This coming Sunday is the 6th Sunday of Easter. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends – in v.13 we come to the greatest love. This verse is perhaps the most explicit statement in the Gospels of what it means to love as Jesus loves. While some might argue this is simply a restatement of the ideal of Plato and Aristotle, that classical idea is given new gravitas of Jesus’ conventional mission by which the world is redeemed. Continue reading →

This coming Sunday is the 6th Sunday of Easter.  There is something very practical here: If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. Many suggest that this is the practical answer of how one remains in Christ and in his Word, bears fruit, and remains in the love of Jesus. These things are not some mystical experience. It is simple obedience. It is when we keep Christ’s commandments that we abide in his love. Once again appeal is made to Christ’s own example. He kept the Father’s commandments and thus abides continually in the Father’s love. And it is not a blind following of the commands, it is to “listen through” to the deeper love that resides within and throughout the commandments. Continue reading →