A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.
In John 15: 14-15 Jesus calls his disciples ‘friends,’ because they have been with him and heard everything that the Father had told Jesus to say. Yet in this verse, Jesus says, “You will leave me all alone.” What kind of friend does that?
Being a friend is a remarkable thing. I think at the heart of friendship is a kind of love. To be a friend you have to like the person. That doesn’t mean you have to be liked by the person you want to befriend. Sometimes that comes later.
Jesus picked his disciples for reasons only God knows, but at the heart of those reasons is love. The disciples love Jesus, too, but in a different way. It is not yet the kind of love that Jesus talks about in John 15: 13 where he says, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” That will come later.
Food for thought: How does it feel to be left alone by someone you thought was a friend? How does that feeling help you understand what Jesus did for us by going to the cross?
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Romans 5: 8: But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were yet sinners, He died for us. Romans 5: 6 – 11 tells the whole story. We were enemies when He went to the cross. And now we are friends. Pretty amazing.
Rich,
Yes it is amazing! Thank you for the beautiful verse!