Jn.15:12-14 – This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that a person will lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you.
Augustine is known for some of his famous quotes. One of the most famous is “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You”. Another one is “ask what you will but give what you command”. This last one is what Jesus was getting at in today’s passage, He is asking us to do the impossible, to love God and to love our neighbors. This is the heart of the gospel of grace, He works in us, in this case love, the very thing He asks of us. How does He do this? He does it by loving us, we love Him and others because He first loved us. It was His love that did all of this, He enables us to do what we could never do. Here is how Augustine describes this.
“This [love] is our fruit about which he said, “I have chosen you, that you should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain.” And what he added, “That whatever you shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you,” he will certainly give us if we love one another, seeing that this is the very thing he has also given us in choosing us when we had no fruit, because we had not chosen him. He appointed us that we should bring forth fruit—that is, that we should love one another—a fruit that we cannot have apart from him, just as the branches can do nothing apart from the vine.
Our fruit, therefore, is charity, which the apostle explains to be “out of a pure heart, and a good conscience and sincere faith.” When we love one another, we love God. For it would be with no true love that we loved one another, if we did not love God. For everyone loves his neighbor as himself if he loves God. And if he does not love God, he does not love himself.”
This is the power of God’s amazing grace, He changes us completely on the inside of our hearts creating inside of us an amazing love. Out of this love we become worshippers and lovers, loving God and loving people sometimes to our own amazement. This love may take you to the hospitals to pray for the sick, to the homeless shelters to minister to the hopeless, and even to the schools to bring hope and life to disillusioned youth. You may be surprised by this new you. His love can do amazing things.
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It’s the foundation by which the born again start new life.