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#DailyDevotion The Friendship Sandwich. What’s The Meat?

#DailyDevotion The Friendship Sandwich. What’s The Meat?

John 15:12-17 12This is what I order you to do: Love one another as I have loved you. 13No one has a greater love than he who gives his life for his friends. 14You’re My friends if you do what I order you to do. 15I don’t call you servants any more, because a servant doesn’t know what his master is doing. But I’ve called you friends because I’ve told you everything I heard from My Father. 16You didn’t choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that doesn’t pass away and to have the Father give you anything you ask Him in My name. 17This is what I order you to do: Love one another.

I call this the “love one another sandwich.” Love one another are the two slices of bread. Bread is good. What’s the meat then?  The love Christ has for you. He has demonstrated his love for you by giving his life for you. Here Jesus calls us something we might not have expected. We are his friends. Not drinking buddy friends as people as some people think. This more of the patron who gathers people to himself and bestows favors upon them. Those upon whom he showers favors then are there for him when he needs them.

Yet his friendship, while we are not equals in it, is something greater that the patron friendship of the ancient world in two things Jesus shares with us. One is that he gives his life for us. In the ancient world that would be the opposite. On top of that Jesus also tells us what he is doing. We know what he is doing because we have his word as to what he is doing. There are no secret teachings in Christianity. There is no pay your dues to learn more and go up the ladder. At best there is only spend your time listening to and reading the word to know what he taught his disciples. If there was something Jesus taught his disciples that isn’t written down, it is identical in meaning to what is written down for us.

Here’s another meaty part of this sandwich, Jesus chose you. You didn’t choose him. There is no decision for Jesus to be made. He chose you. What a wonderful thing that is! Gone is the pressure of the anxious bench. That was suffered by Jesus on the cross for you. This is a constant theme in John. At the very beginning John writes, “They have been born, not of the blood of parents, nor of a sexual desire, nor of a man’s desire, but of God.”  Jesus also says in John, “A person can come to Me only if the Father Who sent Me draws him. Then I will raise him on the last day.” Jesus’ choosing of us though is not without purpose. He chose us and appointed us to bear fruit.

This fruit is to love one another as Jesus has loved us. This is fruit that cannot be born of our own power or strength. It is born of him, of the Spirit, as we abide in him and his word. We are to hear his word, believe his word, and the Spirit will have us by this word do the word. That word is show our fellow Christians sacrificial love. It is thinking of others more highly than ourselves. It is putting their interest above our own. This is what Jesus’ friends do. They do as the secular world calls, “pay it forward.” What can we do for Christ that he cannot do for himself? Nothing. But we can, by the Holy Spirit, love our fellows in the same way Christ has loved us. This is greater than the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. This is love one another as Christ is love you. In this we demonstrate our faith that Jesus is our friend.

Heavenly Father, may the friendship of your Son Jesus Christ so convert our hearts that we love our fellow Christians as he has loved us in our daily lives. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

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Rev. Guillaume J. S. Williams, Sr.

The Reverend Guillaume Williams is the Pastor of Hope Lutheran Chapel of Osage Beach, Missouri. His pastoral ministry with Hope began in 2005 where he preaches the Christ crucified.

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