Obedience

God threw this one to me today so I thought I'd share

Jesus said "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." (John 14:15)

If we're believers, what do we think when we hear that? A typical response I think is something like "Okay God, I love you, I'll keep your commandments." We better get the gospel when we say that, because if we don't get the gospel, one of two things will happen.

- Thing 1. Pride. We'll do well, in some areas, and say "Look how good I'm keeping A, B, and C compared to those other people. Man, I rock!" Never mind D through Z.

- Thing 2. Despair. We'll recognize our miserable failure to do what we said and give up. "I can't do this, it's hopeless for me!"

We need to get the gospel.

Jesus didn't say "To be saved, keep my commandments." He said "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." If you just read that as "Obedience doesn't matter" that is NOT what I said. Hold your thought and keep reading. Let's focus on the first part -- "If you love me..."

Well how do you get to the point of loving God?

"We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother." (1 John 4:19-21)

How did God first love us?

"In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4:10)

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." (John 3:16-17)

"God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)

So God first loved us through the cross. When we repent of our sins and turn to Jesus for our salvation, we get a new heart, a new nature -- one that desires God above all things. It is from this new nature that we can truly love God, and demonstrate it through obedience, which includes loving others.

But let me try to be very clear -- this obedience from the new nature is not a "try really hard to show my love" thing. It's a "by my new nature I will obey, because I love God" thing.

Or to put it another way getting rid of that pesky and confusing "you will" and clarifying the meaning:

"If you love me, you better keep my commandments to show it." No.

"If you love me, you're going to keep my commandments." Yes.

Not getting this right leads to works based self-righteousness that focuses on ourselves and what we do. It makes our perception of God's love for us, and possibly our state of salvation, dependent on our performance. That's evil.

Getting this right leads to to grace based Christ-righteousness that focuses on God and what he did. It makes our perception of God's love for us, and our state of salvation, dependent on the cross. That's good. That's God.