John 14:15-24, "15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper,6 to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be7 in you.
18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” 22 Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” 23 Jesus answered 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 home with him. 24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me."
What are the commandments? When you read through the whole Gospel of John just looking for specific commandments, what do you find? You find about two explicit commandments that you might call moral-behavior commandments: the new commandment to love each other as Jesus loved us (John 13:34–35), and the command to Peter: “Feed my sheep” (John 21:16).
But Jesus didn’t say, “If you love me, you will keep my moral behavior commandments.” He said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (verse 15). So if you read through the Gospel again, what you find is lots of commandments like: “Receive me” (1:12). “Follow me” (1:43). Get up, crippled man (5:8). Rise from the dead, Lazarus! (11:43). “Believe in the light” (12:36). “Believe in God” (14:1). “Believe me” (14:11). “Abide in me” (15:4). “Ask whatever you wish” (15:7). “Abide in my love” (15:9). “Receive the Holy Spirit” (20:22). These are the commandments that are all over the Gospel of John.
Now how does that confirm the way we have understood love for Jesus in John 14:15, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments”? Because if the commandments in the Gospel of John are overwhelmingly receive, believe, ask, abide, then it makes perfect sense that Jesus would say, “If you love me — if you desire me and delight in me and treasure me — then you will receive me, and believe me and abide in me.”
In other words, if you have been born again so that you treasure Jesus above all other treasures, and he commands you, “Receive me,” “Take me,” “Have me as your treasure,” we will. If we have been born again so that we find him supremely and wonderfully trustworthy, and he commands us, “Trust me,” “Believe me,” we will. And if we are born again so that we long to be with him, and he commands us, “Abide in me,” we will.
Praise God for my rebirth in Him!!
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