The Cost of Discipleship

In John chapter 15, Jesus says that He wants to share His joy with us, the fullness of His joy. And the fullness of His joy is reached when He sits down at the right hand of His Father and receives back to Himself the glory that He had with the Father from eternity, and it's that joy that He shares with you. As followers of Christ, we read many wonderful promises that our Triune God makes to us, and I'm not sure we consider this one quite as often as we should, especially over the last few months.

Think about it though, ruined centers, poor and needy, yet adopted by the King and allowed to share in His joy. Welcome to the Wednesday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm Lee Webb. As we begin today, Dr. R.C. Sproul is reading from John chapter 15, starting at verse 9. As the Father loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love.

And these things I've spoken to you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. And greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends. And you are my friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, and that whatever you ask the Father in my name He may give you. And these things I command you, that you love one another. But if the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. And if you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you.

The servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for my name's sake, because they do not know Him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. For he who hates me, hates my Father also. And if I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would have no sin. But now they have seen and also hated both me and my Father.

But this happened, that the word might be fulfilled which is written in their law, they hated me without a cause. But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of me, and you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning. He who has ears to hear the word of God, let them hear.

You may be seated. We're looking bit by bit at the discourse that Jesus had with His disciples in the upper room the night before His execution. And though several weeks pass as we come together and glimpse the text, we remember that these things that He was saying to them flowed right close to each other in the passage of time. The discourse that we're looking at this morning is part of that discourse in which our Lord announced His legacy saying, peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth, give I unto you.

It's still part of the discussion where our Lord said, let not your hearts be troubled. And so He expands here on that legacy, on the inheritance that He is leaving behind to His disciples in addition to peace. He gives them two other things. He leaves behind His love, and He leaves behind His joy. And so these must be connected. The peace that He gives is inseparably connected to the love that He sheds abroad in the hearts of those who are His, and that love and that peace are the basis and the source for our participation in His joy.

Peace, love, and joy. Now part of this chapter is a little bit awkward in its English translation, and in its awkwardness can really easily mislead us from the original. But in verse 9, Jesus said, as the Father loved Me, I also have loved you.

Let me stop right there for a second. If you ever wonder how much Christ loves you, or if He loves you at all, if you are His, think for a moment of the incredible comparison that He is making here. Jesus is not simply saying that the Father loves Me, and I love you, and you love each other, and everybody's happy.

No. What He is saying here is that I love you the same way that my Father loves me. Now who of us can possibly plumb the depths of the love that God the Father has for God the Son, the Son whom the Scriptures call the Beloved of the Father? And so our Lord is saying, I'm loving you the same way that My Father loves Me. Then He goes on to say, and this is where, again, it can be misleading, abide in My love.

Stay in My love, still giving us more exposition of the metaphor of the vine that we considered last week. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love. I don't like the way that's translated, because this makes it seem conditional. This makes it seem that I'll love you as long as you're obedient. But the moment you're disobedient, you can kiss My love goodbye. That is not the import of what Jesus is saying here. He is giving a weighty mandate to His disciples to persevere in their faith, to stay close with Him, and to be fruitful and to be obedient. But really what He's saying is, if you stay in My love, if you stay in My love, you will be obedient, because His love is not a result of our obedience. Rather, our obedience is the result of our love for Him. That's why He said elsewhere, He said elsewhere, if you love Me, keep My commandments. And He's deepening that by saying, because I love you and have chosen you out of the world and have brought you into Myself, you will be fruitful, you will be obedient. I've mentioned this before a long time ago, but I'll never forget my professor in graduate school in Amsterdam saying in one of his lectures, he said, gentlemen, the essence of Christian theology is grace, and the essence of Christian ethics is gratitude. We're not driven to obey Christ in order to get in good with Him. We are driven to obey Christ out of a heart that is filled with gratitude for the way that He has plucked us out of this world and poured His love out to us. These things I've spoken to you that my joy remain in you and that your joy may be full.

Again, let me just comment briefly on this. Our Lord is called elsewhere in Scripture, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. He is a man who has known pain beyond any measure from what we have ever experienced. And yet beyond the pain, beyond the sorrow, beyond the afflictions, and the humiliation of Christ stands the incarnate One whose life is marked by joy.

And this again is His legacy. We may weep, beloved. We may be crushed from the exigencies of life and the afflictions that we endure in this world, but nevertheless in the deepest part of our hearts and at the lowest level of our soul, there must be a spirit of joy. There is nothing more clearly the mark of the Christian than that we are people of joy. Remember we have a joy, joy, joy, joy where? Down in our hearts, down in our hearts, not just today but to stay, that my joy, Jesus says, may stay with you, may remain with you, and that you may experience the fullness of my joy. And the fullness of His joy is reached when He sits down at the right hand of His Father and receives back to Himself the glory that He had with the Father from eternity, and it's that joy that He shares with you and with us. This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.

I don't like that one. I can try to love you, but to love you as much as He has loved me pushes it beyond my natural ability. No wonder He keeps talking about sending the Holy Ghost to help us. But He loved us when we were unlovely, and we are called to model that kind of love. He says, greater love has no one than this, that to lay down one's life for his friends. From another perspective, it's greater to lay down your life for your enemies, as Paul labors, of course, in Romans.

But what Jesus is talking about here is the nature of friendship, and the greatest love that you can show a friend is to lay down your life for your friend, to sacrifice everything that you have to be a friend. I've told this story before too, an incident that happened shortly after Charles Colson was released from prison, and he was speaking at an Ivy League school. I believe it was Yale on that occasion, Yale or Harvard, one of the two. And as he began, his address, a group of students were heckling him in the back of the room and kept interrupting his speech, and they were shouting out, saying to him, how could you have defended Richard Nixon? Colson stopped his speech, and he looked at the hecklers, and he said, because he was my friend. And instantly, the student body was on their feet applauding, and so Jesus says, greater love has no one than this. So, he lays down his life for his friends. Now, he gives further exposition of his meaning when he says, you are my friends, again, if you do whatever I command you. Now, you are my friends, and you will do whatever I command you, is what the force of the text is. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends.

Now, this does not mean that Jesus says, at this point, I cease being your Lord, and you are no longer my servant. But Jesus is saying, I have related to you as a master relates to his students. You've been my disciples. You've been enrolled in my school. I've been your professor. You've been my subordinates.

And all of those things are true. But today is graduation day. From now on, I want you to look at me as your friend. I had a professor like that, my mentor in seminary, Dr. Gerstner. I remember after I came back from Europe and from graduate school and had dinner with Dr. Gerstner, I said to him, it's good to see you, Dr. Gerstner. And he said, no, no, no, no, Roberto. He always called me Roberto. He said, call me Jack. And I had a friend of mine who worked with me, and every time he saw Dr. Gerstner, he would call him Jack. And I said to him one night, how can you call him Jack? He said, well, he wants us to call him Jack. I said, you might want me to call him Jack. I'll never call him Jack.

And to this day, except in this illustration, I have never, ever referred to him as anything but Dr. Gerstner. That's what happens when a student is deeply impacted by a teacher or by a professor. That dignity, that esteem lasts for one's entire life, and you want to show your affection and show your respect by using the titles. Well, the disciples continued to call Jesus Lord. But Jesus is saying, I'm bringing you into a close relationship with Me that goes beyond the classroom, that goes beyond My tutelage. I'm calling you friends because I'm confiding in you the deepest things that My Father has confided to Me. We are friends of Christ with respect to our being the recipients of His privileged revelation.

That's why we should never take these matters lightly. And as I said, when we started this examination of this discourse, we are, as it were, eavesdropping on this final discussion that Jesus has with His disciples. I have called you friends for all the things that I heard from My Father I've made known to you.

You didn't choose Me. I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should remain so that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. Now, in verse 18, the dark side of the legacy, we receive as His disciples and as His friends His peace, His love, and His joy.

But once we are joined to Christ and participate in the legacy that He gives to His church, we must also participate in the inheritance that He receives, not from the Father but from this world. And the legacy of this world to Christ is its enmity, its scorn, its rejection, and yea, He uses the intense word here for hatred. He said, if the world hates you, you know it hated Me first. It hated Me before it hated you, and if you were of the world, the world would love you because you would be its own, but because you're not of the world, but because I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

Remember that I said to you, a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you also. One of the greatest embarrassing experiences of enlightenment I ever had was the first month that I had become a Christian. I became a Christian in college, and I went home for a weekend visit, and when I came back on Friday night to my town, I went to the drugstore where all of the guys always gathered on Friday nights. And frankly, I was their leader. All the way through high school, I was their leader. And when I came back to share with my friends the greatest thing that ever happened to me in my life, the cause of my highest happiness, my discovery of Christ as my Savior, and I sat down and I told my buddies about Christ, I fully expected every one of them to get in line and say, way to go R.C., we're right with you. Instead, they were unanimous in their rejection of everything that I said, and not only did they reject what I said, but they manifestly rejected me and thought I had lost my mind.

For the first time in my life, I identified with Captain Quig. I was hurt because I told them these things because they were my friends, and I loved them. And I wanted them to meet my new friend Jesus. Has there ever been a Christian who has ever been converted by the grace of God who didn't want to share that with all of his friends, with all of his relatives?

After a while, we learn to be more discreet because we experience that often low-key but nevertheless real hostility that is deeply embedded in this world. This world hates the things of God by nature. This world by nature hates Christ. They can have peace with Christ as long as we make sure that we strip Him of His real identity. But if you look at the biblical Christ, and you proclaim the biblical Christ, and you follow the biblical Christ with allegiance, you will be despised at some point by this world. That's why the Bible says, beware of the person of whom everyone speaks well, because if you've made friends with the world, you could only have done that by compromising Christ. A convicting yet encouraging message from Dr. R.C.

Sproul. We as believers have the great privilege of sharing in the joy of Christ, but we also get to share in His reproach. Thank you for joining us for the Wednesday edition of Renewing Your Mind. This was a sermon by Dr. Sproul from the Gospel of John. And when you contact us today with a donation of any amount, we would like to send you R.C. 's hardbound commentary on this gospel.

He goes through the book verse by verse and provides easy-to-read explanations for each passage. This is a great addition to your library. So we encourage you to call us today at 800-435-4343. You can also make your request and give your gift online at renewingyourmind.org. Each day this week, we're featuring a sermon by Dr. Sproul from a different New Testament book.

So as you listen, you'll have the opportunity to request that particular commentary. Today it's the commentary on the Gospel of John. And again, our phone number is 800-435-4343. Our web address is renewingyourmind.org.

And in advance, let me thank you for your generous donation. You know, it's interesting that in explaining the gospel, the Apostle Paul refers to the Old Testament patriarch Abraham. What does he have to do with those of us who are saved under the New Covenant? We'll find out tomorrow as Dr. Sproul preaches from Paul's magnum opus, The Book of Romans, Thursday here on Renewing Your Mind.