Jesus brings freedom, both from our sin and freedom from the toil of trying to earn his forgiveness. The Galatian situation was one that has continued to be an issue throughout the church. Adding rules and manmade structures. But as we will see, this is not the gospel.
Author: the Josh Benner Blog
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March Madness: one champion, but many winners
It’s the start of one of the most beloved traditions in the American sports calendar: March Madness. We’re a little bit past the midpoint of the first day. There have already been some upsets. Many people already probably have a team (or two) who they thought would go deep into the tournament already headed home.
For me, one of the reasons why I appreciate the tournament is that I feel like there is always more than one winner. Yes, there’s only one champion. But lots of teams can come away from March Madness feeling like winners. Not every school is Kansas, or Duke, or Kentucky who expects to be in the tournament every year. For many schools, just getting into the dance i already a big win. Kennesaw State University is in the tournament for the first time in program history.
I think of Princeton’s win today over Arizona. A 15 seed over a 2 seed. That’s Princeton’s first tournament win in 25 years. Regardless of what happens in their next game, they’re playing with house money.
Earlier today, Furman who’s a 13 seed upset Virginia. This is Furman’s first appearance in the tournament since 1980. And there will be more upsets to follow. Obviously every team is always going to win their next game, but for the teams who pull off an upset (and if history is an indicator, there are usually about nine upsets in the first round alone), they’re already winners.
I think of the teams who make it to the final four. Even if you’re a one seed and only make it to the final four, you’ve accomplished something special.
I feel like we tend to judge a lot of sports based on championships. We’re like Ricky Bobby in Talledgea Nights and think “if you’re not first, you’re last.” Perhaps it’s because the tournament is so long, but in March Madness, more so than other team sports, I feel like we can appreciate the teams that overachieve, the teams that find some magic, the teams who get a game further than the experts thought they could. And in that, I feel like it’s a celebration that much more closely resembles life than how we talk about other sports.
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The God who calls us friends. John 15:12-17
We all have acquaintances. People we know, people we’re pleasant with. People we can have small talk with, talk about the weather, talk about sports.
That’s fine.
But it can be easy to keep people at arm’s length, control what we reveal to someone.
Friendships are a struggle for many in our society.
When comparing surveys that Gallup did in 1990 and a 2021 survey from the American Enterprise Institute, when asked how many close friends people had (not including family members), for people who said they had zero close friends, the 1990 number had quadrupled from 3 percent to 12 percent in 2021.
People who said to have fewer than two close friendships doubled from 16 percent to 32 percent.
And the number of people who said that they had 10 or more close friends fell from 33 percent in 1990 down to 13 percent in 2021.
How many people know you?
Not people to whom you can give a passing prayer request, but who actually know your fears, know your dreams, know your struggles, your heart?
There is something that is so incredibly life giving about meaningful friendships. Being known. Being known in your weaknesses and imperfections but still being loved in spite of those things. It’s a powerful thing.
True friendship can be difficult, it can be challenging, yet it is absolutely essential. It’s essential to our wellbeing.
In a 2010 review of 148 studies which – across the board – had included more than 300,000 participants, stronger friendships were linked to increased lifespan and decreases in things such as high blood pressure and diabetes.
Studies also found that close friendships had similar impacts on health to quitting smoking, and that in terms of lifespan, strong friendships were a bigger indicator than strong family connections.
That’s not to say that family connections aren’t important, of course. But it is to point out how much true friendship matters. Friends, not acquaintances. People who know you well enough to love you in spite of yourself.
It matters to our health, it matters to our happiness, and it matters to our ministering to the world as Christians.
No matter how quiet, or introverted, or shy a person is, we need friends. It’s part of our human nature. Our need for friendship and connection. It’s part of how we’re created and what we’re created for.
In John 15:12-17, on the even of going to the cross, Jesus will say to the disciples you are my friends.
This passage points us to three principles on friendship.
- The friendship Jesus calls us to
John 15:12:13: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
The command to love
Love one another. Let us appreciate how close to the heart of Christ our love for one another is. It’s the command that shows that we love Jesus. Loving others is not option for the Christian.
Does it mean we like everyone? Not necessarily. Does it mean we love everything everyone does? No, especially not sin. But we are to love. To be patient and kind. To want the best for people. To be forgiving when hurt or wronged. To put differences aside. To love people who are hard to love.
To love one another as Jesus has loved us.
That’s quite the standard. Because Jesus loves us with a perfect and righteous love.
Jesus loves a world where people plotted against him, where he was crucified. He loves a group of disciples where Peter denied him, where in the moments leading up to his arrest, some fell asleep and let him down.
Jesus calls us to love one another as he has loved us.
- The friendship Jesus displays
And he points to the pinnacle of that love in verse 13: Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
Jesus is at one time pointing us to the great love for us that he is going to display on the cross when he lays down his life for his friends. And he is also pointing us to an incredible standard of love that the Lord desires for us. The greatest display of love is one laying down their life for their friends.
Sacrifice
There’s something about that idea that intuitively speaks to us. The power of sacrifice. We honor those who lay down their lives.
In America, we have an entire day set aside – Memorial Day – to honor and remember those who gave their lives for our country.
Every September 11th, we remember the great sacrifices that people made. Firefighters who ran into those burning buildings. We remember the 343 firefighters who gave their lives. People who went into those buildings, with heavy gear, walking up the stairs into an inferno. They knew that it was incredibly dangerous. We remember the tremendous heroism of the people who overtook the highjackers on United 93 when they became aware of what had happened to other flights.
We honor and celebrate those stories. And that’s appropriate. It’s a powerful gesture when a person sacrifices their own life for something greater than themself.
Now for many of us, if someone we loved. A spouse, a child, a grandchild was in mortal danger, I have no doubt that many people in this room would lay down their life for the people who matter most to us without even blinking.
But there are a couple of things to keep in mind with Jesus as the example of the one who gives up his life for his friends.If I died to save someone, you’d call me a hero.
But here’s the thing. Unless Jesus comes back in my lifetime, I’m going to die. We might give up some time, some years of our life. And that’s significant. And that’s costly. But Jesus is the eternal God. He has life in himself. He would not have died a natural death.
But he gave up his life. And for whom did he do that? A fallen world.
Romans 5:6-8, Paul says: For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—
He finishes the thought: but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Jesus befriends a world that was an enemy to God. Before we move on to our next point, I’ll make this point of application. While the pinnacle of love is laying down your life for another. Fortunately, there’s a good chance that none of us will ever be in that situation.
It’s easy to think of what we would do in an extreme situation.nBut what’s harder is dealing with the realities of life, the world, our own challenges and struggles.
It’s easy to say we’d be the hero when we’re not on the battlefield. We might not ever need to die for someone, but what are we living for?
Are we living to honor that command of Jesus? Are we living to love people and to honor our great God by loving the people who he loves? By loving the people he sent his son to die for?
Jesus shows that on the cross.
- The friendship Jesus invites us into
John 15:15: No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
The eternal Christ says he does not call us servants, but he has called us friends. Like so many things that Jesus says in the gospels, if we’re not careful, it can be easy to overlook the immensity of that statement.
The Lord calls us his friends. In the Old Testament, that’s not typically the language we hear of people in their relationship to God.
We see Abrhaam referred to as God’s friend in the Old Testament. Abraham is also the patriarch from whom the Israelites would come.
Isaiah 41:8: you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham, my friend;
So the idea isn’t altogether absent but it’s not common in Old Testament usage. But with Jesus, he makes a sweeping declaration that he calls his servants friends.
Friendship and status
Think – for a moment – of that immense disparity of status between Jesus and us.
Do you have any close, personal friends who are movie stars? Or big time professional athletes? Or famous musicians? Or leaders of nations?
We tend to have friends who are of a similar social standing to us.
Now if you could meet someone famous who you admire. Maybe it is an athlete, or a TV personality, or a former president, and you met that person, and they actually sat down with you and talked to you for 15, maybe 20 minutes. Asked you all about yourself, your life, your family, your interests.
You’d be so taken with that person.
You’d tell everyone you knew about meeting them. How nice they really were.
Are you telling people about Jesus? Because the Lord of the universe invites us to personally know him. He calls us his friends.
He gives his life for us.
Evangelism
We’d tell people about meeting someone famous. We’d want a picture, want an autograph. But that person wouldn’t be your friend. Jesus is.
You’d tell everyone you know about meeting someone famous.
Friendship with Jesus is not meant to be something that we have just to have for ourselves. He calls us to love one another, but Jesus also values our friendship with those who do not know him, so that they too can be his friends.
No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
This verse is showing the closeness of the relationship that we get to have with Jesus.
We are created by him, we are subservient to him, we are infinitely less than him. But through divine initiative, Jesus no longer calls us servants, and he grounds that because a servant does not know what his master is doing.
But Jesus let’s us in. He’s a personal savior. He would be within his rights to simply command us and we follow it, but he came into the world and showed us. He demonstrated who he was to us. He taught us.
Jesus reveals things about himself, and his heart for the world.
He spent time with people. He let’s us in. In other religions, they believe that God is so transcendent and above people that we cannot know him. And while the Lord is so great that we cannot fully comprehend him, Jesus is relational and personal.
Jesus came into the world and lived in total submission to the will of God, though Jesus himself is divine and in him, the fullness of deity was pleased to dwell. And as the Son has a perfect relationship with the Father, he invites us into a relationship and friendship with him.
Sin had tarnished our relationship with God, but Jesus restores that and he can do that because the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit have always had a perfect relationship with each other.
Chosen
John 15:16: You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
Is he saying that he chose them to be disciples and that this verse only relates to the disciples?
No. This verse is true for all friends of Jesus.
You did not choose me, but I chose you
It should not be surprising. In the Old Testament, as Israel did not choose to be God’s chosen nation and as Abraham did not choose to be selected for God’s covenant, our friendship with Christ is ultimately at the sovereign initiative of Christ.
Ephesians 1:4: even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.
What a comfort it is that our faith does not hinge on us. I’m sure we’ve all had friendships that did not stand the test of time. We sometimes have a falling out with someone. Jesus is the friend who does not leave us. He’s the friend who is faithful.
Verse 17: These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
This verse wraps up this section. He points back to what he has said and reminds us of the purpose for what he has said: so that you will love one another.
Let’s tie this all together.
As a reminder, in verse 16, Jesus had said:
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.
This is getting at our purpose as Jesus’ friends.
That we go…and bear fruit.
Again, I keep pointing this out but it’s important to remember that this is the night before Jesus is crucified. These are some of the final words he gives to his disciples.
And what Jesus is getting at here is his mission in the world.
His command is that the disciples love. The true disciple of Jesus observes his command. Jesus calls his disciples friends. And Jesus has appointed disciples to go and bear fruit. To go into the world and bear fruit.
To go into a world that is hostile to the gospel and share the message of Christ. To go into a world where there are enemies of God and to make friends and introduce them to our friend Jesus. We’re called to love one another and to love others with the love of Jesus.
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Abiding in Christ. Studying John 15:6
Abiding in Christ delivers us from judgment
In John 15:1-5, Jesus has told the disciples that he is the vine and he’s compared his followers to the branches. Beginning in verse 6, Jesus warns those who do not follow him.
Jesus uses powerful imagery to point to himself as the source of life. He is the true vine, referring to grapevines. And life is found on that vine. Life is found in being part of the vine, in growing on the vine, in receiving your nutrients from the vine.
In John 15:6, Jesus says: If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.
At the end of the harvest, fruitless branches would be cut off of the vine and thrown away. That is what Jesus is alluding to here. And Jesus is talking about a specific type of person.
He’s talking about a person who’s within the church, within the group of believers, within the vine, but who’s not actually bearing fruit on the vine because they’re not actually alive on the vine.
And they never truly were. On the night before he went to the cross, the most obvious example of this was Judas. But while Judas might have been the first person to disingenuously follow Jesus, he was not the last.
And I talk about this because it’s an important warning to the church.
That there are frauds..
That there are people in churches who say they’re Christians, who profess to be believers but who aren’t really walking with Jesus, who don’t really know Jesus, who don’t really believe in the gospel and who have not been born again.
And while those people can fool a church, fool a pastor, fool their spouse, they will not fool the Lord.
Where is your hope?
It is the blood of Christ that cleanses us for our sins. It is his death to sin for us and his resurrection and faith in that which gives us eternal life. It is that and nothing else.
If you want to rely on yourself, if your hope is in your goodness and that is why you believe God will accept you, then your faith is not in Jesus, your faith is in yourself.
In Matthew 7, Jesus talks of the people in the community who were active participants but who were never genuine believers.
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
My point isn’t to make a believer doubt. But the point of this is to make a person who doesn’t believe in the saving work of Christ, and that alone, to question where their faith, hope, and assurance are found.
For the person who abides in Christ, and for that person alone, you are delivered from God’s judgment, and the reason for that is because of Christ and what he has done.
That we are sinners, but Jesus redeems and forgives us of our sins when we have faith in him.
Kobe beef
Being a Christian in Name Only, but not actually believing in Jesus counts for nothing. It is Jesus who justifies and forgives when we come to him as Lord and savior. I was reading about Kobe beef this week. Kobe beef is the holy grail of beef. True Kobe beef has rigorous standards of quality and marbling. It’s a specific type of cow in a specific region of Japan to truly be kobe beef.
A 2016 report from Inside Edition found that there were only 8 restaurants in the entire United States that sold genuine kobe beef. And it is not sold in retail.
The upscale steakhouse McCormick and Schmicks advertised a kobe burger with beef that was not from Japan, but was from Kentucky. Class-action lawsuit. Restaurants and grocers have tried to call things kobe beef that aren’t.
And my point is this: just because you say something is something doesn’t make it so.
Just because you SAY something is kobe beef, doesn’t make it kobe beef. Again, it has to be the right type of cow, from the right region, to the right standards.
Anything else is inauthentic.
A person can say that they’re a Christian, but if they do not have faith in Jesus, if he is not the savior in whom they have placed their hope, and they don’t believe that he died for them and rose for them, then it’s not Christianity, regardless of what you call it.
But the person who believes in Jesus and who abides in Christ is delivered from God’s judgment.
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Jesus is the true vine. John 15:1-2
In John 15:1-2, Jesus compares himself to a vine.
“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 does bear fruit he prunes,
In saying that he is the true vine, he’s pointing to himself as the one who sustains his people. Jesus is the vine. God the Father is the vinedresser or gardener.
Christians are attached to the vine and bear fruit, which refers to good works and to Spiritual growth which is the result of one’s relationship to the vine, to Christ. A vine branch cannot blossom and produce fruit apart from the vine. A vine branch cannot survive off of the vine. Neither can a Christian exist apart from Christ.
Jesus talks of two different types of branches in these verses. There are the branches which do not bear fruit and the branches which do bear fruit.
This is a reference to two different types of people within the church. People who believe in the gospel and those who do not. The fruitless branch is someone who goes to church, they know how to speak the churchy lingo. They might say they’re a Christian. They know a little bit about the Bible. But they don’t really believe in Jesus. They don’t truly believe that he’s their Lord and savior.
And because they don’t really believe in Jesus, there’s no fruit. They never had fruit. It’s not that their production slowed down or that they had a bad week. It’s that they never believed in the first place.
In the Gospel of John, the most obvious example of someone to whom Jesus is referring here is Judas who had been one of the disciples and who had departed from Jesus at the end of chapter 13.
It’s not that Judas was a believer in Jesus who walked away from him. Judas never believed in Jesus in the first place.
every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
God is the vinedresser who prunes the grapevine.
Understanding viticulture
Properly pruning grapevines is essential to maximizing the harvest. Without pruning vines, they can quickly become overgrown and entangled.
Pruning requires cutting off small branches and old branches so that you can make room to support the new year’s grapevines. You wanted the vine to be cut to a certain length. Too long and it’s more susceptible to breaking. Pruning was primarily done twice a year. It would be done in the spring when they planted and again in the fall at harvest to ensure healthy vines.
And that is all important to the metaphor and what the passage is teaching.
Because for the branch the bears good fruit on the vine, God as the master vinedresser, God prunes in order to maximize the harvest.
That’s what a vinedresser does. They have to cut away at the vine for the good of the vine. Imagine that you’re a branch on the vine. You might have all of these other branches and shoots that look good and are about to blossom. And then the vinedresser starts cutting.
It’d seem cruel!
But a good vinedresser knows it’s necessary to get the most fruit out of the vine.
God brings about things in our lives sometimes for our growth that can seem painful, that can seem harsh, that can seem unfair. Yet all of it is meant for ultimate good. And God has to prune us.
God prunes us
It can be different ways in different seasons of life, but God must use the knife to cut into us. This calls to mind a passage like Hebrews 12, where God is a loving father who instills discipline in his children.
Hebrews 12:6: the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.”Sometimes that’s how God prunes us. By discipline. Sometimes it’s through the challenges we face.
James 1:2-4: Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
James says that we are to count it all joy when we meet trials of various kinds because God uses those trials to work greater results in us.
There’s pruning. Sometimes it can be through illnesses or life circumstances. Sometimes God takes things away from us, but for greater purposes. Sometimes it can be through setbacks. But God works through those challenges and situations.
In the process, he produces different results. No two branches are pruned exactly the same. But to be a Christian is to be part of the vine, and to be part of the vine is to produce fruit. And to be part of the vine is definitely to be pruned. God is a perfecting God.
God is faithful to work in us.
God can prune us through relationships. People in our family, people in the church, people from work. He can use people to be transformational in our lives. Kari is getting me a pruning knife in October, Lord willing. He can prune through his word.
2 Timothy 3:16: All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
God can use his word in mighty ways in our lives. And let us remember that when we read our Bibles. That the Word should challenge us. We are sinful and imperfect. God’s Word is true and points us to holiness. It can be challenging to be confronted with the Bible.
You can have weeks or months of reading the Bible and nothing really stands out to you and then you come across a passage that feels like it was written with you in mind. Because God uses his word to cut us. He uses it to prune us.
Hebrews 4:12 says:
the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
How is God pruning you?
Is there an area of your life where you’re not living up? Where you know you’re not honoring God? Is there an area of sin that you’re struggling with? Is there an idol that you’re holding onto? Is there a person you’re withholding forgiveness from?
The answer for that question will vary from person to person. But what does not change is that God is working in his people. You’re not a finished product.
