If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.If you love me, keep my commandments.If ye love me, keep my commandments.If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments.
8 sermons cite this verse
… Remember Jesus himself said in John 14, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. If you love me, Jesus is saying, you will keep my commandments. We cannot love Jesus, love God, and be indifferent to the pathway that he has set for us in his truth. so love for God it's not a fuzzy feeling of affection there is feeling involved but there is also this divine defined pathway to it our love for God it's shown in a repentant obedience here that in second John that is to love one another not a perfect obedience of love, of course, but a heart longing and desire and attempts to obey according to the truth. So truth defines love. Love adorns the truth. Truth and love, these two, they belong together. It's often been observed, truth without love will harden. love without truth loses any shape or substance and will eventually dissolve. The two go hand in hand, and John highlights that for us. So thus far, John has communicated his love, his joy, his encouragement, but in verse 7, we come to a sudden change in tone. …
… getting what Jesus is saying. And now she starts to effectively argue with him, bringing me to my next point. To share the gospel Jesus style we must adapt to the situation. John 14.15. The woman said to Him, Sir give me this water that I may not thirst nor come here to draw. She is being sarcastic. Oh yeah you have water to drink. Oh sir give me this water that you are talking about. Jesus effectively calls her out. He says in John 4.16. Why don't you call your husband to come here. She says, well, I have no husband. Jesus says, that's true. You've had five husbands and you're living with some dude right now. She's like, whoa, how did he know that? She says, sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. See, there will come a moment when you're engaging someone, you appeal to their spiritual thirst, but they might ask you a question like, well, look, I'm living with my boyfriend or girlfriend or, you know, I'm doing drugs. Would I have to give that up to follow Jesus? You might say, well, I don't want to say yes. That might turn them away. No, you need to tell them the truth. Yes, you need to give that up to follow Jesus Christ. You see, sin is keeping you from God. Now, I don't start with those issues, but I'm not going to avoid them when I get to them. They need to know that sin separates them from God. But the solution …
… to fulfill a mission. And that mission is now at hand. But I want you to understand there's more to come. And so John 14 verse 15, Jesus is saying, if you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate to help you and to be with you forever. And who is that? He identifies this another advocate. He says the Spirit of Truth, capital S, Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit. The world cannot know him because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him for he lives with you. Now this is the most important part of this passage today, and that's not all. He will be in you. Jesus is saying the Father's going to give you another advocate. Now, that word advocate's going to appear several times in these next verses as we're looking through the gospel of John, but let's just drop down and finish this text, and I want to come back to a big idea. All this I have spoken while still with you, but the advocate, there he is again, the Holy Spirit, now we're getting clarification on this spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. So there's an unbroken connection I don't want us to miss today between Jesus and the Spirit of God. They are linked together not only as community of God, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, but their missions within that community …
… to get you ready. Now, he said to his men, now you know where I'm going. Thomas said, no, we don't. That's verse five. We don't know the way. We don't know where you're going and how can we know the way? Thomas didn't know. He was honest Thomas. He wasn't doubting. He was honest. He said, we don't know where you're going. He honestly didn't know. So the Lord said to him that historic statement, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but through me. Christianity has often been criticized because it is bigoted and narrow and rigid. No, it's just as Jesus said it. If a human being on earth wants to go to the Father in heaven, he's got to go one way through Jesus Christ. Without him, there is no going. Without the life, there is no living. Without the truth, there's no knowing. It must be through Jesus Christ. If you're planning on heaven as your eternal abode, there's one way to get there, and that's through the cross, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, this created another question in Philip's mind. …
… Let me give you a couple verses. John 14, verse 15, Jesus says, if, conditional statement, if you love me, then keep my commandments. love drives obedience jesus says if then let me show you another one first john chapter 3 verses 5 and 6 it says and you know that he was manifested that is jesus came into the world to take away our sins and in him there is no sin verse 6 whoever abides in him does not sin whoever sins has neither seen him nor known him. Now I remember these verses absolutely torturing me as a young believer. Maybe you guys remember the same. That when it says there, and you know that he was manifested to take away our sins, but then it says whoever abides in him does not sin, and you immediately begin to think, wait a second, I see myself. I know that I still sin. What is that about? David Guzik is very helpful here. Let me read this quote. …
… leading you in a good way. And yes, there's some bumps and yes, it's going to be difficult. And yes, there are challenges, but trust me. If you love me, you will keep my commands. Believers, you know, Christians, you just want to be believers are like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I thought we were done with commands. I thought this was just about, you know, loving Jesus. Can't we just celebrate your birthday and be done with it? Can we make it that simple? Again, Jesus doesn't leave us that option. In fact, again, I'm putting words in the mouth of Jesus, so don't take this too seriously, but I think Jesus would respond to that, hey, if you got to choose one or the other, I would prefer you embrace the way I live over celebrating the day I was born. Celebrating the day I was born doesn't mean you love me. It just means you're grateful for what I've done for you, but if you love me, I want you to follow me. The way in a manger came to show us the way we were created to live. That's why he came as one of us, to live as among us, to show us the ways of the Father, the way of the Father, the way that the Father actually created us to live. It's the best way to live. And central, and here's where we're going for the next few minutes, and central to that way of life, the way of living that Jesus modeled and called us to, his commands. At the epicenter of …
… that they try to define love as mere acts of obedience. If you love me, you will keep my commandments, which they take to be a definition, not a result, which is absolutely not what it says. We don't love our children like that. we feel strong affections for our children. We count our children and feel them precious. And so Jesus is saying, I must be more precious to you. I must be more precious to you. I must be a greater treasure to you than your children and your parents, or you're not mine. Matthew 10 verse 37 Why would he say that? Why would he say that devastating sentence? because treasuring Christ above all is how we glorify Christ above all. Embracing him as more precious than anything is how we make him look more glorious than anything. This is Jesus. It's not me. It's not Edwards. Let's let Paul put an exclamation point on it. I love the Apostle Paul. I wrote a whole book called Why I Love the Apostle Paul. …
… They're the most precious things. Before he left, he said to them, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Watch that. Listen. If you love me, not that you'll think about it, not that you'll consider it, not that it'll be a maybe. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. What is one of his commandments? As you go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He says that is a command. Ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the uttermost parts of the earth. That's a command. He says if you love me, you will keep my commandments. You see, Jesus Christ is only Lord of your life when you've been to the cross and you've said, no longer I, Christ now lives within me and all that I had and all that I was and all that I hoped to be is all up to him. We want to come for consideration. …