John 15:12-17
October 30, 2022
preached by Pastor Doug Cooper
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Time of Reflection Quotations

“Nothing is more sacred, more useful, more difficult to find, more pleasant, and more profitable than true friendship. Without authentic spiritual friendship, it is next to impossible to be happy in this life. A person without friends is more like a beast than a human being. Spiritual friendship cultivates virtue, overcomes vice, and brings balance in both good times and bad. It is a medicine for life that heals and elevates. As such, it leads one to the love and knowledge of God.”

~ Aelred of Rievaulx (1110-1167), English Cistercian monk and abbot of Rievaulx, Yorkshire

“Sometimes it takes having differences, not understanding one another, and even being a little bit irritated by and bored with one another, to remind us that the church is a family and not a club. At its best, this family dynamic of the local church functions as God’s fertile soil for growing us beyond mere tolerance toward true expressions of love and unity.”

~ Scott Sauls (1968-present), contemporary author and pastor

“Deep in our timid hearts is a desire to be loved mildly, nothing more. That way, we retain control, we set the terms, we avoid risk. Our loving God, in His ferocious intensity, will have none of it. He defines the meaning of our lives, and we are saved from our anemic loves and brought by degrees into intense loves, like His own.”

~ Ray Ortlund, contemporary pastor and author

“There is great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, He wants me as His friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given His son to die for me in order to realize this purpose.”

~ J.I. Packer (1926-2020), English-born Canadian theologian, minister and writer

Sermon Passage

John 15:12-17 (ESV)

¹² “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. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command you. 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. 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. ¹⁷ These things I command you, so that you will love one another.