“If You Love Me…”

 

 

“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” John 14:15.

 

I wonder if we love Jesus. Do I love Jesus? Do you love Jesus? Do our congregations love Jesus?

 

The Upper Room begins in love and it is completed in love. In 13:1, “…having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” Then in 17:26, “…so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”

 

In 14:21 Jesus says, “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me…” Do we love Jesus?

 

Then in 14:24, “He who does not love Me does not keep My words…”

 

Then in 15:10, “If you keep my commandments you will abide in My love…”

 

John continues this theme in his first letter; “The one who says, ‘I have come to know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected…” (1 John 2:4 – 5).

 

Then, “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.” (1 John 5:3).

 

Jesus Christ does not give us commandments that we cannot keep, I cannot understand why we do not recognize this…unless it is that we have been taught that we cannot keep them, unless we are convinced that we cannot keep them. Is not this akin to Israel believing the negative report of the ten spies that the land that God promised could not be possessed?

 

How cruel it would be that our Father should give us commandments, in Jesus Christ, knowing full well that we cannot keep them. How mean it would be if Jesus, commanding us that we should love one another as He loves us (John 13:34 – 35), knows full well that we cannot possibly keep such as commandment.

 

Thankfully, our Father and Lord Jesus do not treat us this way, they do not give us stones for bread or serpents for meat or wormwood for water – instead they give us themselves – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit invite us to live in them and they come to live within us (John 14:16 – 17; 23). Jesus bids us to abide in Him, to draw our life from Him, so that we may bear much fruit, for without Him we can do nothing – but in Him we can do all things, including keeping and fulfilling His commandments (John 15:1 – 11). When Jesus becomes our Way, Truth, and Life, fulfilling His commandments becomes our Way of Life as we live in Him and He lives in us.

 

One of the great distinctions between the Law and the Gospel is that the Law was given to manifest our sinfulness, our need for a Savior, to drive us to Christ. We could not possibly keep the Law, we were essentially powerless. However, in Christ the Gospel through the indwelling Holy Spirit and empowering grace sets us free from the law of sin and death and condemnation and releases and empowers us, in Christ, to obey and fulfill the commandments of God.

 

It is a tragedy when professing Christians think they cannot fulfill the commandments of God in Christ, it is a repudiation of their identity in Christ, of His perfect work on the Cross and in Resurrection, a rejection of the reality of the indwelling Holy Spirit – it is saying to Jesus in response to His teaching of the Vine and the branches, “Yeah but…”

 

It is allowing our experience to determine our interpretation of Scripture – something we might reject when it comes to other teachings…and I find an irony here. The irony is that believers who criticize other believers for their supposed reliance on “experience” in one area of life and thought, do the very same thing when it comes to other areas of life and thought – if not more so. I write “if not more so” because the issue of our identity in Jesus Christ and of His perfect and complete work of salvation and its outworking within us is what is at stake here – whether or not the Vine and branches is an actual present reality or some elusive ideal that we cannot experience.

 

Are we continuing to grow in Christ? Let us hope we are. Is our obedience continuing to be perfected, let us hope it is. Is conformity to our Father’s will an ongoing process and experience? Again, let us trust Him that this is so.

 

Jesus says that if we love Him that we will keep us commandments.

 

Do we love Him?

 

What Jesus commandments, He gives us the power to obey and fulfill – He “wills and works in us for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). And as we will see, the Lord willing, in our next reflection, He gives us the Holy Spirit – not just to be with us, but to live within us.