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. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another. (Jn 15:12-17)
The disciples are called friends. This is the only designation which speaks about a perfect, equal, and just relationship. Because only among friends there are no secrets, no hesitations and life is spontaneous and among them there is perfect revelation. This also helps us to look back into the relationship that existed between God and Moses. (Ex 33,12.17). God and Moses are friends. And it is through Moses God is first revealed.
‘Whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you’ is another statement that speaks about the relationship and the effect of this relationship. It is because of the close relationship that the name is revealed. (This is like in the case of Moses where God revealed his own name to Moses). Jesus name is with the disciples and whatever they ask through his name is granted to them.
Jesus says it again the commandment that he has come to leave with his disciples. This is the mark of their relationship and this again reveals the relationship among them. If there is love then there is relationship. So the commandment is to build relationship
