If We Love Him

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

IF WE LOVE HIM

John 14:22-24

22 Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, "But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?" 23 Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24 He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

NIV

That is a valid question as we are supposed to tell the world about Jesus, yet it seems he will not show himself to the world, but only to us. But then if someone who is in the world becomes a believer they are no longer in the world and will see Christ when they come to make their home with us. It has to come down to those who love him are the ones who will see him. True he said that if we love him we will obey his teachings, but that obedience is not included in the loving him in order to see him. The obedience is a result of our love, not in addition to our love. It is our love for him which is the condition for salvation, but not the obedience. Yes we certainly should obey his teachings, that is a given, if we love him, but when a person comes to Christ, accepting him as their Lord and Savior it is out of love for him and what he did for them on that cross. How can anyone accept Christ without loving him? But that is the only condition for salvation. When we tack on obedience then we border on salvation through good works. It seems quite obvious that people who do not love Jesus pay absolutely no attention to his teachings at all, but we who love him do. Again we have to admit, that even though we pay attention to them, and do our level best to obey his teachings we fail from time to time in being obedient to each and every one of them, yet we are not a part of the world, we are a part of Christ. It always just comes down to who loves him and who doesn’t. It is an either or situation, we either love Jesus or we don’t. We cannot sort of love him, we cannot just love him a little, or sometimes, once and a while, like when we need something from him. We simply must love him, at least as mankind can love as we cannot love in the same way as he loves us, for he is God and we are human, his creation. Still it comes down to our love for him, then they, who has to mean Jesus, the Holy Spirit and yes even the Father making their home with us. That would mean we are the temple of the Holy Spirit as we are told by God through the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Corinthians. he has made his home within us, and we experience his love toward us every day deep within our being. Those who refuse Jesus do not have that experience. It is not as though Jesus hides himself from them, but because of their refusal, God does not live within them and they cannot see the Jesus as we do. But once they accept Jesus, they can see as we do. Yet it still comes down to us and them, each person is either in or out, in Christ or out of Christ, can see or cannot see. His love is the same, he loves everyone, but everyone’s love is not same, not everyone loves him. It also comes down to those of us who love him will obey his teachings, all of them, not just the ones we like, and that is where the rubber meets the road. If we could actually make a list of all of them, all his teachings, all the don’ts and the entire do’s it might well shock us as to how many we don’t even try to obey. Sure we can recite the ten commandments, but can we recite all the beatitudes, or all the other attitudes we are supposed to forgo, like gossip, greed, envy, jealously, anger, bitterness, unforgiveness, or thinking more highly of ourselves then we should? If we love him, then what?