How to Abide in the Love of Jesus

John 15:9-14  As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. 11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. 12 This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.

Sometimes it is hard to boil down the Christian life into a principle or two. The Bible is a very large book with many things to say. We can (or at least I can) get bogged down by the shear amount of information, and commandments in the Scriptures.

Jesus tells me that he loves me with the same love that the Father loves him. This is an amazing statement because the Father loves Jesus with an infinite, perfect and a holy kind of love. Jesus tells us in the above verses that he is our example and our instructor. As our example he tells us that we are to keep his commandments in the same way that he kept God's commandments. In other words, we are to look at the life of Jesus as an example for us to mimic. As our instructor he tells us that we are to keep his commandments. We are to do what he tells us.

Now Jesus not only tells us that he loves us in the same way that he is loved by God the Father, he tells us to abide, or remain in that love. Jesus remained in the love of God because he kept God's commandments. Now Jesus looks at us and says the way we are to abide in his love is by keeping his commandments. Notice it does not say, "I have loved you with an unconditional kind of love, go forth now and do whatever you want." He tells us that in order for us to remain in his love, we are to obey his commandments.

Jesus now sums up for us the Christian life by giving us his commandment. His commandment is to "love one another as I have loved you." Then he tells us that the way in which he has loved us is by laying down his life for us. He laid down his life for his friends, he calls us his friend, then asks us to lay down our lives for him.

God used Luke 9 to awaken me and my wife to the truth of the gospel. I remember pondering over and over again what Jesus meant by "if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." Jesus' commandment sounds so easy at first, but the more you ponder what he is saying, the more I knew I was unable to do what he was commanding me. I am unable to deny myself in a self slaying kind of way, where I offer myself as a living sacrifice to Jesus. I loved myself way too much to lay down my life for anyone other than me. It is the simplest thing in the world to become a Christian (for it is by faith alone), yet it is also the hardest. Because no one on their own can lay down their dreams, their desires, their hopes, their plans, their money, their possessions, their time, their hurts, their pains, their affections, their mind, their body, their very life for Jesus. Oh we see all kinds of people lay down their lives in a one time act for Alah'. But you try laying down your life for your spouse, your kids, your friends, moment by moment, and day by day. This kind of commandment Jesus calls us to is not a one time act; that would be easy. This commandment of Jesus demands the moment by moment, and day by day death of Scott.

I dare you to try to love in this kind of way. It will throw you on your face before the Holy God of heaven and cry mercy, mercy, mercy. And when you come to that place, you have begun to learn what it means to be a Christian.