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Picking up in chapter 14, verse 15 of John’s gospel account,
Jesus tells them … “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” What you do reveals how you feel, what you
want, and how you think. Only moments
before Christ had issues to his disciples a “new” commandment, that they love
each other as He loved them. In effect
Christ was saying to His followers, that to love Him, is to love each
other. To love others was the life
example of Christ, and what He wished His followers to emulate and become. Again, Christ stood to gain nothing for
Himself in what He did, but we stood to gain everything. He would pay any price to free us from the
slavery we had chosen, not even His own life was as important to Him as was our
well-being and redemption from the slavery of self. Doctrine would not equal love. Doctrine without love could not equal
truth. The Pharisees had the scriptures,
they had spent years in study and debate over their meaning. They had carefully crafted doctrines based on
a wealth of accumulated knowledge, but they did not see love when it was
staring them in the face. Truth without
love, could not be truth at all. Truth
could only be found in Christ, and Christ was love itself. Therefore Jesus reminds His followers, that
when they love others, they love Christ.
Jesus continues in verse 16 … “And I will pray the Father,
and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;”. Christ came in the flesh. But God is not bound by the limitations of
the flesh. The Holy Spirit would be sent
to be with the disciples, and with each of us.
The Holy Spirit would not be bound by the limitations of our human
containers, and would be the part of the God-Head that can be in all places at
one time. This would continue our
personal relationship building with God on a one-to-one basis. Jesus continues in verse 17 … “Even the
Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not,
neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in
you. [verse 18] I will not leave you
comfortless: I will come to you.” As
Christ is “the truth”, so the Spirit of God is also the Spirit of Truth. The world does not discern it, because the
world does not accept the divinity of Christ, or the truth of Christ. But the Spirit would dwell with us, and
within us. He would bring us our comfort
when Christ could no longer be physically present with us. The Spirit would bridge the gap between the
time of His ascension, and the time of His returning.
Jesus continued in verse 19 … “Yet a little while, and the
world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also.” Soon the world would think that Christ had
died. But His followers would see Him
again before His triumphant return. And
in addition because Christ was alive after death, His followers would receive
the Holy Spirit and the self-less miracle working power of Christ would bring
them to life as well. This would be the
definitive truth of Jesus Christ, for the disciples were merely men, flawed,
human, and not extraordinary. But
through the transforming power of the love of Christ, and the indwelling of the
Holy Spirit, real change, and real miracles would occur. Jesus continues in verse 20 … “At that day ye
shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” The presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives
would be yet another proof, a certainty, a knowledge that Jesus was alive, and
united with the Father, and united through His Spirit with us. This linkage would help give the disciples
the certainty that Jesus was indeed the Son of God. The same evidence would be true for us as
well.
Jesus further states in verse 21 … “He that hath my
commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me
shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to
him.”. The Ten Commandments, and the
recent summary of them in the “new” commandment, were ALL commandments of Christ. They were designed to show us, the basics of
what it means to love each other. When
we love, we do not steal from those we love.
When we love, we do not think to lie to those we love. When we love, it never even crosses our minds
to kill the things we love, rather to watch over them, and bring happiness to
their lives. When we love, we
prioritize, we put the objects of our love ahead of ourselves. This was the example Christ was setting with
them in those very hours. He was about
to be tortured and killed, yet still He is offering words of comfort to
US. Even with everything He is about to
face, His thoughts and words are directed to bring us comfort, bring us hope,
bring us relief. That is the power of
love to forget self, and focus on the object of love. It did not matter to Christ that His
followers were still imperfect. It did
not diminish the love of Christ for those men, even though they still did not
fully understand the true mission of the Messiah, and therefore were missing
the entire point of the Jewish faith. He
loved them despite their imperfections, and their willful ignorance. He sought to bring perfection to them, not
require it of them.
When we love others we reveal the love of Christ within
us. When we love others, we find
ourselves in harmony with Christ and His Father. When we love others, we become living
examples and beacons to point to our Lord who is the author of all love. Christ is “manifested” in us, when we love
others. Not just those who already claim
to love us, but like our Lord, we are to love those who are bent on our
destruction. We are to love those who
would do us real harm. For love is the
only way to reach those with hearts of stone, the only power that can turn them
from stone to flesh again. Love is the
only motive and reason to want to be something else, and something better. It was love that redeemed us, from the
slavery of serving only ourselves at the expense of others. It will be love that will see an end to evil
throughout the universe. It is as we
allow the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that our human limitations, our human
frailty is obliterated, and instead of us, the strength and depth of the love
of God is manifested through us. We are
not the source of the love of God, we are vessels through which it is dimly
reflected. But His light burns brightly. It can overcome our tired frailty. It can overcome our decisions of apathy, our
indifference, and our reluctance. It can
create in us a burning fire to see love manifested in the world around us. We cannot change the world, but we can love
it through the power of the Holy Spirit and in so doing point it to Christ, who
can change anything.
Judas (not the betrayer but a different disciple, likely his
brother Jude) ponders this idea of Christ manifesting Himself to them, but not
to the world. He likely ponders if
Christ would be invisible to everyone else, or just how that would happen, so
he asks Christ about it in verse 22 … “Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot,
Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the
world?” Jude is still thinking literally
and has not understood the concepts of reflecting Christ through the
manifestation of love to others. But
Jesus stays on topic and repeats again to Jude his answer in verse 23 … “Jesus
answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my
Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. [verse
24] He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is
not mine, but the Father's which sent me.”
Loving others remains the hallmark of being a follower of Christ, and of
His Father, and a testament that the Holy Spirit is abiding in us. By contrast, when we do not choose to love,
or choose to accept the Holy Spirit’s influence over us, we are not just
rejecting Christ, but rejecting God entirely.
For the words Christ was speaking were still not His own, but the will
of His Father in heaven.
This is where so many Christian faiths have gone sideways on
the topic of obedience. True obedience
cannot be achieved in human effort or strength.
It can only come AFTER the Holy Spirit is allowed control over our lives
by our decision to submit the whole of who we are to Christ. Only then, can the errors we embrace, the
selfishness we are slave to, be corrected within us. Creating lists of rules, or tenets of
doctrine we must profess, does nothing to capture what it means to love
others. Love is a living thing, it cannot
possible be contained in a piece of paper.
There are no laws of God that limit how much we can love another. There are only laws that restrict us from
hurting another, thus revealing our lack of love in the actions we would desire
to take. The beauty of obedience is
revealed in the freedom from our slavery to self that it brings. Obedience too, is another gift of Christ to
us. It is the end-result of the transformation
His Holy Spirit works within us to bring us in harmony with The Father. The “laws” of God become a part of who we
are. They define us, but then become so small,
so quickly, when it comes to the measure of how much we can love another. Christ kept His own laws while living life on
planet earth; but He did SO MUCH more than just keeping those tenets. His life showed us a love that is way larger
than what we do not do to hurt people; His love was defined by how much He did
to help people and lift them up. He held
nothing back when it came to how much He would give for another; even His own
life was not as precious to Him as we are.
There is no commandment that could define the depths of His love. But when we are brought in harmony with Him,
our obedience becomes natural, not an effort.
Our actions follow our motives. So to love would be revealed in what we
do. Then came one of the most powerful
promises Christ ever made to His followers, both the disciples in that room,
and to us down through the ages. He
states in verse 25 … “These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present
with you. [verse 26] But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the
Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all
things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” Wow!!
He will teach you “all things”.
Understand the sequence of events here.
The Holy Spirit must come to you FIRST … before your understanding of
scripture and doctrine can even be called complete. To bring “all things” to our remembrance is NOT
something we achieve by the power of our failing memories and human
skills. It is another gift of the
indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We
remember the scriptures, and understand the love revealed in them, only AFTER
the Holy Spirit is given control. What
is more, the Holy Spirit is sent, not as a general rule, but in the Name of
Christ. When the supernatural is
manifested in our world, we can challenge its source in the name of Christ, and
it must reveal itself in truth. Satan is
not allowed to lie about who he is, if he is challenged in the name of
Christ. And the Spirit of God is not
offended to answer a similar challenge in that precious name.
It is important to God the Father, that we understand our
salvation was enabled alone through the actions of His son. We do not randomly find God, or randomly find
perfection. We find it ONLY through the
sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and our willingness to submit to this truth. Being a “good person” is not the goal of our
God. “Good”, simply is not good
enough. Our God wants more for us. He wants us to live in perfect freedom, where
“great” would hardly be adequate to describe it. There are those other religions and
ideologies that teach self-abasement and doing for others as a way to achieve
inner peace. It is true that in doing
for others we begin to share in the contentment that God offers. But doing for others does not change “who” we
are, absent our submission to Christ. We
may have the willpower to resist doing actions that would harm ourselves or
others. Perhaps because we fear the
consequences of our actions, or the discovery of our evil intent, but the
struggle against these inherent desires is the very thing that Christ longs to
free us from. It is not the actions
alone He wishes to alter in us, but the motives and desires behind them. Religions powered by self, are doomed to miss
this mark entirely. History demonstrates
this. But our God, Jesus Christ, offers
to perform the work of transformation to perfection within us by His power, not
our own. He changes us from inside out,
and in this is the true power of the gospel.
It is why the Holy Spirit is only associated with the name of Jesus
Christ, and not with any other random ideas of deity.
We do not choose to love others, in order to secure the love
of Christ. Rather, it is because of the
love of Christ reflected through us, that we are able to truly love
others. The beauty of obedience when it
is natural, shows a manifestation of Christ alive in our lives, and in the
lives of those we can affect with our love in action for them. Our circumstance become irrelevant when we
love like Christ loved. He was facing
torture and death, and yet spending his final hours caring for us, giving us
hope, and offering us something more.
And communion was not over yet …
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