John 15:9-11 9As the Father has loved me, so I have also love you. Abide in my love. 10If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.
In verse 9, Jesus describes in further detail what it means to remain, abide, live, or dwell (meinate). This verse connects the dots of the previous verses. He reveals specifically how the disciples could obey him and have their prayers answered from verse 7. The crucial focus of faith and obedience is shown in love. The Father’s relationship of love toward the Son is the example for how disciples ought to respond to Jesus and one another in love. The aorist tense is used for the verb loved used twice in this verse (ēgapēsen, ēgapēsa). This is the most common verb tense in the New Testament and can be interpreted in many ways. It often shows a completed action from the past, but it can also have a timeless quality to it. Either nuance could be intended in this verse.
The Father showed his love to Jesus throughout Jesus’ earthly life and ministry, but this love was only an extension in temporal existence of the timeless love within the Trinity. Likewise, Jesus showed this love toward his disciples up to this point, but this love was eternal and would extend beyond the meal, his death, resurrection, and ascension. As Paul wrote in Romans 8:37-39, nothing can separate us from this eternal love. Love is the bond that unites believers to Jesus and to one another. This love is not human sourced but is an extension of the love between Father and Son and is experienced through the Spirit. The verb abide is a command and invitation. As a command, it requires the human response to Jesus’ love. His love for humanity is extended in grace, but we must respond in faith and obedience.
The need for the response of obedience and its relationship to abiding is indicated in verse 10. The verse is another conditional sentence, with the conditional part requiring the response of faith to be shown as obedience. The verse could be paraphrased to bring out the intention: If a person is in a relationship with Jesus, and let’s assume that is the case, then this relationship will be shown by how that person lives in love. Love is the primary evidence of one’s faith in Jesus. Once again, Jesus offers himself as the prime example of this with his love and obedience to the Father. Obedience is not legalism but the expression of love, which is how faith is shown. Believing in Jesus is not real faith unless it is shown in loving him and loving others. Jesus has now shown his disciples what it means to abide in him. It is not complex, but it is all consuming.
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