FBC Daily Devotional – October 20, 2021

Well, good Wednesday to you. Here we are in the middle of the week already. I hope your week is going well. Well, this morning we read John chapter 15. I hope you've read John 15. If not, after this little time together, I hope you'll take a few minutes today and read this passage of Scripture.

But John 15 is that it's really a precious passage to God's people because this is a passage where Jesus talks about being divine and his people are the branches. Those who follow him, those who trust him, are the branches and he gives us some insight in fruitfulness and how we need to abide in him if we're going to be fruitful and the Father wants us to be fruitful and so forth.

But one of the questions that we often ask ourselves as Christians, as followers of Jesus, is, you know, do I really love him? What is the fervency of my love for Christ? And he gives us some indication here of how you can know and how you can gauge that.

He says, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments.

Okay.

So, how am I doing with that? If I'm ignoring what Jesus has to say, with what God's Word has to say, then I really can't claim to love him. If I know what God says and I defy it, then I definitely don't love him.

If I don't give any thought to what God says and living accordingly, then I have a very weak expression of love for Christ. No, it's when I know what God says, I know what Christ commands, and I want to obey him and I endeavor to do so.

That indicates a love for Christ. And then he goes, after he says that, in verse 10, he says, if you love me, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. But then he goes on to say in verse 12, this is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

So, one of the hallmarks of an obedient follower of Jesus is that he loves other followers of Jesus. It doesn't mean he always agrees with them. It doesn't mean he would be necessarily drawn to them in an affection sort of way with you know, like you know, we all have people we like because of personalities and so on and so forth.

We may not have that kind of a draw, but we love them. We'll give ourselves to them. We'll give ourselves for them. We'll sacrifice to help meet their needs. That's the nature of the kind of love that Jesus is talking about here.

And this is his command, that we love one another in that way.

Loving the Brethren in a World That Hates Christ

Now,.

You know, when when everything in the world is calm and and Christians are, you know, tolerated or even to some degree appreciated and their views are appreciated and all the rest of that stuff, it's easy for the church to fall into infighting and to get to get upset with each other over silly little things.

I mean, in my years in the ministry, I've heard stories and experienced some of that, but I've heard stories of churches splitting. I mean literally splitting over things like differences of opinion about the color of the carpet in a remodeling job and other kinds of remodeling projects where there are differences of opinion over the kind of materials to use of a color scheme or whatever.

And it is just pathetic, absolutely pathetic to hear about. And if you've been in a church like that, to go through the experience of people getting angry with one another over such silly superficial stuff.

And I've thought about that in relationship to our brothers and sisters in Christ in places like Afghanistan or Iraq or some of the Arab countries or the Muslim countries where they can't even have a church building.

And if they do have one, it's kept secret and there's no big sign out and there's no colored carpet or any of that kind of stuff. And they're just happy to be able to meet together with one another. And then to think of some churches who will fight over this kind of stuff.

Where is the love, you see? But what I'm getting at here is what Jesus says after this passage about in verse 17, for example, he says, these things I command you that you love one another. But then he goes on to say, if the world hates you, know that it hated me first.

He goes on to talk about the fact that if you're going to love Christ, if you're going to follow Christ, the world's going to hate you. The world's going to hate you. And you will be persecuted for it.

And the interesting thing about experiencing that hatred and experiencing that persecution from the world, it drives God's people together and it draws them together. And the command of Jesus to love one another takes on a new fervency and urgency.

That yeah, we do. We have to overlook some of these silly little things, some of these silly differences of opinion and stick together as God's people and really love one another and sacrifice for one another.

This is the exhortation of the vine. We as the branches need to listen to what he says. We need to abide in him and we need to abide in his love. And if we're abiding in his love, we'll keep his commandments.

We'll do what he says. I hope today that you're abiding in the love of Christ. And you can gauge that by your active pursuit of obedience and success to some measure, some degree of obeying what Christ has said by your love for your brethren in Christ.

Prayer for Love and Faithfulness

Father in heaven, thank you for this encouragement today to be the kind of believers in Christ that you would have us to be. People who love you and love one another as true followers of Christ. And may as this world continues to degenerate and hostility toward believers escalates, I pray that we would see all the more the importance of really truly loving one another.

This we pray in Jesus name. All right. Well, have a good rest of your Wednesday. Get over the hump and may God bless you in it. Good day.

Amen.