John 14:15 (ESV) — 15
“If
you love me, you will keep my commandments.
John 14:21–24 (ESV) — 21
Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who
loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest
myself to him.” 22 Judas (not
Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us,
and not to the world?” 23 Jesus
answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and
my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with
him. 24 Whoever does
not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine
but the Father’s who sent me.
In Part 1, we discussed
two issues.
·
What the
text appears to mean.
·
Why the
text does not mean what it appears to mean.
·
It was
necessary to deal with both of these because they laid the foundation for today’s
lesson.
Today we will try to figure out what our text
actually means.
·
Crucial
to understanding this is the progression we uncovered last week.
·
What we love
– is – What we desire
·
What we desire
– is – What we keep (“apply ourselves” to “persist in obedience” in)
·
This
progression shows us how our love for God and commandment keeping are linked
together through our desire or will.
To understand how
they are linked, and the meaning of our text, we need to learn 3 things:
1)
What does it mean to love God?
2)
How does this love of God change our
desire/will?
3)
What is the purpose of commandment
keeping?
1) MEANING FOUND IN LOVING GOD
It needs to be
repeated that the only reason we can love God to begin with is because, as we
saw last week, He first loved us.
·
“The
revelation of God’s love in Christ…makes it possible for us to love. Love is
awakened in us by him. We feel its call…to love Jesus himself, and then God” –
Dallas Willard.
·
His
love for us is the context in which our love for Him exists.
·
“Thus
the first great commandment, to love God with all our being, can be fulfilled
because of the beauty of God given in Christ" – Dallas Willard.
·
It goes
without saying, then, that this entire discussion applies only to believers,
those who God loves salvifically.
Love (agapao) of God defined:
·
To ‘agapao’ God
means to totally give ourselves over to Him – Nancy Missler.
o We are to be totally consumed with Him.
o We are to be totally committed to Him.
The TDNT elaborates
on our “agapao” love of God as
follows:
·
“To love
God is to exist for Him [like] a slave for his lord”.
·
This
means that we are “to listen faithfully and obediently to His orders, to
place oneself under His lordship, to value above all else the realization
of this lordship (cf. Mt 6:33)”.
·
It means
to:
o “base one’s whole being on God”
o “to cling to Him with unreserved confidence”
o “to leave with Him all care or final
responsibility, to live by His hand”
·
“It is
to hate and despise all that does not serve God nor come from Him, to break
with all other ties, to cut away all that hinders (Mt 5:29 f.), to snap
all bonds except that which binds to God alone”.
·
It is “total
commitment and total trust” to His Lordship and purpose – TDNT.
It should be obvious
that to love God in this way, something is needed.
·
If we
are to have any shot at all, then His love for us has to be transformative in
the area of our heart’s desire/will.
·
We
cannot love God in this way without God’s action on our hearts.
·
This is
what is meant by John’s words, that we loved because He first loved us.
·
His love
is necessary before we can ever hope to love Him as He commands.
·
So what does His love do to our heart’s
desire/will?
2) MEANING FOUND IN CHANGE IN DESIRE/WILL – SELF DENIAL
We have defined our
love of God as something in which we “break with all other ties” and “cut away
all that hinders” and “snap all bonds except that which binds to God alone”.
·
What are the ramifications of these actions for
our own interests and desires?
·
It means
we have to lay them aside.
·
It means
we have to crucify them.
·
Scripture
calls this self-denial.
·
God’s
love for us and our love for God will result in, and flourish in, our self-denial.
Paul explains this
beautifully:
·
Ephesians 2:1–5a & 10 (ESV) — 1 And you were dead in the trespasses and
sins 2 in which you once walked,
following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the
air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived
in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the
mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because
of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made
us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved…10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ
Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that
we should walk in them.
And the fact that
our love for God demands the complete giving over of ourselves is made
clear by Jesus.
·
Mark 12:30 (ESV) — 30 And you shall love the Lord your God
with all
your heart and with all your soul and with all
your mind and with all your strength.’
o Heart – all of our will and desire.
o Soul – all of our life.
o Mind – all of our reasoning and thinking.
o Strength – all of our energy, time and effort.
What all of this
means is that self-denial is at the heart of loving God.
·
We
cannot love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength without realigning
all of those from ourselves to God.
·
To love
God demands that we hold nothing back.
·
All that
we have and are is to be used to love God.
·
This can
only happen with a heart transformed by God to live in self-denial.
What is self-denial?
·
John 12:25–26 (ESV) — 25 Whoever loves his life loses it,
and whoever
hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
·
Galatians 5:24 (ESV) — 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus
have crucified
the flesh with its passions and desires.
·
Galatians 2:20 (ESV) — 20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no
longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live
in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself
for me.
Self-denial is to “lose”
our life and “hate” our life in comparison to our love for God.
·
It is the
killing off of our passions and desires.
·
It is
Christ through the Holy Spirit crucifying our “self” in love.
Dallas Willard
describes self-denial this way:
·
It is to
“not make ourselves and our ‘survival’ the ultimate point of
reference in our world”, or to “treat ourselves as God” – Dallas Willard.
·
It means
that “the object [of] securing myself, promoting myself, indulging myself, is
to be set aside” – Dallas Willard.
·
“Being
dead to self is the condition where the mere fact that I do not get what I want
does not surprise or offend me and has no control over me” – Dallas Willard.
Willard says in
practice a life lived in self-denial will look like this:
·
“…as our
personality becomes progressively more reorganized around God and his
eternal life, self-denial moves beyond more or less frequent acts to settled
disposition and character” – Dallas Willard.
·
And,
importantly, this is a process and a life struggle (Romans 7).
·
How to
improve in living a life of self-denial is another lesson.
Ok, so God has loved
us and as transformed our hearts to love Him and live a life of self-denial.
·
What do Jesus’ words in our text mean then?
·
Why this call to commandment keeping?
3) MEANING FOUND IN PURPOSE OF COMMANDMENT KEEPING
Shouldn’t it be enough that we love God, and He, having
crucified our flesh, has empowered us to live a life in self-denial?
·
In the
world’s eyes, this is the epitome of self-actualization.
·
This is
the ultimate meditative, “yogafied”, “Oprahfied”, New Age moment of Zen.
·
The
great peace and love longed for by so many.
But it is not
enough!
·
God
desires more from us.
·
In fact,
God desires the best for us.
·
This is
the difference between the world’s and the Christian’s self-denial.
·
At the
moment where the world would think we have found Nirvana, God has to get all
“religious” on us.
·
God has
to mess it all up and place “religious” demands on our “self-actualized moment
of Zen”.
God’s “Religion”
of Commandment Keeping – The Best for Us:
·
A love
for God that brings self-denial has in effect, emptied the self of self.
·
Or is at
least emptying the self of self.
·
What do we fill this emptied self with?
It is inevitable
that we would replace it with something.
·
And given
our fallen nature, we would simply replace it with a so-called brighter,
cleaner version of self.
·
This
might be in the form of the moralistic legalism we spoke of last week.
·
Or it
might be with the latest “cause” – the environment; puppies; poverty; etc.
But, remember
Horton’s quote from last week.
·
“Even
when I have… [kept God’s commandments] …as far as other people are concerned,
if my sincerity were weighed, it would actually count against my righteousness”
– Michael Horton.
·
Only
God’s motives are pure, ours are self-serving; no matter how righteous they
look on the outside.
Why is God’s “religion” (His commandments) the best for us?
·
Because
in his Grace, He has provided for us His motives, His will, and His desires.
·
And He
wants us to fill the emptied self with these, not a “better” self.
·
Jesus’
words in our text today point us to where His motives, will, and desires are to
be found.
·
His commandments!
This is why Jesus
says to us:
·
“If you love me, you will keep my
commandments” – John 14:15
·
The best
for us is to appropriate His will and desires at the expense of ours.
We aren’t just to
love Him; He is clearly worthy of that.
·
We
aren’t just to deny self for Him; our love for Him could be nothing less.
·
But we
are to participate in the glory of His works “prepared beforehand” as God-loved lovers of God.
o This is commandment keeping.
This is why Paul says
this:
·
Galatians 5:16–17 (ESV) — 16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and
you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against
the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh,
for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want
to do.
And why he says
this:
·
Ephesians 4:20–24 (ESV) — 20 But that is not the way you learned
Christ!— 21 assuming that you have
heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, which belongs
to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,
23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your
minds, 24 and to put
on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true
righteousness and holiness.
God’s commandments
save us from ourselves.
·
They
provide a way for us to freely flourish in the love of God and in our love for
Him.
·
God
carries all the pressure; we have all the freedom.
This is why it makes
sense for Jesus to say moments later:
·
John 14:27 (ESV) — 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give
to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be
troubled, neither let them be afraid.
Conclusion and Rabbit Trails:
The purpose of
keeping, then, is not to love God and then jettison our desires claiming that
as a worthy accomplishment.
·
The
purpose is to, in the grace and love of God through Christ, jettison our
desires and allow God to replace them with His desires and His will as
manifested in His commandments.
·
And
because this is the best for us, the giving of His commandments is a deep
expression of God’s love for us.
·
1 John 5:3 (ESV) — 3 For this is the love of God, that we
keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.
·
2 John 6 (ESV) — 6 And this is love, that we walk according
to his commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the
beginning, so that you should walk in it.
Rabbit Trail 1:
Last week we
suggested that in keeping with our context, Jesus’ words were a comfort to the
disciples.
·
Notice what
John said – “his commandments are not
burdensome” (1 John 5:3).
·
John
clearly didn’t hear Jesus’ words they way we first did last week.
John saw them in two
striking ways!
1.
It is “the love of God” that we keep Jesus’
commandments
a.
In other
words, the primary expression of love is not in our keeping them but in God’s
giving them.
2.
The
commandments “are not burdensome”.
a.
In fact,
they are the guide to navigate a fallen world.
b.
In them,
we have total freedom to express the will and desires of God.
c.
When we abandon
our self in love to God, and fill our self with His motives, will, and desires,
we will be most satisfied in Him.
d.
And, as
John Piper says, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
e.
Given all
this, they most certainly are a comfort.
Rabbit Trail 2:
Are the works of the believer different than the works of
the unbeliever?
·
If I love my neighbor by doing “X”, and an
unbeliever also loves his neighbor by doing “X”, is the loving different?
The answer is that
they are different.
·
As we
said, our love of God, self-denial and commandment keeping are at the prompting
of a transformed heart.
·
Our motives,
will, and desires are set aside and replaced by God’s through commandment
keeping.
·
Just
as His love is the context for our love for Him to exist, so too are His works
the context for any God glorifying works to exist!
·
In other
words, in the context of this love and commandment keeping, God appropriates our
works for His glory.
·
This is
why our works are different from the world’s works.
·
They are
done in context of God’s love and God’s commandments.
·
This
really does make a difference.
As Paul so
eloquently puts it:
·
1 Corinthians 13:1–2 (ESV) — 1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of
angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging
cymbal. 2 And if I have
prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge,
and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am
nothing.
·
In God’s
reality, the unseen spiritual world is fundamental.
·
Our
relationship to God in it has a direct relationship to how He views are actions
in the physical world.
Our
works/obedience/commandment keeping in the context of God’s love for us and our
love for Him are what Paul calls the “obedience
of faith” (Romans 1:1-7 and Romans 16:25-27).
·
This is
an obedience that has as its ultimate end, and its chief aim, the glory of God.
·
The
works of the unbeliever do not glorify God; they are not an “obedience of faith”.
Romans 1:1–7 (ESV) — 1
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the
gospel of God, 2 which he promised
beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, 3 concerning his Son, who was descended
from David according to the flesh 4
and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of
holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, 5 through whom we have received grace
and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake
of his name among all the nations, 6
including
you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, 7 To all those in Rome who
are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God
our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Romans 16:25–27 (ESV) — 25 Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my
gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the
mystery that was kept secret for long ages 26
but has
now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has
been made
known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to
bring about the obedience of faith— 27
to
the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.
