How to Remain in God’s Love

Guest post by my son Everett

Today is the fourth and final Sunday of Advent before Christmas. Having learned about the first three traditional Advent themes of hope, peace, and joy, today we look at the last, but not least, which is love. Specifically, we are looking at the Greek word agape, or “selfless love.” This love is distinct from emotional affection. It’s deeper, stronger, and more enduring than any other kind of love, for it comes from God.

This is the kind of love that Jesus spoke about in our passage for today, John 15:9-17 (NASB). And as we look at this text, we will be asking an important question: How do we remain in Christ’s love? I think that the answer is found within these nine verses, so let us begin by reading the passage together, starting in verse 9 and continuing through verse 17. It says:

9 Just as the Father has loved Me, I also have loved you; remain in My love. 

10 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. 

11 These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.

12 “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. 

13 Greater love has no one than this, that a person will lay down his life for his friends. 

14 You are My friends if you do what I command you. 

15 No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. 

16 You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.

17 This I command you, that you love one another.

This passage can give us a lot of comfort in knowing just how deep Christ’s love for us is. To better understand everything Jesus said here, let’s go through it, verse by verse. Starting at the top, verse 9 says, “Just as the Father has loved Me, I also have loved you; remain in My love.”

            To rephrase the first part, Jesus loves us as the Father loves Him. That means that the love He has for us is the same kind of love that the Father has for Him. The words He used in the Greek for this verse are “ēgapēsen,” which Strong’s Lexicon defines as, “To love, wish well to, take pleasure in, long for, denotes the love of reason, esteem” and “ēgapēsa,” which is the same except it is the 1st person singular form of the word instead of 3rd person singular.

            These are verbal forms of the noun “agape,” and they denote a deep love—the kind of love God has for us. So, Jesus is saying that He loves us with the constant, unchanging love that the Father has for Him.

            Then, for the second part of verse 9, Jesus said “remain in My love.” The Greek word for remain is “meinate,” which means “stay, abide, remain.” And the word He used for love is “agape,” which is the selfless love of God. So Jesus is commanding us to abide in His love.

To rephrase something MacLaren pointed out in his commentary on this passage: Jesus commanding us to remain in His love puts the ball in our courts, so to speak; He doesn’t cease to love us, but it’s up to us to continue in His love. And the thing is, if we have the job of remaining in His love, then it’s also possible—and our own fault—if we leave His love, reject it, or fall away from it. It isn’t that Jesus will withhold His love from us; it’s that when we sin, we have ceased to abide in His love.

            Remember that I posed the question as to how we remain in His love. Well, Jesus answers our question in the next verse. Verse 10 says, “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.”

            If we keep Jesus’ commandments, we will remain in His love; just as He kept the Father’s commandments and remains in His love. I would like to clarify: I don’t believe that Jesus meant we will earn His love by keeping His commandments. Jesus already demonstrated the ultimate act of love for us when He laid down His life on the cross. There is nothing we could possibly do to earn His love—He gave it as a gift because He loved us first. However, while we can’t ever do enough to earn our salvation, we can earn Jesus’ approval by following His commandments.

To remain in Jesus’ love is more than simply receiving His love; it also means reciprocating that love, and to love Jesus as our dearest friend. This begins in our faith in Him: faith opens the door to receiving His love. And if we have faith, and if we love Jesus, there will be evidence of these things. Jesus wants a real, intimate friendship with us. In order to be friends with anyone, it has to be reciprocal. So, in order to have real friendship with Jesus, we need to love Him back. And we prove that we love Him, by keeping His commandments.

Recall an earlier verse of this same chapter—John 15:5—which says “I am the vine, you are the branches; the one who remains in Me, and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.”

            Our faith gives way to love, and our love for Christ is shown by our works. If we remain in Jesus’ love, we will not only bear fruit, we will bear much fruit. By fruit I mean good works, anything that furthers the Kingdom of God, or anything that glorifies the Lord and communicates His Word: those things are counted as fruit. So, if someone thinks that they are remaining in Jesus’ love, it will be evident by their good works, or lack thereof. In that same sense, if we think that we’re remaining in Christ’s love, but we aren’t producing any good works, then we may very well be deceiving ourselves.

The good news is that if we aren’t producing good works, we can be redeemed. I believe that if we humble ourselves before the Lord, and put our faith in Him, we’ll come to love Him as we keep His commands. I think that if we understand what He has done for us, then our faith, and our gratitude give way to real love, and then we will produce good works.

            But maybe you’ve experienced something similar to what I have experienced. Sometimes, demonic forces will speak in first person in my mind and say “But do I really love Christ? Do I have any faith at all?”

            I’ve come to realize that the best response to this attack of the enemy is to say, “I do love Christ, and I’ll prove it.” And then commit myself to something that will please the Lord. It doesn’t have to be something complicated. I could show integrity by washing the dishes after dinner when no one’s asked me to, or help out with someone else’s chores around the house. Just so long as I’m doing it out of love for God and not in a “Look at me, I’m such a nice guy!” kind of way.

You could do the same thing. This doesn't necessarily mean we have to jump on a plane as a missionary to some foreign country—although if the Lord puts it on your heart, then by all means listen to Him—but rather on a day-to-day scale, we can show our love for Christ by doing simple acts of kindness, by worshiping Him with songs, or by spending time in prayer; to which I might add: never let the enemy convince you prayer doesn't matter, we can’t always see it right away, but the Spirit is moving and prayer is amazingly powerful.

            All that to say, to remain in Jesus’ love is to receive and reciprocate it. This is accomplished when we follow His commands.

            Back to our text, verse 11 says, “These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.”

            To rephrase what Jesus is saying here: He has told us these things so that His joy may be in us and our joy may be made complete. He wants to share His joy with us, so that our joy may be complete.

            Remember that this is the last Sunday of Advent, and my mother wrote sermons for the weeks that looked at hope, peace, and joy, before asking me to do this sermon on love. I would like to point out how, if we remain in Jesus’ love, we will receive hope, peace, and joy as a result. I believe that it is remaining in Christ’s love, that completes not only our joy, but also our peace, and our hope. Truly, we can never deserve Christ. For the fact that He not only wants us to love Him and receive His love, but also for us to be joyful, hopeful, and at peace—Jesus’ love for us surpasses that which I can comprehend.

            This is shown even more in verse 12 which says, “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.”

            Who has loved us more than Jesus? He loved us so much He died on the cross for us. And here, He’s telling us we are to love others with that same sort of self-sacrificing agape love.

Recall that He said the greatest commandment is, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and that “the second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

            I think that these two commandments explain what it is to remain in Jesus’ love, and that just as “Upon these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:40), I would say that truly remaining in Jesus’ love may very well fulfill all of Jesus’ commandments to us.

All that to say, if we keep Jesus’ commandments, we will remain in His love, and this is His commandment: that we love one another just as He has loved us. Note also that just as the Father loves Jesus, Jesus loves us. And now we also are to love each other, just as Jesus loves us. All of this love is agape.

            It is because of this love that God sent Jesus down to us, and that He was born as a man, lived among us, and gave up His life so that we might be with Him for eternity.

Moving on, as Jesus said in verse 13, “Greater love has no one than this, that a person will lay down his life for his friends.”

            Jesus demonstrated the end result of agape by laying down His life for us on the cross, and now we are called to demonstrate agape in everything we do. As I said before, this doesn't mean we need to look for ways to literally sacrifice ourselves to do this, we can show agape every day, by setting our selfish desires aside and putting others first. This can be as simple as doing chores for someone else, or taking time for someone else when there’s something we’d rather be doing. We should do everything out of agape, to follow in the footsteps of the Lord.

Now, you might be thinking, “Well, that’s great and all, but no one will do the same for me. What about what I want?” Remember that Christ came to Earth, lived among us, suffered, and died an excruciatingly painful death on the cross before rising again, and He did it for all of us, and that includes you. The good news for us is, if we do these things out of respect and gratitude for Christ, our own desires will matter less to us. We will see selfishness for what it is and will be able to see what really matters.

            The thing that all this really communicates to me is, God doesn't want a relationship with us that is limited to our Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. He doesn't want us to follow His laws ritualistically so that we can be “good people” and go to Heaven. He is not some detached yet benevolent being who lives out in space and wants us as servants as though He has any needs (much less any that we could hope to fulfill). God is our Father, our Maker, our Savior, and our Friend; and He wants us to belong to Him forever.

And this is exactly the attitude Jesus modeled for us in verse 14, when He said, “You are My friends if you do what I command you.”

            Remember that there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends. Jesus laid down His life for us, and if we remain in His love, He calls us His friends.

He elaborates on this in verse 15, which says, “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.”

            The Bible really is amazing isn’t it? Jesus really spells it all out for us so we know exactly how to please Him, and all things that He heard from the Father He has made known to us. It’s just like during the time He spent with His disciples: Jesus told them again and again exactly what was going to happen, how He would die but be raised again three days later. They didn’t understand what He meant, but in hindsight, He made it very simple for them.

I’m not so arrogant as to assume I understand everything He has told us though; I’m positive that come end times, there will be so many things that have gone right over my head, and I’ll go “Ahh, it should’ve been so obvious all along, this is what that verse in Revelation meant.” Happily for thick-headed individuals like me, we can pray that the Holy Spirit in us reveals more of the Word to us, and—because we are more than slaves (He calls us His friends!)—He often does.

            Then, in the next verse, Jesus explains how He can call us His friends. Verse 16 says, “You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.”

Jesus died for us before we did anything close to deserving such a sacrifice; I believe that this is what He means when He said “You did not choose Me but I chose you.” He took it on Himself to pay for our transgressions. However, then He says that He also appointed us that we would go and bear fruit, and that our fruit would remain, so that whatever we ask of the Father in Jesus’ name He may give to us.

I think that all this means that we have been given a chance to earn Jesus’ approval, that He has given us work to do spreading His Word and furthering His Kingdom. Not that we can earn our salvation, but at the same time, this isn’t universalism; we aren’t all inherently saved by default. Remember that Jesus will separate the sheep from the goats, and to the goats He’ll say, “Depart from Me, I never knew you.”

            We have to remain in Jesus’ love to be counted as His friends, and we prove our love for Him by bearing fruit, by spreading the Word and following His commandments. If we are loveless towards Jesus, then how could we have ever even known Him at all?

            And just in case we’ve missed the point through all of these verses, Jesus sums it up perfectly in the last verse of our text for today. Verse 17 says, “This I command you, that you love one another.”

            If Jesus is our Master and our Friend, then all of us believers share the same Father, and we ought to love one another as one big family. Agape is the love that the Father has for Jesus, agape is the love that Jesus has for us, and now we are called to love one another with that same agape love.

This doesn't mean we should simply smile at each other and be polite on the outside, when we’re indifferent towards each other on the inside. A loveless family is super depressing to think about, and they rarely stay together, and yet we’re surprised when it happens in churches that are the same way.

Instead of going through the motions, we need to feel genuine agape towards our brethren in Christ, not just keep up appearances on the outside. If you don’t feel agape towards your brethren, then start at the Source—start by loving Jesus, and ask Him to give you His heart towards other believers.

This may seem like I’m contradicting myself, but hear me out: the best way to build love for someone, is to act like you love them—not to pretend you love them, but to do loving things for them. So start by loving Christ, and then out of obedience to Him, do loving things for your brethren in Christ, you might find it to be very fulfilling; and that’s because you’d be remaining in Christ’s love.

It’s Jesus’ love that completes the four themes of Advent. As we remain in Christ’s love, we see that it is Christ Who brings us not only love, but also hope, peace, and joy.

With Christmas just days away, it’s good to remember that Jesus was born on Earth because of God’s great love for us. He came to save us, so that we may be with Him forever in Eternity. And now if we remain in His love, by obeying His commands, He calls us His friends.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank You so much for loving us. We pray that You would help us to remain in Your love, and that we would grow to love You more and more every day. We ask that the Holy Spirit would put You on our minds day and night, so that we would always give thanks as we remember everything You have done for us. Again, Lord, we thank You. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.