Dear Friends,

This is my command: "love each other". (v.17)

You are my friends if you do what a I command you. (v.14)

I have called you friends, for everything that I have learned of my Father I have made known to you. (v.15)

Here are three verses which are words of Jesus in John chapter 15. You will notice that I have set them out in a different order to that in which they are written in the Gospel. I have done this because v.17 makes v.14 specific and direct. This is very important.

We can read verse 14 -- "You are my friends if you do what I command you". We can desire the blessing with all our hearts. To have Jesus as our friend is very precious. Real friendship is rare. Human friendship is so imperfect. Jesus, however, is a perfect friend, if so be he is our friend.

Jesus is a friend who can be trusted completely. Jesus is a friend who will never break a confidence. Jesus is a friend who will always listen to our needs. Jesus is a friend who can always help us in our needs. Jesus is a friend of infinite wisdom, and his help and advice is always good. Jesus is a friend who will never let us down. Jesus is a friend who will never forsake us. And so we can multiply the qualities of friendship in Jesus. All his qualities are good and none are bad.

Yes, we can desire the blessing of the friendship of Jesus, but pass over superficially the condition Jesus speaks about. What is the condition? It is "do what I command you". That is all right we say; we will seek to keep the commandments, etc. In the general sense in which this condition is given, we are reasonably happy. It is easy to say, well we are not perfect, and Jesus is full of grace, but we will try. We remember our obediences, then, and forget our disobediences.

It is not so easy to be complacent when Jesus says to us what his command is specially and directly. Love each other is the command. We can’t be superficial here.

Do I want to bask in and enjoy and be blessed with the wonderful friendship of Jesus. If so, then I must share the same attitude of friendship Jesus gives me with others. Notice that Jesus puts no limits on our loving. We must love each other, that is everyone we come into contact with or meet.

How we fall short here. We want Jesus still to manifest his friendship to us when we fail and hurt him, but if others fail and hurt us we are soon ready to complain and reject and even hit back. Yes, we do hit back -- not directly -- but by gossip. We tell someone, we call it sharing with someone, how awful another person is, and so turn that person we confided in away from the one whom we are supposed to love.

We still greet that person and smile and say kind things to their face, and believe we are showing great love; but really we are punching them in the heart by the hard things we say about them to others, so turning other people’s affections from them.

How much division and disruption is caused in Christ’s family by this action. How much grieving of the Holy Spirit. How much quenching of the Spirit’s fire in the church.

Does Jesus ever complain of our failings to another person? No, never! Does Jesus ever talk about us in an unkind way behind are back? No, never! Does Jesus forsake us or withhold his love when we are rejecting him? No, never! This is love. This is the love Jesus commands us to show to others. This is the heart of Christian fellowship.

The joy of the Christian life is the love and friendship of Jesus. He has chosen us to bear fruit -- fruit that will last (v. 16). His purpose is that we might bear this fruit and know the delights of his love. So often, though, we are spiritually depressed or cold, and the love of Jesus seems far away. It is not that he has ceased to be our friend or to love us, but we are not experiencing the delights of his love or his presence.

There may be many reasons for this experience, but we need to see that the reason is in ourselves that we are not doing what he commands us. We often are more ready to blame the church fellowship, or others for our spiritual depression, when really the blame is in ourselves. We are not loving someone in the fellowship as Jesus commanded.

There is no escaping this command. We can’t blame of the one we are finding is difficult to love, because the command takes no account of their attitude to us, only our attitude to them.

Do you want the experience of the friendship of Jesus. Jesus says, "This is my command: love each other".

Your servant for Christ’s sake,