Confronted by the Truth

By: Ruel Guerrero

In 2003, I was asked to speak at a nearby Vineyard church. I asked the
Lord what he wanted me to say? He said, “talk about the theme, love
one another.” I didn’t know the people in the church where I was to
speak, so I said, “OK if that’s what you want, but what passage should I
use?”
I heard him say “John 15.” As I recalled, that chapter was on abiding in
Christ or on bearing fruit. I checked again. Sure enough it was on both.

I reread the entire passage. Yes, it was on abiding in Christ, and yes, by
doing so we would bear fruit. But, I began to realize that the entire pas-
sage was founded on loving one another. It was time to read the chap-
ter with a fresh perspective. I read through the first few verses until I
came to verse 8: “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit,
showing yourselves to be my disciples.” That caught my attention. For
quite some years now, there has been much focus on worship. The de-
sire to glorify the Father and to become truly intimate with the Lord was
the reason for the focus. Verse 8 drew my attention because for me do-
ing ministry had to glorify God or it was worthless. Worship and ministry
both are all about glorifying God. So here I found Jesus’ words about
how to glorify His father.

This put me on a quest. Jesus said that in order to glorify the Father, I
must bear much fruit. But what really is bearing fruit? The standard an-
swer I always got was that it had to do with evangelism. Verse 5: “I am
the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he
will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” I’ve heard this
verse interpreted to mean that in order to bring in the harvest one must
spend sufficient time in prayer and worship and be able to hear God’s
voice in the course of evangelism. This verse does say that to bear
much fruit, a man must remain in Christ. How does one remain in
Christ?

Verse 10 speaks to that: “If you obey my commands, you will remain in
my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in
his love.” To remain in Christ, I must obey Christ’s commands. It doesn’t
specifically say devotion, nor does it talk about hearing God’s voice.
What are Christ’s commands? If this verse is referring to all biblical
commands, goodnight! We would never be able to remain in Christ’s
love. Thank God the Old Testament commands are over. But we have
Christ’s commands in the New Testament.

Then I came upon verses 12-13: “My command is this: Love each other
as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down
his life for his friends.” Jesus was actually focusing in on one major
command—loving one another. This is the new command he gave. If
the first and greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart,
soul, mind and strength, and the greatest love of all is to lay down your
life for your friends, then Jesus loved and worshipped God by doing the
greatest love of all—to lay down his life for all of us. His was the great-
est and most supreme act of worship!
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