Keeping On

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

KEEPING ON

John 14:15-21

15 "If you love me, you will obey what I command. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to 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. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him." 

NIV

If we love him we will keep an eye on his authoritative prescription. That is the premise of how we are to live, keeping what he has commanded. So then the quest of our lives is to determine just exactly what it is he commands. We see that it is whoever has his commands and obeys them are the people who love him. If Jesus made a distinction between us loving him, and thus being loved by the Father, then is there a distinction between the commands of the Father and the commands of Jesus? Is this where we have developed the lists of do’s and don’ts from? Is there a list we can make of all the commands of Jesus? Why don’t we have a list? That sure would be a whole lot easier than trying to determine on our own, especially because we all would end up with a different opinion of what he has commanded. But here comes where the Spirit of truth comes in. The Spirit will live with us, and as we will see later, Jesus tells us the Spirit will remind us of everything he said. Now in the context of all that Jesus has been telling them, as he just finished saying that he was the way, the truth and the light and that no one can come to the Father except through him. He also just told if we have faith in him, we would do what he has been doing, in fact, even greater things and that whatever we ask in his name he will do it. Now if we love him we will keep that command. Instead of making our lists of all the things we are not to do, and all the things we are supposed to do, although there are other places in the scripture that do give us those kind of choices. We should learn from this, we should be doing what he did, even greater things, and we should be asking for anything in his name. The Spirit who is living in us is the one who empowers us to do all this. The Spirit will guide us into all truth, but we need to be open to the Spirit. We cannot understand the commands of Jesus with our intellect, we must listen to the Spirit and he will instruct us, empower us with the truth and the truth here is that if we love Jesus we would be keeping his command of doing what he has been doing, and asking for anything in his name. Yes, there are other commands throughout the rest of scripture we should regard as well, and maybe we pay all our attention to them and disregard this which Jesus has just told us. We also have the assurance here that Jesus has not left us as orphans. He is coming back for us, so we can be where he is, after of course he finishes preparing our place. We also see that when he does come, the whole world will not see him, but we will. Again that could be at the close of each of our lives, when we take our last breathe, Jesus will be there to take us home, and those around us, if we are fortunate enough to have our loved ones with us when that last breathe is taken, will not see Jesus at that time. Then he could be referring to that day he comes to gather all the believers to him which we call the rapture. When he appears in the sky to gather us, the rest of the world will not see him, but we will and that will also be a great day. So we need keep on keeping his commands.