If You Love Me Part 1 - A Deeper Dive
Message Recap
This week, against the backdrop of Memorial Day and Pentecost, we began the new sermon series If You Love Me. In Part 1, we consider Jesus' statement, “If you love me, keep my commands.” John 14:15 (NIV). Claiming to love is easy. However, putting action and commitment behind the claim is much more difficult.
Perhaps no scripture verse captures the solemn nature of Memorial Day more than Jesus’ own words found in the Gospel of John, “13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13 NIV). These words were a foreshadowing of Jesus’ impending arrest and crucifixion. Jesus’ love for his disciples was so great that he willingly gave himself up for those who believed in him. Jesus demonstrates that love and obedience go hand in hand.
Love is a complex and multi-faceted concept that often means different things to different people. Trying to explain what love is can be complicated. When we try to explain what love is, we often rely on examples. Consider the passage about love found in Pau’s first letter to the Corinthians:
“4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ”
Paul doesn’t offer a textbook definition of love. Instead, he uses examples of what love is and what it isn’t. Love is difficult to explain, but we know it when we see it.
Elsewhere in the Gospels, there are accounts of Jesus speaking about love, where he goes further and describes the actions required to secure his love. Let’s consider the broader context of the earlier text (John 15:13), where Jesus is speaking to the disciples during the Last Supper:
“10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command.”
Jesus tells his disciples and us that obeying his commands and meeting his expectations demonstrates our love for him. What we do is a better indicator of our love than what we say. Or is it possible that Jesus is placing conditions on his love? What if we don’t keep his commands? We’ll examine this question a little closer when we take a deeper dive.
Loving Jesus equates to our obedience and our willingness to keep his commands. “If you love me, keep my commands.” If we truly love Jesus, we will show love through actions. A path has been laid before us, and the expectation is that we will follow that path of love, commitment, service, and obedience even when it is difficult.
We all go through seasons where we are tempted to stray from obedience. We grow tired and sometimes look for the easy way. We’re bombarded with messages that tell us we’ll find happiness in worldly things. How are we to remain obedient when there are so many distractions that can lead us away from what Jesus wants from us? Jesus’ disciples faced the very same challenges. They depended on Jesus to explain everything to them. What would happen to them when he was gone?
God anticipated this very thing. Jesus reassured his disciples by saying,
“15 If you love me, keep my commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.”
Later in the Gospel of John, Jesus continues his description of the Spirit when he says,
“13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.”
The Spirit was a gift from God on Pentecost to help us when we face difficulty and lose our way.
The Holy Spirit is an advocate and guide, empowering us to love and obey Jesus. With the help of the Spirit, we discern between right and wrong so that we may remain on the path laid out for us. It is sometimes easy to forget that the Spirit is with us, and that’s what the evil forces in our world hope to achieve by distracting us. As Jesus said, the world cannot see the Spirit, so as we drift closer to the world, we lose sight of Jesus. But we were promised that the Spirit lives within us, so we can take comfort in knowing that we can find our way back, even under the most challenging circumstances.
Is God’s Love Unconditional?
But what about this idea that Jesus’ love somehow depends on our obedience? Jesus’ own words seem to say that he won't love us if we don’t follow his commands. There seem to be conditions. “You are my friends if you do what I command.” Or “If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love.”
Often we have been told that God loves us unconditionally. No matter what we have done in the past, or the mistakes we may make in the future, God will continue to love us. Yet, the words in the scripture we’ve looked at with this week’s message seem to indicate that if we fail to follow Jesus’ commands, we won’t receive his love.
Perhaps rather than saying God’s love is unconditional, we should say it is unconditional in its giving but not in its receiving. Throughout this week’s message, the point has been emphasized that our willingness to obey Jesus and keep his commands is a response that demonstrates our love. During his ministry, Jesus showed love for all; the sinner, the thief, the Samaritan, and even the religious leaders who opposed his teaching. His love is not forced on us; it just is. Our obedience is the outward sign of our acceptance of that love.
When those who challenge our beliefs suggest that our God is only interested in us following an endless list of rules and commands, we should respond by pointing out that we follow those rules because we love and are devoted to God. Our obedience is the action and commitment behind our claim of loving God.