If You Love Me

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

IF YOU LOVE ME

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

Again, we have to take these words of Jesus within the context of what he has already said. Sometimes, it is easier to take something out of context and make some rule or fit a doctrine or interpretation we want, instead of seeing want is meant. Jesus had just made that statement that we could ask him anything and in his name and he would do it in order to bring glory to the Father. Now, if we love him, we will obey want he commands or we will ask him as he told us to. Now there is this area where we could take that command to every aspect of our lives. That is every command that he ever gave, such as love the Lord our God will all our heart, our mind, our soul, and our strength and love our neighbor as ourselves, we would have to obey if we love him. Then we would have to get into every little nuance of the word, looking for all things which would be interpreted as a command. The problem is if we need to obey every single one, such as the Pharisees tried to obey all the law, we would always fail, as they did. Then because we fail, Jesus would never ask the Father and the Father would never send the Counselor to be with us forever. If the sending of the Holy Spirit is dependent on us being one hundred percent in compliance with his commands, we would be totally without the Spirit. Now, that does not mean we should not obey his commands. What does that look like? Again, loving God and loving our neighbor are the two greatest commands Jesus gave us. But it would seem that turning from the world and turning to Jesus is the proof of our love. This idea of denying self and taking up our cross and following Jesus carries the meaning of being willing to do the will of the Father. As children, we wanted to please our parents so we do what they asked us to do, at least which is supposed to be the normal way of family behavior. There are always those children who are defiant and that usually brings some form of discipline. So we want to do that which pleases our Lord. The one thing which pleases him which just preceded what he is now saying is ask him anything. Somehow, we must be doing something right, for we have the Holy Spirit, The Father did send the Counselor and He has been with us since that day of Pentecost when he arrived with power. The evidence of this Spirit within us is shown in many ways. Of course, he has brought his gifts with him and his fruit. If we have the Spirit within us, then there should be evidence of him. That is we should be exhibiting his gifts. Here is where it gets a little dicey. We want, according to our sense of interpretation, to determine which gifts no longer apply and which gifts still apply. We also want to decide as to which fruit we want to show in our lives. If then we want to make those choices, would that be in some way limiting, or squelching the Spirit, which we are commanded not to do? If then we are doing that, we then are not obeying his command, which then would lead us to say we do not love him. That would be the logic that would follow. So then how do we deal with all this? The fact remains, the Spirit does dwell within us, and we need to allow his power to be unlimited in our lives. We say we love Jesus, so then we must be willing to do his will and that would include the Spirit dwelling within us. So the question we have to answer is, do we love him.