Abide Here
Where love nourishes and grows fruit into obedience.
We’ve already read from John 15 earlier, when we were considering the fruit of joy. But this paragraph from Jesus is founded in love.
Note how Jesus defines what love looks like in particular ways:
If you keep my commandments…
This is interesting. It’s not, perhaps, something we would come up with on our own to define what God’s love at work in us looks like. It might even feel backwards. Like, if we have God’s love in us, we will then do his commandments. But he frames it the other way - If you…then you will remain in my love.
But then he defines commandments by love - My commandment is this - love each other.
In other words, the action that keeps us rooted in love is love itself. This is not a list of rules layered on top of affection. This is a way of life that keeps us connected to the source. Love is not the reward at the end of obedience; it is the environment in which obedience makes sense.
This is where the image of fruit becomes so helpful. Fruit does not appear because a branch tries harder. Fruit appears because the branch remains connected to the vine. Love, then, is not merely one fruit among others. Love is the life of the vine itself flowing into the branch. Joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness - these are what love looks like in context once it has had time to grow.
Jesus is not asking his disciples to manufacture love through effort or willpower. He is inviting them into a way of remaining so close to him that love becomes the natural result. And when love is lived and practiced, chosen, enacted, it keeps us rooted in him. The cycle continues. Remain. Bear fruit. Remain again.
Love as the Spirit forms it: not sentimental, not abstract, not passive. It is lived, practiced, and sustained through daily attentiveness. Love that grows fruit not for display, but for nourishment, for the sake of others, and as the theologians say, for the life of the world.
John 15:9-17
“As the Father loved me, I too have loved you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy will be in you and your joy will be complete. This is my commandment: love each other just as I have loved you. No one has greater love than to give up one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I don’t call you servants any longer, because servants don’t know what their master is doing. Instead, I call you friends, because everything I heard from my Father I have made known to you. You didn’t choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you could go and produce fruit and so that your fruit could last. As a result, whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. I give you these commandments so that you can love each other.”
Prayer
God,
Teach us to love you rightly so that our lives may bear fruit without fear. Let our obedience be the shape love takes, and our love the life that flows from you. Keep us remaining where true fruit can grow.
Holy Father of all creation, I see your loving justice in Jesus of Nazareth. By your Spirit, make me more like him.
Amen.