John 15:12-14, “ This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.”
I was reading in the Aramaic Bible this morning and I ran across these verses. I find when I am reading the Word of God in one of the Biblical languages it helps me to really focus on things you would not normally consider when are just reading a familiar passage in the English. What struck me is the Aramaic word that we render as love and the word for friend.
In the Greek the word use for love is agape which we all know is an unconditional love and the word in the Greek that is rendered as friend is philon which in our modern Western thinking is a friendship type of love. However, according to a recent dialogue between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Pope they agreed that Jesus spoke Aramaic and used Hebrew as a ceremonial language. So according to these two experts it is more than likely Jesus spoke the words in John 15:12-14 in Aramaic. The Aramaic Bible uses the word chav for love and the word racham for friend. However, both chav and racham could parallel the Greek word agape. These two words actually break agape down into two levels. There is no direct parallel in the Greek for chav and racham, agape is the only word in Greek that you could use. However, the scribes who translated this into the Greek needed to show a difference so they did the best they could by using the Greek word philon for the Aramaic word racham. It is curious because racham is a greater love than chav. We have no English equivalent for racham just as the Greek has no English equivalent. We call racham tender mercies.
In the Song of Solomon 4:9 Solomon refers to his bride as his sister. I know that sounds creepy in our culture to call your bride your sister, but in a Semitic culture this is the highest compliment a man can give his bride. In Genesis 20 when Abraham introduces his wife Sarah as his sister to King Abimelech he was not necessarily lying although deceit was his intention. However, in the Semitic culture it was not unusual to call your wife your sister. In our culture if a man were to call his wife his sister, she would be a bit upset because you chose your wife but you did not choose who would be your sister. However, we have a saying, Blood is thicker than water which suggest that your family bonds are tighter than that of your friends or even your spouse. Actually, we have the saying backwards as it really means the blood of a covenant is thicker than the water of the womb, but be that as it may, in most cultures, even ours, we look upon family ties as much stronger than friendship and even marriage. You can get a divorce and end a marriage but you cannot end the bond of a brother or sister, you are joined together by blood. You might not get along, you might even hate each other, but you are still brother or sister. There is a blood bond that can never be broken. So when Solomon called his bride his sister, he was telling her that she was not only his bride, his chosen, but his beloved forever, like with a sister nothing would break that bond between them.
So the Greek word philon serves it purpose in these verses in John if we consider the proper rendering for philon as not friendship love but brotherly love. Greater love has no man than this that to lay down his life for one he has brotherly love, that is one that he is bonded to like a brother. That really fits the word racham, for it does represent a tender love as well as a love that is bonded like that of a family member. The problem in this verse is not the use of the Greek word philon for the Aramaic word racham, it is the English word friend that is the problem. In our culture a friend has really been watered down. Today you can go on Face Book and with the click of a mouse just click up a whole bunch of friends or you can unfriend with just a click of a mouse. We have so watered down the word friend that we have taken on the Semitic practice of calling someone a brother or bro to indicate that this friendship is special, not simply hoody doo friendship. Sorority members refer to each other as sisters which means they may have other friends on a college campus but if your sorority sister needs help, you abandon your other friends in favor of this sorority sister.
Given our flippant use of the word friend today I would suggest that rendering the Greek word philon and the Aramaic word racham as simply friend would no longer be a proper rendering in our society today. We can no longer say philon is friendship love as we have really blasted the heck out of that word. We must return to the Eastern Semitic understanding of philon as brotherly love.
Thus, to put this passage into modern English as we would better understand, we should render this as “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his beloved. Ye are my beloved if ye do whatsoever I command you.”
Here is the crux of the issue. In the context of this passage Jesus was instructing his disciples on their relationship to each other after He has left them. They were to love each other with the bonding of a brother, a blood relative. But Jesus was also playing the good rabbi in laying down double meaning with an important message. He loved us so much that he considered us a racham, a blood relative, a brother or a sister and he was going to confirm this blood relationship by shedding his own blood for us.
Think of it, we can become a racham, a blood relative of Jesus Christ Himself. We can become his child, his brother, his sister, a relationship that cannot be divorced, and a relationship that is eternal simply by saying to Jesus, “Yes, I want to be your racham your brother or sister by blood.” With that relationship, the blood of a covenant is indeed thicker than the water of a womb. We are not just born again into the family of God we are made a blood brother or sister of Jesus.
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