John 15:9 As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.
John 15:10 If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.
John 15:11 These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.
Now Jesus tells them that He has loved them in the same way the Father has loved Him. “Continue ye in my love.” I think that this is saying that He wants them to love each other as He has loved them, to follow His example. Next, He tells them how—by keeping His commandments (again as He has set the example for them by obedience to His Father’s commands). Then He tells them why; He gives them a motive—that their joy may be full and complete.
Note the word “remain” in verse 11. The new believer is always full of joy and enthusiasm. Jesus is saying that we never have to lose that first joy. I think that is the very thing He is addressing in His letter to the church at Ephesus in Revelation 2 when He speaks of their leaving their first love. It was their choice to leave. Keeping His commandments is the key. Once we begin to compromise or take back control of little sections of our life, we begin to lose joy; we begin the process of leaving our first love.
In verse 10 Jesus makes a direct connection between obedience and abiding in the love of God. I think we have a hard time with this concept because obedience carries a negative connotation today. It is associated with rules that we don’t necessarily like and forbidden pleasures. We haven’t been taught that obedience to one who loves us and establishes rules for our benefit and protection actually gives us more freedom to enjoy life. The commandments of the LORD Jesus are an expression of His love for us. The fact that He has established boundaries around us by giving us those commands proves that we are important to Him. It’s like He has erected a fence of protection for us. By staying in the fenced-in area established by His commands, we are protected from experiencing the consequences that accompany actions taken outside that fence. We can enjoy complete freedom without fear inside those boundaries. When you get a vision of that word picture, you can better understand how keeping His commandments equates to abiding in His love.
A second thought that hit me was that Jesus the man lived within those same boundaries and knew from experience the truth that He was teaching. As always, He was teaching truth revealed to Him by the Father. He was not telling His disciples to do one thing and then doing something different Himself. He lived the truth He taught.
The third thought that jumped out to me is that our joy is directly connected to His joy. The closer we stay to the heart of God through our willing obedience to His commands, the greater will be the joy that we experience in life. I believe that joy is an attitude of heart that comes from knowing we are loved and watched over by a Father who is in complete control of all that is allowed to touch our lives. When we go outside the “fence,” He allows us to experience the consequences of that action so as to teach us not to do that again; but He also willingly takes us back into the fold and makes something good come out of that something bad.
Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
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