Monday after the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity Sunday
Posted on September 30, 2024 by under
Scripture: St. John 15:1-17 (NKJV)
15:1 “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.
5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. 7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. 8 By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.
9 “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. 10 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.
11 “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.
12 “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. 14 You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. 15 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. 16 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, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. 17 These things I command you, that you love one another.”
Devotion
The Lord’s uniqueness—in not only being eternal, omniscient, and omnipotent (Is. 46:9-10), but the Pardoner and Subduer of the sins of those trusting in Him (Micah 7:18-19)—requires very specific language. Since fallen human thinking is so unlike His (Isaiah 55:8), time has so impoverished our languages that it has become more difficult to convey how He is and what He says.
Fallen reasoning assumes, when reading John 15:14, “If I obey Jesus, I will be His friend; my works will save me.” When St. Paul labors so intensely to make sure we don’t reason this way, it’s because he understands what Jesus’ perfect use of language—and the whole context He sets up with His Vine and branches illustration, as well as what He says next!—really conveys: if we have been made His friends through faith in His atoning work, we will do whatever He has set in order for us to do (cf. Eph. 2:10). St. John’s Greek shows Jesus using a ‘present general’ condition, which expresses a principle, not a challenge or task: “My friends do whatever I bid them to do.”
We are not equals in this relationship. Jesus sets in order how we are to live, but we are also not those commanded by a slave driver, whose plans and purposes are hidden from us. Rather, we are given the exalted title of ‘friends’ by Jesus—indeed, of children and heirs of the Father, those doing His will!
Collect: O God, forasmuch as without Thee we are not able to please Thee: Mercifully grant, that Thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
