|
|
|
|
The Gospel of John, The Period of Conference, Conference With the Disciples, Part XL, John 15:14,15 - Lesson 148
Read Verses John 15:12,13 for review: This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:14,15 Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.
You are a friend to Jesus Christ if you abide in him.
The friendship of Jesus Christ is dependant upon obedience to his word.
Disobedience to his word servers friendship because disobedience separates from the path of Christ.
The cause of that separation is never Christ because he is always on the path of obedience.
Friendship is always severed by the one who is disobedient to the word of Christ.
He proves his friendship by confiding in his disciples and all who abide in him.
He does not keep his confidence from his disciples but all things he has heard of his Father he has made known unto them and to all who in him abide.
That is a mark of abiding in Christ.
Knowing all that Christ knows of the Father.
God does not keep things from his Son nor does he keep things from those who abide in his Son.
He reveals to them the Father's thoughts and brings them into the intimacies that he has with the Father.
It is the new nature that Christ imparts to those that abide in him that allows this intimacy.
That is what abiding is, an intimacy with Christ and therefore an intimacy with the Father that the natural man cannot and will never know in the natural state.
Ye must be born again in order to abide.
And when you abide Christ reveals things to you that the world does not know.
The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him.
It is given unto those who abide to know the mystery of the kingdom of God. |