I work for a non-profit that exists to share the hope and love of Jesus with women in the adult entertainment industry. We do this by bringing home cooked meals into strip clubs across the country every Thursday night with the goal of building a relationship and sharing the gospel.
A few weeks ago, I was talking to a girl in the club I consistently go to that was new. She asked what I was doing in the dressing room if I wasn’t there to work. I told her that the girls around here call us the “church ladies” and explained to her our purpose in coming. Naturally, she looked at me confused yet intrigued. She said, “I’ve never known anyone from a church that would want to come in here.”
As I think about the passage today, what I wish I would have said to my new friend is, “I am here because I have been loved by God, and I want to share that love with you.” I think that sums up the point Jesus is trying to make not only in these two verses but within the whole chapter of John 15.
Obedient Joy
You see, the blessings of God were never meant to end on us. The love which we experience in Christ is intended to go out to those who don’t yet know that love. Those who live obediently to His love experience great joy.
Jesus’ command in John 15:11-12 is grounded in His own obedience to the commands of His Father, and it is rooted in an abiding love. As thoughtful Bible readers, we know that the way Jesus begins verse 11 (“I have told you these things”), should cause us to look back at what He said previously.
In verses 1-11 of chapter 15, Jesus paints a picture of what it looks like to abide in the Father’s love as branches abide on a vine and produce fruit through the thoughtful care of the vinedresser. The one who abides is safe from the fire, provided for by the Father, and able to live a fruitful life. What beautiful realities!
Abiding Joy
But how are we to abide? In verse 10, Jesus says the way we abide is we keep His commands as He kept the Father’s. The purpose in this obedience is so that Christ’s joy may be in us fully.
What is His joy? For Christ, it was His joy to know His Father and to keep His Father’s commandments. The blessing of knowing His Father through an abiding relationship fueled Him in living out the purposes of the Father.
If you’re anything like me, there are days, seasons, and situations where it feels like God’s commands exist to withhold good things or to inhibit my experience of joy. In Psalm 16:4a and 11 (ESV), David proclaims, “The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply… You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
Christ offers His life as proof that obedience to God’s commands is where the good life is found. What you get at the end of obedience is more of who God is, and in Him joy is found.
Loving Joy
Jesus sums up His point with the command in verse 12 to “love one another just as I have loved you.” As thoughtful Bible readers, this should make us reflect on the question: How has Christ loved us? I love how Hebrews 12:2 (CSB) sums it up: “For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Christ’s love for His Father and desire to obediently live out the purposes of His Father led Him to set His mind on Jerusalem where He would count it joy to die. He laid down His life for us! Sinners, undeserving of the grace and love of the Father, are brought into an abiding relationship through the obedience of Christ. In John 10:10 Jesus says, “I have come so that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.”
Hear Christ summoning you to a life of joy as you live in obedience to God and share His love that you have experienced through Christ with others!
