“If you Love me, You will Keep my Commandments”
John 14:15-21
4/27/08
As with last week’s Gospel text from the book
of John, so with today’s text, Jesus speaks as if He were a
parent addressing His children. Not only are the words He speaks
very simple, but they can only be spoken to those who belong to
Him. They are not meant for non-Christians. They are not
meant to show non-Christians how they might become children of
God. They are spoken to those who, as the Apostle John says, were
born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man,
but of God. They are spoken to those whom God has given to
receive the gift of His only-begotten Son and to believe in His
name. They are spoken to those who are children of God through
faith in Jesus Christ, in order that they might know how they are to
live as children of God.
To illustrate what Jesus is teaching using our
earthly families, you don’t love and obey your parents in order
to become their children; you love and obey your parents because you
are their children. And their love for you doesn’t depend
on your love and obedience towards them; they love you in spite of the
fact that you often disobey them and even hate them at times.
Now, of course, in our earthly families both the children and the
parents are flawed, sinful human beings. No parent can perfectly
love his children as he ought to, and sometimes, yes, a parent’s
love is dependent upon his child’s obedience. And many
other children are unloved by their parents for apparently no reason at
all. Not only do many children abandon their parents, but many
parents abandon their children.
But that’s not the way it is with God.
We might abandon Him, but He will never abandon us. If
you’re afraid that God will leave you because you’ve been a
disobedient child, consider that you were no prize to begin with.
God didn’t send His Son to die for those who were perfect little
angels. He sent His Son to die for those who were His enemies,
for us who were dead in our trespasses and sins. The Apostle Paul
says that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. This is
why the Apostle John can say that none of us are children of God by our
own willing or doing. You could not give yourself a new birth any
more than you were able to bring yourself into this world in the
beginning. You were born into this world apart from any help from
you. The one who did the work of giving you birth was your
mother. So, too, with the family of God, you did not bring
yourself into this family. You had nothing to do with your new
birth. Most of you were baptized while you were still
babies. Through that washing of regeneration and renewal God
caused you to be born again, born of water and the Spirit, apart from
any willing or doing from you. At your Baptism the blood of
Christ was applied to you, your sins were washed away, God’s name
was placed upon you, and you were given a new nature, one that delights
to do God’s will and walk in His ways, one that delights to love
God and keep His commandments. You do these things because you
have been made a child of God, and only a child of God can do these
things, because the Holy Spirit dwells in him, working in him what is
pleasing to God, working to transform him into the loving, obedient
child of God that he has been recreated to be in Christ.
It is to you who have been given new birth and been
made children of God through the waters of Holy Baptism that Jesus
says, “If you love me, you will keep my
commandments.” Simple words, but now what do they
mean. First, what is this love Jesus talks about? There are
three kinds of love in Greek: eros, phileos, and agape.
Eros is the physical, infatuation type love. Usually, this love
is short lived. Once the object of our love grows old or we grow
tired of it, this kind of love ceases. Then there’s the
phileos type of love, which is the friendship love. This kind of
love is stronger than the eros love and often endures the test of
time. This love is often willing to do anything for a friend,
even to the point of laying down one’s life for him. But
it’s still not as strong as the agape love, which is a
self-sacrificial love, a selfless love, which loves another person and
serves him in spite of the fact that that person may never be our
friend, may never love us in return, and might even be our enemy.
Now, Jesus is not our enemy nor has He ever hated us, but we have
certainly been His enemy and hated Him. But He agape’d us
in spite of ourselves by giving His life on the cross as the sacrifice
for our sins. Again, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for
us. He loved us even while we were His enemies.
It is because He so loved us, that we His children
are to love Him in the same way, loving Him with our whole heart, soul,
strength, and mind, loving Him above all things, to the point that
we’d be willing to sacrifice all that we had, even our own lives
if necessary, to keep Him. This is what Paul expresses when he
writes, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing
worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” But here again,
this is not a love that you can produce yourself. You, a sinner,
cannot love Jesus with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.
But living under God’s mercy, having been forgiven this sin along
with all others and having been given the Holy Spirit through your
Baptism, you can now begin to agape Jesus as the Holy Spirit continues
to work through your Baptism, His Word, and the Lord’s Supper to
conform you into the image of Christ.
When you begin to agape the Lord, that love will
manifest itself by your keeping the Lord’s commandments.
Well, what does it mean to keep the Lord’s commandments?
First, it’s interesting to note that Jesus does not say that you
will “obey” His commandments. What kind of
relationship would it be between a child and his parents if it was all
based on the child’s obedience? Life lived under the Law is
a life of obedience, a life of slavery; life lived under love is a life
of “keeping.” To keep something is to treasure it, to
guard it, to preserve it. One who keeps the Lord’s
commandments can say with the Psalmist, “Oh how I love your
Law! It is my meditation all the day.” One who keeps
the Lord’s commandments believes and does them because he loves
them, holds them dear, and considers them precious.
This brings us to the meaning of the word
“commandments.” Does this word simply mean a bunch of
do’s and don’t’s? Is Jesus telling us to
treasure a list of rules and demands? At the beginning of his
Gospel account John writes that the Law was given through Moses, but
that grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Is Jesus here
turning Himself into another Moses? We couldn’t obey the
first 10 commandments that Moses gave us. How are we going to
obey the commandments that Jesus gives us? There can be no doubt
that Jesus does, in fact, give us a number of do’s and
don’t’s. But most of these are simply explanations of
the 10 commandments; they don’t teach anything different or
new. The new commandment that He does give us is that we
Christians love our fellow believers in Christ. But here the word
“commandments” is much broader than simply a list of
do’s and don’t’s. It’s a synonym for the
words of Jesus. So, when, for example, Jesus tells His Apostles
to make disciples of all nations by baptizing them in the Name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep
everything He commanded them, the commands referred to are the words of
Jesus, everything He taught, which include words of Law, but especially
His words of Gospel. Just as John says, “Grace and truth
come through Jesus Christ, not through Moses.”
All this is to say that if you are a child of God,
you will love His only-begotten Son and keep His commandments, His
words. It’s not so much of a command that Jesus gives here
as a description: God’s children, who have been made His
children through Baptism, love God’s Son, Jesus Christ, who gave
His life for them on the cross. They hold His words precious and
live by them, walking by the power of the Holy Spirit in faith towards
God and in love towards one another. And this is just what we
pray for after having received the body and blood of Christ in His Holy
Supper. We pray that He would strengthen us through this
Sacrament in faith towards Him and in fervent love towards one another.
Of course, what we often see in ourselves is that we
do not love our Lord as we should nor do we keep His commandments as we
ought to. We are not perfect children, either in our earthly
families or in our heavenly family. And so our Lord must
discipline us for our good, sometimes even bringing pain and hardship
into our lives in order to teach us to love Him and keep His
commandments. But He doesn’t withhold His love or
forgiveness from us. Jesus has paid for our sins with His blood,
and He has washed and cleansed us with this blood in our Baptism.
If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And just as there is
no partial or fractional confession of sins, so there is no partial or
fractional forgiveness. It’s all sins confessed and all
sins forgiven, even the sin of failing to love the Lord and keep His
commandments.
When children do what their parents say and walk as
they have been taught, it brings glory and honor to their mother and
father. So with us and the Lord... When we walk as the
children of God that we are in Jesus Christ, we bring glory and honor
to Him. And so Jesus tells His disciples to let their light shine
before men, so that people might see their good works and give glory to
their Father in heaven. There is a difference between a child who
obeys his father because he thinks he has to and a child who obeys his
father because he loves his father. Let us be the latter and in
so doing shine the light of Jesus Christ into the darkness of this
world, that all who see might believe in Him and have life in His
Name. Amen.