John 15:14 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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John 15:14

Comments

What a privilege to be a friend of God, a friend of the maker of heaven and earth. To be in the love of Christ, secure and forever. The law of Christ is the moral law of God, the moral law of the Ten Commandments reiterated and extended, plus the specific duties that fall in this case to apostles. What would the apostles do? They would testify to the resurrection of Christ. They and they alone would be given the capacity to work miracles and signs and wonders because they were personal witnesses of the resurrection of Christ. They did not know that yet, but all too soon it would happen.They would be those who would be commanded to order the church, to supervise the giving of the New Testaments, to put their authenticating mark on holy Scripture. These were their specific commands, and in some cases like Peter, as the Lord told him so very plainly, to die as a martyr for the Lord. So they had their commands, the moral law plus their specific duties.We have the same. Not the same specific duties. We are not witnesses of the resurrection, we are not the doers of signs and wonders of a physical restorative kind anyway, but we are witnesses of a spiritual kind, a new birth kind. It is our whole life to represent Christ within our family circle. Everybody, every Christian has a role. Yes, there are teachers, there are individual witnesses, there are preachers, there are those who bring others, there are those who visit the communities, there are those who teach the children, there are those who distribute the literature, there are those who pray and pray and pray and bring down the blessing down from on high. It is a corporate work and we should all have a place and a part in it as God’s people.

Application

The longing to obey him, the obedience to him, is the authenticating sign that we are his friends, which is repeated through John’s Gospel. How do you know if you are his friend, if you are truly saved, if there has been a work of grace in your heart, if you are bound for heaven? Oh, ‘If ye do whatsoever I command you.’ If obedience is your desire, though not always what you achieve, not always what you do, but how you hate yourself and how you long and wish for it.

There is a form of evangelical Christianity about that does not answer to this. There is a form of evangelical Christianity which says how glad I am that Christ is my Saviour, but I make my own plans, thank you very much. I follow my own chosen career. I do not seek his will, I am not committed to him. I help myself to as much of the world as I like. I play the world’s music. I watch the world’s things. I decide how much of a Christian I am going to be or not. Of course, you would never put it like that, but you are a kind of pick-and-mix Christian. Well, you have not got the authenticating sign of somebody who is a friend of God. What you should say is, ‘I want to put him first. I want to know his will for my life. I want to serve him and him alone. I want to finish with this world and serve the Lord and count for him.’

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John 15:14 Commentary and Bible Study