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

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.

Romans 5:8 says: God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. The cross is the demonstration of God’s love to us and for us. It is often said that God loves us just as we are, even in the midst of our sin. That is true, but His love, demonstrated in the cross, means that He loved us so much that He didn’t want us to remain as we were, in the midst of our sin. Christ died not so that we would remain sinners, but so that we would change and turn from our sin.    Today’s text begins with Jesus saying:  “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”  The demonstration of God’s love is the cross. 1 John 4:19 says:  We love Him because He first loved us.  In response to His love, we love Him in return and our love is demonstrated in obedience. Jesus says:  “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”  He doesn’t ask us to try; He doesn’t encourage us to do our best. He says you will keep my commandments if You love Me. We can understand then, that if we don’t keep His commandments, we don’t really love Him. Does that mean we would never fall or fail? Of course not. Jesus died to forgive all of our sins; past, present and future. But that doesn’t give us license to continue in sin. On the cross, in Luke 23:34 Jesus said:  “Father,forgive them, forthey do not know what they do.”   If we choose willingly to continue in sin though, through our disobedience we demonstrate that we don’t truly love Jesus.

The demonstration of God’s love is not limited to the cross. In today’s text Jesus says:  “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; 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. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. 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. 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; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.”   The love of God for us is so great that He has chosen to not only abide with us, but to reside in us. He has given us the Helper, the Holy Spirit. Jesus says:   “These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. 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.”  The Holy Spirit, given to us because of the love of God demonstrated in the cross, will be our guide and our teacher. The Holy Spirit will bring to our remembrance all that Jesus said and help us to be obedient to Him.  In this season, as we remember Pentecost; the original outpouring of the Holy Spirit to the church, there is available a fresh outpouring of the Spirit, to enable us to walk in obedience to Him in these uncertain times.   

Jesus says:   ^“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.”  Amen.  Thank You heavenly Father, Lord Jesus Christ and precious Holy Spirit; for the demonstration of Your love, the cross and the abiding and residing presence in our lives.    Amen.