Jesus and His enemies
John 15
Part 4
How can we be fruitful as Christians? In this short series we focus on one passage, John 15:1-17 and draw on some other scriptures, to try to answer the question.
John’s gospel is rich with many important themes and among them is how we deal with outsiders, or “the Other.”
We live in a world where community matters - we are designed to be people who need other people. So we identify with family, local community, ethnic group, nation and maybe a community around a shared interest.
All these identities matter.
The problem is that human nature makes all these identities exclusive. We naturally find security in our identity and we are tempted to define identity in contrast to others - it only takes a few misunderstandings or insecurities and we can find ourselves on is a slippery slope downwards ending in regarding the Other as a threat. And sadly, many politicians know how to play on these fears of the Other and gain power through whipping up even more fear and hatred of whatever minority or other ethnic group is the main target.
Jesus had some strong, confrontational things to say to the Jewish leaders. In John 15 Jesus makes the bold claim that He is himself the vine - a picture used often in the Old Testament to symbolise the people of God. The whole covenant people is now reduced to the one man Jesus and those who are in Christ, drawing life from the vine. And in verses 2 and 6 we read that unproductive branches are to be cut out and burned. It looks ominously as though all the Jews are now Other and rejected, because they refuse to believe.
It looks like a classic “Us and Them” confrontation.
However, a detailed study of John 8, which looks as though Jesus seems determined to confront and provoke the Jewish leaders, shows that instead Jesus is challenging their narrow definition of the people of God.
Jesus in John’s gospel is arguing that the old divisions based on race and natural birth are no longer valid because new birth is available to all who believe.
Loving enemies might seem impossible. But we are born from above; we are children of God himself.
For the full article on what it might mean for us, see Storehouse