RCL reading for Sunday, May 17, 2009:
Excerpt from the New Revised Standard Version
via Oremus (http://bible.oremus.org)
John 15:9-17
9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.
10 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.
11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
12 ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.
15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.
16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.
17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
STUDY GUIDE
What does the passage tell us about God?
What does the passage tell us about human beings and the relationships between people?
What does the passage say about the relationship between God and human beings?
How does the passage call us to change?
Adapted from “Theological Bible Study,” from In Dialogue with Scripture: An Episcopal Guide to Studying the Bible, ed. Linda L. Grenz (Episcopal Church Center, 1993), p. 96.
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ReplyDeleteWesley's Notes
15:9 Abide ye in my love - Keep your place in my affection. See that ye do not forfeit that invaluable blessing. How needless a caution, if it were impossible for them not to abide therein?
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary
9-11. continue ye in my love-not, "Continue to love Me," but, "Continue in the possession and enjoyment of My love to you"; as is evident from the next words.
Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary
15:9-17 Those whom God loves as a Father, may despise the hatred of all the world. As the Father loved Christ, who was most worthy, so he loved his disciples, who were unworthy. All that love the Saviour should continue in their love to him, and take all occasions to show it. The joy of the hypocrite is but for a moment, but the joy of those who abide in Christ's love is a continual feast. They are to show their love to him by keeping his commandments. If the same power that first shed abroad the love of Christ's in our hearts, did not keep us in that love, we should not long abide in it. Christ's love to us should direct us to love each other. He speaks as about to give many things in charge, yet names this only; it includes many duties.
The fifteenth chapter of John is all about the vine but the latter half focuses more on the theology and only refers fleetingly to the metaphor. The thinking is so close to John the elder's letter that some suspect that the same man was the editor of this chapter. The language refers to commands in collective but only the dual commandment is meant. The letter has already pointed out loving God whom we cannot see and cannot know is not the same and so the flow of love is from God through Christ to us and thence to the brothers. The vine metaphor is apt, the flow is one-way and the commandment is to keep it going.
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