John 15:12 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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John 15:12

Comments

It sounds like the beginning of a list, but actually, it is the second point of a two-point list which began in verse 10. In Matthew 22.37-40, the Lord effectively summaries the two tables of the law: the first table of the law, the first four commandments, our duty to God, and then the remaining commandments, our duty to our fellow person. The same distinction is found in in the Gospel of John. The first table of the law has been dealt with in previous verses – love for God, love for God. You can see it at the very end of chapter 14 verse 31 – ‘but that the world may know that I love the Father.’ Here in verse twelve is Christ’s reiteration of the second table of the law: ‘This is my commandment,’ continuing the second table of the law, ‘that ye love one another’. And if we are to love our neighbour, our fellow man, how much more must this be expressed in the society of the redeemed?And then there is added – ‘As I have loved you.’ How has he loved us? With sacrificial love, patient love. Is there sacrificial love one towards another, sensitivity to the other’s needs? Great mutual helpfulness and support. Think of the Lord’s great patience with us, even since salvation – daily patience and kindness and longsuffering and toleration of us with all our drifting and foolishness and ills. So too we must show patience with one another, forbearance, kindness, forgiving of one another at every opportunity. ‘This is my commandment.’ It is the second table of the law for Christian people starting with the household of faith. ‘That ye love one another’ with that very patient and sacrificial and caring love.

Application

Now there are offences and wrong doing and wrong views and Christian teachers who seem to believe the fundamentals of the faith and seem in their way to sincerely teach them, and yet they make, what seems to us according to our degree of light, very great mistakes which mislead people. What do we do? Write them off, assume them to be tools of Satan, evil, simply and only to be rejected? We have to take care because we are under the law of love. So wrongs have to be righted, and if it is the public teacher who is misleading people, well yes, we do have to say that is not right for this reason and try to correct. Shall we go further? Shall we say, He is a scoundrel, he is unconverted, he is terrible, he is awful? I am talking about somebody who holds to the truth, he seems to sincerely proclaim the Gospel. Well the errors may be such that we cannot work with him, we cannot go right alongside him. But we dare not condemn him. To his own master, he must stand or fall. God must be his judge. We can make it clear what is wrong and what is right, but beyond that we cannot go. We can decline to work with but we cannot enter into judgement. We can only pray for change, transformation, for improvement and so on. There are boundaries even in the correction of wrong.

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John 15:12 Commentary and Bible Study