John 14:15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” I can’t think of many more power packed verses than this little verse. This verse has everything to do with growing as a Christian. The sanctification of a Christian will look completely different depending on how this text is understood,in fact if you misunderstand this verse your apparent growth as a Christian sadly will not be growth at all. Right action with wrong motive adds up to sin not to spiritual growth. So what about the verse? Both right and wrong understandings of this verse should bring the reader to a point of motivation. This motivation will most likely bring the reader to devotion in their Christian life which most likely will be seen in renewed efforts in bible reading and prayer. My hope is that in taking a quick look at two different understandings of this text that you will experience freedom to appropriate devotion by the fuel of the Gospel. The first and most common way to look at this passage is to focus on the second half of the verse. The idea is, since you love Jesus you need to prove it by keeping the commandments. When the passage is understood in this way what soon follows are high commitment promises from the reader. This person will say things like “I am going to read 5 chapters of the bible a day” or “I am going to give 15% instead of 10”. This person will turn the disciplines of reading the bible,prayer, and generosity into an activity in which proves to Jesus that they love Him. This understanding wrongly turns bible reading into a search of discovery of what “I” am supposed to do to prove my love to Jesus. Let me plead with you that if that is you, there is a better way! The second way to understand the passage is to simply look at what verse says first. Before the passage says “You will keep my commandments”, it says “If you love me”. Getting this right is unbelievably important as I will show. Jesus wants us to know that if we want to obey Him we have to love Him. Is seems clear that Jesus is saying that the obeying Him flows from the loving of Him. If we don’t start with loving Him then all of our attempts at obeying Him will fall short leading to great frustration or great self-righteousness. Conversely if we focus on loving Him the result is the obeying of Him. The right understanding of this little verse can change your bible reading and prayer time. If you rightly get this you are free to read the bible not to find out what to do but to be thrilled with what God has done in Jesus. Read your bible to see Jesus and love Him, not to find out what to do! You will discover crazy things about Him that bring confidence and rest like Heb 12:2 that says that by looking at Jesus we are looking at the author and perfecter of OUR faith! Jesus gives us faith to believe in Him and then He works in us till we die perfecting and growing us! Its stuff like that that causes more and more love for Him in us. If you love Him you will obey Him! If you set aside Jesus work in favor of your ability to keep the commands you will soon find you lack the strength.
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