Whoever has my commandments and observes them
is the one who loves me.
We keep the commandments out of love for Jesus, and this is the way he desires that we express our love for him. He himself kept the commandments of the Father, demonstrating his love for the Father, and opening himself in turn to the fullest manifestation of the Father's love. (Think, for instance, of the baptism in the Jordan by John). This means that the commandments don't earn the love of God, but that the love of God precedes any obedience on our part. God places within our hearts a new motive power to keep the law and a new and deeper way. Keeping the law from some other basis than love always seemed to result in creatures opting for the least that would suffice to get them by. It often resulted in twisting of the law to make it seem to serve selfish desires. But love would not be content with anything other the the will of the beloved, as the beloved wished it to be done.
Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father,
Our interchange of love with Jesus makes us become like him and allows the Father to recognize him in us. When he does this we become able to receive the Father's love just as Jesus did. For those who don't keep the commandments this transformation does not take place and such individuals are not loved as fully by the Father and the Father himself desires because they remain closed in on themselves. They remain disinterested in the love of the Father, and that love of his only seems threatening to their self-interested worlds. They are like those with better things to do than to attend to wedding feast of the king (see Matthew 22).
and I will love him and reveal myself to him.
It is when we open ourselves outward in loving obedience that Jesus is able to reveal his heart to us. Unless we do so his heart seems antithetical to ours when they are still mired in selfishness. But it is still more him than us doing the work, still him coming in through the slightest openings, his love seeping through the smallest cracks in our defenses, making our obedience possible. Obedience to the commandments becomes our way of saying yes to the fullness of life God desires to give us, and yes to receiving it in his way and on his terms. It is our vote of trust in God and against our first parents attempt to usurp the judgment of good and evil from him.
Master, then what happened that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?
This disciple misunderstood the point of what Jesus was offering. He thought Jesus was forming an exclusive club of elites who had his teachings and commandments over and against a world that did not. And after all, Jesus had been in the habit of instructing his disciples more deeply than the crowds. He seemed to suggest that some religious leaders will all but predestined not to hear, that their hearts had been hardened by God himself.
Whoever loves me will keep my word,
Jesus made it clear that his invitation was open to anyone. It was not limited merely to those in the hierarchy tasked with teaching and therefore given background knowledge about the teaching to assist with their task. It was not necessarily closed to those who seemed to reject it, for they were always free to change their stance. It is actually difficult to imagine any other invitation so generous and open. It is open to whosoever is willing to receive the love of Jesus and respond in love, young, old, male, female, people of every race, tongue, and nation, from the age of Jesus unto the end of the world.
and my Father will love him,
and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.
When we keep the commandments by the power of the love we receive from Jesus our hearts become increasingly similar to his own, making our hearts into places he himself desires to dwell. Though we always remain unworthy of so great a guest, nevertheless, because of his own love for us he insists that he must stay with us today just as he did with Zacchaeus (see Luke 19:5).
The Christian's renewed mind should not hear talk of commandments and shrink back out of a sense of unwelcome obligation. Instead we should be eager to more precisely follow the mind of God in all things, the mind of him who created all things, and who desires our greatest good even more than we do ourselves.
I have told you this while I am with you.
The Advocate, the Holy Spirit
whom the Father will send in my name--
he will teach you everything
and remind you of all that I told you.
The interior motive power that makes us want to change not just our actions but our hearts and minds as well, bringing all into conformity with the will of God and who makes us want to be holy has a name. He is the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. He is sent by the Father and the Son in our to teach us "everything" and remind us of all Jesus taught. After all it was this very teaching that was to be our means of response to the love of Jesus. And the teaching now exists not merely at the written level, nor even in our memory, but has been written in our hearts by his Spirit. Perhaps, however, we have not always responded to this glowing interior light as much as we might have or ought to have done. Let's prepare for Pentecost by inviting this same Spirit to make his presence known in us more and more, so that we can live by his light.
When we are filled with the Holy Spirit we see God's purpose in all things, and are therefore able to be his instruments of healing and salvation in the world. It was true of Paul and Barnabas, and it can be true for us as well. No doubt there are many in our world with "the faith to be healed" who are waiting only on Christians to stop ignoring the call of Christ to respond to his own love. Christians are meant to be filled with the Spirit and utterly unable to pass by any opportunity to spread the love and knowledge of Christ in the world.
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