As the Father loves me, so I also love you.
Jesus always did what the Father commanded and thus remained in his love. But this was not to say that the Father's love was capricious, as though he was awaiting obedience to bestow love he might otherwise withhold. Rather the Father's love was the power in which the life of Jesus, including his human nature, was rooted. Jesus allowed the love of the Father to express itself through him. He did not stand in the way of that love or interpose some additional self will or indeed any other objectives or desires of his own apart from those of the Father.
Remain in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love
We are called to root our own lives in the love we receive from Jesus Christ. The way we do this is by keeping the commandments, which, we remember, are fundamentally about love anyway. Jesus was never particularly interested in the arbitrary or merely formal aspects of keeping the law. He didn't get excited about nuance for the sake of nuance, nor of obedience as a means of ostentatious display. For him, law was about mercy, love of God, and love of neighbor. The fact that such a love could be commanded was simply a matter of saying that it was in fact real and concrete and could be seen in the world. It wasn't merely some whimsical subjective feeling that could only be captured in fleeting poetry. There were some things that genuinely were loving and things that were not. And for those who wanted to remain rooted in the love flowing from Jesus it would be important to choose those things that were actually love and not mere facsimiles. They would need to be sure that what flowed out from them was as real and vital as what Jesus himself poured in.
I have told you this so that
my joy might be in you and
your joy might be complete.
Jesus told us to remain rooted in his love. He did not do this because he was a tyrant or in any way domineering. Rather, he wanted to keep us on the one path to joy, to keep us open to receiving joy from the only source from which it came: his own heart. The commandments he gave could be seen as ways to ensure his followers kept their hearts open to the joy he desired to give them and to never attempt to sate themselves on the false and illusory joys offered by the world. In the worldview of Jesus, love, commandments, and joy were intimately related. He knew this first hand because of how he experienced all of these things in relation to his own Father. The joy that was set before him was enough to relativize all of the suffering he would face in the world (see Hebrews 12:2) precisely because he trusted in the reliable reality of his Father's love. He desires us to learn to trust him in the same way.
None of us is saved by our ability to perform or brought into right relationship with God through our efforts. We are all saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus and we grow in love as faith purifies our hearts. Hence the call to remain in the love of Jesus is primary, and the keeping of the commandments as a solid indication that we are on the right path. It is a path that leads, not only to partial or occasional joy, but to a joy that is "complete".
Announce his salvation, day after day.
Tell his glory among the nations;
among all peoples, his wondrous deeds.
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