If you love Me...

John 14:15-31 from the daily reading in the One Year Bible

“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.

¹⁶ I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; ¹⁷ that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.

¹⁸ “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. ¹⁹ After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also. ²⁰ In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. ²¹ He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.” ²² Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, what then has happened that You are going to disclose Yourself to us and not to the world?” ²³ Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. ²⁴ He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.

²⁵ “These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. ²⁶ But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. ²⁷ Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. ²⁸ You heard that I said to you, ‘I go away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. ²⁹ Now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe. ³⁰ I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me; ³¹ but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Get up, let us go from here.

Several times throughout today’s text Jesus makes the connection between loving Him and keeping His commandments. So as we have seen before it is important for us to not only try to follow Jesus example, to do as He did, but Jesus Himself says it is important that we also do as He said, to keep His commandments, to keep His word. Some will try to say that the only commandment Jesus spoke of was to love. I’m not sure then what they would reduce the rest of Jesus teachings and instructions to, are they merely suggestions? Even if we do break it down to the specific times Jesus spoke of a commandment to love, there would be John 13:34-35, where Jesus says:   “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.  By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”  This is a commandment to Jesus disciples, that they should love one another as evidence to the world that they are His disciples. When I see the  statements about and the exchanges between many brothers and sisters in Christ it is no wonder the world does not recognize Jesus disciples.

The other time Jesus speaks of a commandment is when He says: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  This is the great and foremost commandment.  The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”(Matthew 22:37-40)   In today’s text Jesus adds the qualifier to the love we are to have for the Lord our God. He adds the qualifier that if we love Him, we will keep both His commandments and His words. Before we can even begin to love others as we love our self or as an example, to the world, of being Jesus disciples, we must love God, both the Father and the Son, who are one, and if we love Jesus, He says we will keep His words and His commandments.

If we are to keep Jesus words as evidence of our love for Him, it is important that we know His words. We need to know what it is that Jesus said so that we can keep His words. We need to know the whole word of God, not just our few favorite verses that fit well into our own doctrine, but all of God’s word. Jesus said that it was upon love of God and love for others that all the law and prophets depended. In Matthew 5:17-20 Jesus says:  “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.  For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.  Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”   Jesus didn’t abolish or do away with the law, He fulfilled it.  That means that in Christ we no longer live under the requirements of the law regarding sin. Jesus fulfilled those requirements for us. Still it is beneficial for us to know and understand what the law is, not so that we try to live under it, but rather so that we are thankful that Christ fulfilled it for us. If we decide we don’t want to live in the fulfillment Christ offers then we choose to revert back to the law. Jesus says: “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.  He who does not love Me does not keep My words”   To abide with Jesus and the Father we must know and keep His words.

There is another way which allows us to know Jesus words. He says: “the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.”   The Holy Spirit is our Helper and our teacher. The Holy Spirit is also one with God the Father and Jesus. Jesus says, He will teach you all things. He though, will never teach something that is inconsistent with the word of God. He will bring to our remembrance all that Jesus said. What the Holy Spirit teaches will both confirm and be confirmed by God’s word. The Holy Spirit then will confirm Jesus words that if we love Him we will keep His commandments and His words.

Heavenly Father, Lord Jesus Christ; precious Holy Spirit thank You for Your Word and Your words. Thank You Jesus for coming as the fulfillment of the law. Holy Spirit I ask that You would indeed bring all the words of both the Father and Jesus to my remembrance, that I might keep the words of God as an expression of my love for Him.   Amen