You are my friends if you do what I command you.
We act as friends toward Jesus by caring about what he cares about and doing what he does. Even Jesus himself did the same when he kept the commandments of the Father. By doing so he remained in the Father's love for him. It wasn't as though he had to earn anything from the Father, he who was himself the Father's very Word. But still, like us, Jesus was free, and could choose the to obey the commandments and embrace the conditions under which he would flourish and thrive. He could remain in the Father's love, to continue to benefit from all of the vital power he received from that love, and freely chose to do so even when it was not obviously the easy choice.
I no longer call you slaves,
because a slave does not know what his master is doing.
Jesus was not commanded by the Father as if he were a slave. They shared everything with one another and so Jesus had no misgivings about anything the Father asked of him. He did not recoil in the least at the fact that his Father would command something of him even though he too possessed the full dignity of a divine nature. He himself realized, because he knew everything that the Father knew, that no command of his was burdensome (see First John 5:3).
This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.
No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
Jesus unlocked for us the mystery behind all of the commandments. He shared their very essence as he himself understood it from the Father. Life was finally not meant to be hoarded for oneself, but shared, and when shared, transformed. With this knowledge the followers of Jesus were made able to attempt anything, risk anything, in the service of the Kingdom, not as those who are forced, not as those merely ticking the box, but as those who embraced it because they understood that it corresponded not only to their own very essence, but to the heart of the uncreated reality of the Triune God.
‘It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us
not to place on you any burden beyond these necessities,
Commandments that are not ordered to love are burdensome and must be set aside. This means that some things may be appropriate in one time and place or for specific groups, but not for other times or places or groups. The validity even of such commandments as these must be gauged by how they contribute toward love, how they order those in society toward their fulfillment by the gift of themselves to others. This is why we see the command in Acts to "to abstain from meat sacrificed to idols, from blood, from meats of strangled animals". The Apostles were concerned about creating a context in which they early community could grow and thrive together.
There are of course some things which are always and everywhere opposed to the self-giving loving enjoined on us by Jesus. There are actions which must always be resisted because they are objectively immoral regardless of time and place. But a key in resisting such grave matters in a compelling way, in a society that often disagrees with us about them, is to recognize and represent them as failures to love. More than condemning them, we are invited to propose a better way, the way of the commandment of love.
I will give thanks to you among the peoples, O LORD,
I will chant your praise among the nations.
For your mercy towers to the heavens,
and your faithfulness to the skies.
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