If You Love Me

Jesus' words often have more to them than what you might, at first, see. I think that you'll find that to be the case with what we are going to be looking at today. For the first part of the sermon I'm going to unpack some of what is going on in what Jesus said. But then I'm going to ask a question. I'll ask this question because I want you to see more of what's going on here. The question and its answer will get us deeper. And that will, I hope, make a difference in how you live. So, first, here's what Jesus said.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

Remember that Jesus is speaking to His friends, these men who have been with Him for the last three years. And He is describing some important things about the relationship that He and they share. So, for one thing, Jesus has commands for His followers to obey. Jesus expects obedience. It's important to see that He expects a certain kind of obedience. It is an obedience rooted in love. His words are so very helpful to us because they define what it means to obey Jesus. We are to obey Him because of love.

To make this clearer consider this comparison. Not all obedience is rooted in love. There is a kind of obedience that boils down to mere rule-keeping. You note the rules and do what you can to keep them. But when someone adopts this way of thinking it is so easy to aim for the bare minimum. As long as you do that you can say, 'Well, I did what you said.' That's rule-keeping. But the relationship between Jesus and His disciples is not about rule-keeping. It's about love. Love wants to meet and exceed. And so, bare minimums are not in view.

Another difference is that rule-keeping is simply about the rules. That's where the focus is. It's all about what might be called 'the letter of the law'. This is where American civil law is. Obedience to and enforcement of the law of the land is not about people as such. It doesn't matter who made the law or who broke it. It's just about the law. Did you keep the law or did you break the law? But love is about the persons involved. So, Christian obedience is not about the rules. It's about Jesus. As a result, obedience is an expression of affection for Jesus. We obey not because it's the right thing to do. We obey because it's a way to express love to Jesus. The emotions are engaged and the desire is to respond well to this person, Jesus, and we do that by obeying His commands.

One more comparison. When the relationship is one of love then there is also trust. Because the disciple loves Jesus he trusts Him. The command to be obeyed might not make sense, but because of trust, it is obeyed. Again, the focus is not on the command but on Jesus who made the command. But the rule-keeper's goal, on the other hand, is to stay out of trouble with the one who commands. There is no need to trust him. You're just supposed to obey him. So, there is enough obedience to avoid punishment, but there can be a reluctance to really give oneself wholeheartedly to that obedience. After all, does the one who commands know what he is doing? Who knows? But love trusts.

So, Jesus is here describing some of the basic aspects of a relationship with Him. He, as Lord, issues commands. Those who follow Him obey those commands, but they do so in a particular way. Their response is rooted in love. That's what Jesus is getting at in that simple sentence He spoke.

Now, we're ready for that question. Here it is. Why is this here? That is, why did Jesus say this in this context? You need to remember that Jesus didn't speak in verses. He used words to create sentences that fit into paragraphs. And, as I'm sure you'll all remember from your grammar school days, a paragraph presents one basic idea. The sentence that I have been talking about is part of a paragraph. And what is this paragraph about? It's about the Spirit. So, if we're going to understand the sentence properly we'll need to understand how it fits in the paragraph. So, let me read to you the paragraph.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 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 be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 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.” Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” 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. 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.”

The paragraph is about the disciples' experience of the Spirit, something that is described in several ways here. So, how does our sentence fit in with that? How's this sound? Jesus is saying that in order to receive the Spirit one needs to satisfy a condition. The condition is in that sentence we were looking at. The condition is obedience. But not just any kind of obedience, like mere rule-keeping. The condition is loving obedience.

You can see this conditional connection in several places in this paragraph. It starts with the 'And' of the second sentence. 'And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper…' Jesus is, in effect, saying, if you meet my condition of loving obedience, I will ask the Father to send the Spirit to you.

He does the same sort of thing later in the paragraph.

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.

Jesus will love and manifest Himself to those who lovingly obey His commands, something that He will do by the Spirit.

Then, there's this.

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.

Again, loving obedience to Jesus' word will result in the Father and Jesus living with the believer. They will do that by the Spirit.

What we have in this paragraph deals with the possession of the Spirit. There is a condition to be satisfied. Receiving the Spirit is tied to lovingly obeying Jesus.

Now, that raises all sorts of questions, I'm sure. One goes something like this. 'I thought that everything boiled down to faith. We are saved by faith alone and not by what we do, not by works. It can't be that our enjoyment of the Spirit is tied to our works, to the things that we do.' It's true that we are saved by faith alone. We need to hold on to that at all costs. And yet, Jesus expects our works. He seems pretty clear here that our works of obedience are required if we are going to enjoy the presence of the Spirit, something that is a key part of being rescued by the Gospel. So, it must be that our faith must do some works. Our faith must obey, lovingly obey, Jesus' commands. So, to quote the letter from James,

For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

Jesus expects you to do stuff. He expects you to obey. Any faith that does not obey is a dead faith that does not save.

I think it will help if I connect all of this with that sermon where I talked about Christian growth as lots of little steps. When someone becomes a Christian, Jesus does expect obedience, but He doesn't dump on him some command that is impossible for him to obey. Jesus meets the new member of the family where he is. He calls him to obey something smaller, something he can do. It's like a young child learning math. He's just beginning to learn about addition, and he takes this little quiz. What's 2+3? That will be a bit challenging for him. This math thing is all new. So, he's going to have to think about that, but it's within his grasp. Whatever Jesus calls one of His disciples to do, whatever the quiz, it may well be challenging, but Jesus makes sure that it's within his grasp. Now, what does Jesus do when one of His disciples passes a quiz? The disciple has shown a measure of obedience. So, what happens next? Jesus rewards him. There is a reward for obedience. The theme of reward runs throughout the Bible. Here are a few places where this is mentioned.

Moreover, by them [God's laws] is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. Psalms 19:11

Disaster pursues sinners, but the righteous are rewarded with good. Proverbs 13:21

There is reward for loving obedience. And here's one reward that fits well with the theme of this paragraph. When you obey Jesus you get more of the Spirit. Paul tells us to be filled with the Spirit. That means that there's always more of the Spirit for you to enjoy. How do you do that? How do you gain more of the Spirit? More of the Spirit is a reward for loving obedience. It is Jesus' response to your working at obeying His commands. He blesses those who obey with more of the presence and the power of the Spirit. So, the pattern of quiz and reward is the pattern of lots of little steps. The little steps of a growing obedience are rewarded with little steps of more of the Spirit. The life of a Christian is filled with all of these little steps. So, the next time your faith faces a pop quiz, to obey or not to obey, think of it as another opportunity to be rewarded. It's another opportunity to enjoy more of the Spirit.

Now, why is having more of the Spirit a good thing? First, that's good for you. There's lots of debate about some of what the Spirit does. But everyone agrees that the Spirit is all about Jesus. Whatever else the Spirit does, He changes disciples so that they become more like Jesus. Think about Jesus and how He acted. Think about the wisdom that He displayed. Think about His awareness of God. All of those qualities are increasingly yours as the Spirit changes you. Life is hard. There is much evil all around us, and all too often that evil touches us. How do you deal with that? Well, how did Jesus deal with that? Jesus dealt with it all so very well, and He was able to do that because of the presence of the Spirit with Him. So, more of the Spirit is good for you because you will become more like Jesus and be able to live well.

But it's also good for another reason. Our having more of the Spirit makes Jesus look good. One result of our being changed by the Spirit is that it is proof to the world that Jesus is real. Words about the great power of the Gospel without living proof of that power are almost worthless. The world needs to see the proof. If the Gospel is true, it should be able to show it. What is needed these days are more churches where the power of the Spirit to change lives is evident. So, pursuing loving obedience so that you might enjoy more of the Spirit is an act of worship - wanting to make Jesus look good - and an act of evangelism - offering proof to unbelievers that Jesus is real.

So, what do you do? You want more of the Spirit. You understand the need for obedience, for loving obedience. So, what do you do? The answer is obvious. You pray. Pray that you would become more like Jesus because of the Spirit. And to be more specific, pray that you would do better when it comes to loving obedience. You might go back and consider the contrast between loving obedience and mere rule-keeping that I spoke about. It might be good to pick something there to focus your prayers on, either something to avoid or some things to strive for. But whatever you do, you need to pray that you and all of the rest of us mature in our obedience so that we might enjoy more of the Spirit.