial Day in
remembrance of our war veterans past and present. In light of the shameful way
our government is currently abusing and allowing some of our veterans to languish
and die as they await medical attention, I thought it would be important to try
and get an idea of what it means for someone to knowingly risk their very lives
for the freedom and safety of others. For those of you reading or listening to
this message in other countries, I don’t want to exclude you in this lesson.
This lesson includes all those who give their lives in the service to their
respective countries for the sole purpose of maintaining the freedom and safety
of the people they love. The purpose of this lesson is not to debate whether or
not sending troops to war is proper or moral. There are those who believe that
military intervention is the answer to every international problem and some who
believe that military intervention is never the answer to any international
problem. I’m just a simple pastor who knows little to nothing about
international conflict. However, I suspect the answer is neither one nor the
other exclusively. Ultimately, our military personnel aren’t in a position to
make those decisions. Instead, when they are ordered to engage in a military
conflict, they do so with the belief that their actions are protecting the
country and the people they love as well as protecting our way of life. Do you
want to know why we should place a very high value on our military personnel?
Because they place such a high value on us! They are paid very little, have to
spend long stretches of time away from their families, endure some of the
harshest environments in the world, and most importantly, risk their very lives
as part of their daily duties. In essence, there is nothing in their military
service for them other than knowing that they have done what they can for benefit
of others. Let me ask you a question—can you show me a more concrete example of
love than an extreme act of self-sacrifice? I’m not talking about
self-martyrdom as in the case of Muslims who sacrifice their lives for what
they believe is their own spiritual benefit—that’s selfish and cowardice. The
members of our military (as well as our civilian first-responders) offer their
services and in some cases their lives so that others are safe and can live and
be free and there is No Greater Love
than that. This is precisely what Jesus told his disciples and exactly what he
demonstrated through his self-sacrifice and death on the cross.
Subject Text
John 15:9-17
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.”
Context
In order to
appreciate the depth of meaning in our Subject
Text, we must go back to the end of chapter 13 that somewhat forms a
pericope with our Subject Text. At
the end of chapter 13, we see that Jesus tells the disciples that He will soon
be leaving them. In 13:34 Jesus gives the disciples, and by extension all of
us, the command that they are to love each other the way He has loved them. This
theme of “love” will continue through our Subject
Text. However, there is another
thread that weaves its way into our Subject
Text—self-sacrifice. At the end of
chapter 13 Peter attempts to show his devotion to Jesus when he claims that he
would lay down his life for Jesus. However, Jesus predicts that Peter won’t lay
down his life for Him but will instead deny Him three times leading up to
Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus commanded them to love one another the way that He
loved them. However, at this point they have yet to witness the extent of
Jesus’ love for them—they will only understand the depth of His love as they
witness the way He sacrifices Himself for the benefit of all humanity. It is
only at that point that they will understand the depth of love that Jesus
demands—a love that is selfless and sacrificial. The theme of love continues in
chapters 14 and 15. Jesus also establishes His rightful place in the divine
Trinity based on His unique relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit
whom He promises will comfort the disciples after His departure. After Jesus
demonstrates His love for the disciples by His death, they will fully
appreciate that there is No Greater Love
than the love that leads to self-sacrifice for the benefit of others.
Text Analysis
Our Subject Text and the text surrounding
it is some of the strongest and direct evidence of Trinitarian theology. There
can be no doubt of the existence of the Trinity after reading chapters 14
through 16 which includes our Subject
Text. If you want to learn more about the defense of the Trinity, you can
access a previous three-part series titled Defending
The Trinity, at: http://seredinski.blogspot.com/2011/12/defending-trinity-pt-1.html,
http://seredinski.blogspot.com/2011/12/defending-trinity-pt-2.html,
and http://seredinski.blogspot.com/2011/12/defending-trinity-pt-3-conclusion.html
respectively. In v. 9 Jesus tells the disciples that the perfect love shared
between He and the Father is the same love that He has shown the disciples. In
the verses leading up to our Subject
Text, Jesus compared Himself to a vine with His followers as the branches
connected to and drawing life from that vine. Jesus explains that a branch no
longer connected to the vine withers and dies and then is gathered together and
thrown into the fire. Jesus carries the same language forward into v. 9 when He
tells the disciples to remain in His love in the same way a branch must remain
connected to the vine in order to survive. “Love is the true bond which gives
unity to the moral world, and inspires discipleship. All that Christ
experiences is the result of the Father’s love: all that the disciples are
called to be and to do is the outcome of Christ’s love. This love of Chris was
to be retained as their possession by their conforming themselves to it.”[1]
There are
two interesting things to note in v. 10. First, the verse is a conditional
clause—If they obey Jesus, then they will remain in His love. The
second thing to note is that they, as is the case for all of us, are to obey
his commands—plural. Discipleship is an all-encompassing life that includes
obedience of the mind, of heart and of action. “As children of God, disciples
‘live by the truth’ (Jn 3:21), which is the same as ‘remaining in Jesus’
teaching’ (Jn 8:32). Genuinely knowing divine reality will inevitably be
reflected in the way disciples live; they will obey everything that Jesus has
taught them. The disciple’s life of obedience is the only true life because it
is aligned with God.”[2]
When Jesus
tells the disciples that He wants His joy to take root in their lives in v. 11,
He intends something more than happy feelings. Too often we mistakenly
understand joy as being strictly synonymous with happiness. Although the two
can be related, true joy transcends the emotion of happiness that depends on
circumstance. Joy does not bow to the demands of circumstance. Instead,
biblical joy is rooted in a vibrant and abiding relationship with Jesus. When
our lives are bound to His life like a branch is bound to a vine, then our
lives will overflow with the joy that flows from the divine life of Christ. The
joy of being in right relationship with God through Christ will serve as the
equilibrium in a world fraught with highs of excitement and adventure to lows
of disappointment and failure. “The perfect joy which Jesus has, because he is
in full communion with the Father and does his will, is to be granted to the
disciples also…The world cannot take away this joy and consolation any more
than it can take away the peace which he gives, for they are grounded in
revelation and do not belong to this world. This is the reason why his
disciples are to be separate from the world and are to expect the world’s
hatred and persecution.”[3]
Jesus finally gets to His specific command in v. 12 when
he tells His disciples to love one another with the same kind of love that He
has loved them. And He goes on to clarify exactly what kind of love He intends
in v. 13. The disciples will witness this level of love in the coming days when
Jesus sacrifices Himself on the cross for the sins of humanity. Biblical love
is always a sacrificial love; a love that is concerned first and foremost with
the well-being of another. And the ultimate display of that love is laying down
our own life for the life or benefit of someone else. It is the consummate
theological paradox that we are to live according to Christ’s commands and to
love even to the point of giving up our lives for another which is the supreme
display of the life of love we have been commanded to live. Christ demonstrated
His love for us when He died for us. However, the principle is more about
self-sacrifice than it is about dying for someone else. Specifically, there are
things far more difficult than physically dying for another and that is serving
one another when we can’t afford it or don’t feel like it. At times, dying
might seem preferable to faithfully serving another in love especially in the
case of serving someone who is particularly unlovable. “As a new family the
believers are called to enact the values of kin toward one another. The
Christians are repeatedly urged to ‘love one another,’ specifically after the
example of Jesus, who valued the well being of his sisters and brothers above
his own life [Sisters and brothers being defined as those who believed in Him and
do the will of the Father (Mt 12:46-50)]. Just as it would be disgraceful for
us to ‘love’ our kin only as long as that love costs nothing, so the people
joined by the blood of Jesus are to ‘go the distance’ in loving each other.
Putting one another ahead of our comfort level, our attachment to our money,
even our personal safety—this is the kind of love for one another that, for
John at least, sums up all of Jesus’ teaching. This is to be the church’s
essential mark, so that the world would recognize our connection with Jesus by
the love we show one another.”[4]
When Jesus
calls the disciples His friends in vv. 14-15 we have to remember what He just
got finished telling them in v. 13, that a person can show No Greater Love than to lay down their life for a “friend.” And
that is exactly what Jesus will do in the coming days. Their relationship to
Jesus has gone beyond that of servants who come and go as they are told.
Instead, Jesus now considers them to be friends; partners in fulfilling the
will of the Father. Jesus has told them and revealed to them everything that
the Father has told Him and revealed to Him. Consequently, Jesus now considers
them to be friends. But just like v. 10, v. 14 is a conditional clause that
reiterates the need for their obedience to his commands. People often don’t
like conditions when it comes to their relationship with Christ because to them
it borders on a performance relationship as opposed to a relationship based in
grace. However, the fact that Jesus conditions his relationship with us is an
important reminder that we are not permitted to take that relationship for
granted. Grace is not an excuse to live as though our lives are not governed by
Christ’s commands to love one another, to share the hope of the Gospel with all
people and to be holy as He, the Father, and the Spirit are holy. “Jesus
expects his disciples to obey his commandments. This is a condition of being
his friends. Life with him involves conformity to his thought, not as an
optional extra, but as an obligation. Moreover, Jesus sums up his demands on
his disciples in one commandment, ‘a new commandment’, which requires them to
love others as he has loved them…Jesus sets out his own and his Father’s
example as the pattern for his disciples. The radical nature of this demand is
seen in the comment that the greatest love is the love of a man who gives
everything, including life itself, for his friend, which is not only a
commentary on the love of Jesus in his passion, but also on the Christian
ideal.”[5]
Jesus
reminds the disciples in v. 16 that they aren’t accidental followers; victims
of chance. Instead, Jesus sought each one of them out specifically as disciples
with an intended purpose and that purpose, once He equipped them with what they
needed, was to bear fruit in a dying world. For more on bearing fruit, you can access
a previous lesson titled, How’s Your
Fruit Tree at: http://seredinski.blogspot.com/2014/03/hows-your-fruit-tree.html.
V. 16a is an assumed conditional clause. Even though the condition does not
begin with an “if” statement, it is assumed because v. 16b completes the
condition with the “then” element of a typical conditional clause. In other
words, if the disciples are obedient
to their purpose to bear fruit, which is undoubtedly an allusion to spreading
the Gospel and making disciples, then
the Father will give them what they ask for in the name of Jesus. “The
confident prayer described in 15:17 is a byproduct of the intimacy with Jesus
offered in 15:15-16. To be a branch, to be a disciple, does not mean that we
can make some claim on the vine and demand it to produce what we wish. Prayer
‘in my name’ is not a formula that guarantees we will get what we want.
Centuries of Christian experience bear this out. But prayer that is itself inspired by the spiritual
presence of Jesus, that is in harmony with his will, that is in accord with
what he is doing in nurturing the vineyard—this prayer will succeed.”[6] In the process of
preparing this lesson, my wife and I, by coincidence, were talking about the
unbelievers in our lives that we have been praying for in some cases for many
years. She expressed the frustration that I often feel when those we have been
praying for do not seem to respond to our prayers. I agreed with her that it
can be exhausting to pray without seeing results. But we agreed that since
faith is not something we can force on the people we are praying for, prayer is
our only option. And knowing that the salvation of unbelievers is also God’s
will, we have to trust that our prayers are never wasted.
Jesus
closes his instruction in v. 17 reiterating his command that the disciples are
to love each other. Jesus leaves no room for equivocation in his instruction to
the disciples and to us. We are called to love each other regardless of the
cost. Although this verse restates what Jesus was saying in v. 12 and ends this
section of Jesus’ teaching, it forms a transitional contrast with the teaching
in the verses that follow. “The disciples must love each other because they
would take Jesus’ message to a world that despised them. Christians get plenty
of hatred from the world; from each other we need love and support. Jesus
legislated love. He required his disciples to make peace with one another, to
place the interests of others above their own, and to solve differences
quickly. He knew they were diverse in background, but he ordered them to love
each other. Jesus knew that setting this high standard was essential to
preserving the unity of the church. If he required it, the believers would
accept and live out this standard. Backbiting, disrespect, and bitterness
toward fellow believers strips the church of its power.”[7]
Application
“When the doorbell
rang Monday evening December 4th, about 9:30, I wondered who would be visiting
at this hour of the evening. But when I walked up to the door and saw two U.S.
Army officers standing on the patio at the bottom of the steps, I knew
instantly what was happening. This is the only way the Army tells the next of
kin that a soldier has died.
At
that moment, I felt as if I had slipped off the edge of a cliff and there was
nothing to grab onto; just a second beyond safety, falling into hell. If only
my life could have ended just a moment before this so that I would not have to
hear the words they were about to say. If only I could blink myself awake from
this horrible dream. But it wasn’t a dream.
As the
officers made their way into our living room, I rushed back into our bedroom
and told my wife Romayne to get up; we had company. And they were going to tell
us that Ross is dead. I knew of no other way to say it.
We
rushed back out to meet the officers, and then the appointed spokesperson
recited the standard message that Private First Class Ross A. McGinnis had been
killed in action in Baghdad, Iraq, that day. They could tell us nothing more
except that Army regulations required that the family be notified within 4
hours of the event. They offered their sympathy and support, and the Chaplain
prayed for our strength in the days to come, and then they left us alone in
shock, grief and disbelief.
In the
days that followed, we were informed of the details of his death. The entire
world probably knows those details now, since there was so much excitement
about his heroic deed. Hundreds of family, friends and acquaintances offered us
their words of prayer and comfort. But only time will take the edge off the
knives that have wedged into our hearts.
Ross
did not become OUR hero by dying to save his fellow soldiers from a grenade. He
was a hero to us long before he died, because he was willing to risk his life
to protect the ideals of freedom and justice that America represents. He has
been recommended for the Medal of Honor, and many think that he deserves to get
it without the typical 2 years that Congress has required of late. We, his
parents, are in no hurry to have our son bestowed with this medal. That is not
why he gave his life. The lives of four men who were his Army brothers
outweighed the value of his one life. It was just a matter of simple
kindergarten arithmetic. Four means more than one.
It
didn’t matter to Ross that he could have escaped the situation without a
scratch. Nobody would have questioned such a reflex reaction. What mattered to
him were the four men placed in his care on a moment’s notice. One moment he
was responsible for defending the rear of the convoy from enemy fire; the next
moment he held the lives of four of his friends in his hands.
The
choice for Ross was simple, but simple does not mean easy. His straightforward
answer to a simple but difficult choice should stand as a shining example for
the rest of us. We all face simple choices, but how often do we choose to make
a sacrifice to get the right answer? The right choice sometimes requires honor.
Our
Bible tells us that God gave up his only son to die for us so that we may live.
But Romayne and I are not gods. We can’t see the future, and we didn’t give our
son to die, knowing that he will live again. We gave him to fight and win and
come home to us and marry and grow old and have children and grandchildren. But
die he did, and his mother, dad and sisters must face that fact and go on
without him, believing that someday we will meet again. Heaven is beyond our
imagination and so we must wait to see what it’s like.”[8]
Pfc. Ross McGinnis
died on December 4, 2006 in Baghdad, Iraq when an enemy combatant lobbed a
grenade into the vehicle to which McGinnis was assigned as a gunner that was
also transporting a number of his fellow soldiers. Although McGinnis had the option
to save himself, he instead threw himself on the live grenade that killed him
when it exploded. He did, however, save his friends. I can’t even begin to tell
you how many stories I found like this one as I was doing my research for this
lesson. Each story was certainly heartbreaking but they were also inspiring;
inspiring because each sacrifice demonstrated a profound depth of love. And the
fact that McGinnis’ friends are alive to tell his story demonstrates that there
is No Greater Love than when a person
lays down his or her life for a friend.
[1] W.
Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor’s
Greek Testament, Vol. 1, (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.,
1983), p. 830.
[2]
Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight, I. Howard Marshall, eds., Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, (Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press, 1992), p. 861.
[3]
Colin Brown, gen. ed., New International
Diction of New Testament Theology, Vol. 2, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan
Publishing House, 1986), p. 359.
[4]
David A. deSilva, An Introduction to the
New Testament: Contexts, Methods & Ministry Formation, (Downers Grove,
IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), p. 436.
[5]
Donald Guthrie, New Testament Theology,
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1981), pp. 663-664.
[6]
Gary M. Burge, John—The NIV Application
Commentary, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2000), p. 427.
[7]
Bruce Barton, Philip Comfort, Grant Osborne, Linda K. Taylor, Dave Veerman, Life Application New Testament Commentary,
(Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001), p. 441.
[8]
Arlington National Cemetery Website, www.arlingtoncemetery.net/ramcginnis.htm,
(accessed May, 25, 2014).
No comments:
Post a Comment