You are My friends if you do what I command you.You are my friends if you do whatever I command you.Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.Ye are my friends, if ye do the things which I command you.
4 sermons cite this verse
… And then he commands them to love one another the way that I have loved you. Nobody has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I have called you my friends. You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and to bear fruit, to bear fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I'm giving you these commands so that you may love one another. this was such a simple command such a simple mission but it's so difficult to live out and yet Jesus desperately wants us to live and to love others the same way that he loves us first to maintain friendships like this Jesus commands us to do this and yet we struggle to do it You know, sometimes I think, wouldn't our life of faith be so much easier if it was just like individual? …
… Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends. If you do what I command you, no longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing. I've called you friends for all that I've heard from my father. I've 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 abide so that whatever you ask the father in my name, he may give it to you. Okay. I love this passage. I love it more than I've ever loved it. Just the words that he uses. It feels nothing like do and don't. It's like the natural response. That's why he says, if you love me, you'll obey what I command. So it's just like when I think about if my daughters are taken away, my natural response is to go after them. Why? Because there's love there. …
… Those same two elements can be there. In fact, by the way, you see them in John 15. You notice this? when Jesus Christ, and I put this in after Ephesians 5, though we're not actually studying it, when Jesus Christ says, I'm your friends, he gives the same two elements. What makes him our friend? One is, you're not a servant, you're a friend, because I tell you my business. I tell you what's going on inside. I let you in. And secondly, I give my life for you. I don't let you down. Same two elements. Have you ever encountered somebody who gave you befriending grace in that didn't just brush you off and didn't just sort of do their duty, but were really kind. What is befriending grace? Well, I've experienced this, what it means. First of all, it's the same two things that you've got to have to be a truly spiritually kind person. There's a humility, and yet there's a confidence. On the one hand, befriending grace happens when this person I'm talking to, that there's a humility and therefore there's a transparency. …
… Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing, but I've called you friends. For all things that I have heard from my Father, I've made known to you. And so I want us to see how he's expressing his friendship and how he expresses his friendship to us. And one of the ways he has expressed his friendship is in his sacrificial love for us. before the world ever began, Jesus Christ planned to lay down His life sacrificially for you and me. What He did is that when we were enemies to Him, He laid down His life in love for us in order to make us His friends. So that Jesus Christ is the possible friend of every single person. He desires to be the friend of every single one of us. …