Obedience IS Love

In Matthew 22:37, Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to LOVE GOD with all that we are. 1 John 3:16 tells us that WE KNOW WHAT LOVE IS because of Jesus' sacrificial death on the cross. John 3:16 helps us to know that GOD LOVES THE WHOLE WORLD so much that He sent Jesus to make that sacrifice so that we would not be condemned but accepted as sons and daughters of God.

And then... in John 14:15 Jesus says a strange thing: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments."

I honestly expected Him to say, "If you love me you'll have great affection for me." And I expected this because of the culture in which I live. My culture tells me that love is equivalent with emotion and affection. It also doesn't help that one of my primary means of expressing love is through affection. I love to cuddle with Chloe and kiss on Heather and wrestle with Eduke. So much of what LOVE is to me is affection, and, I don't believe that there is anything outright wrong with this.

But Jesus said that when we think of expressing love toward Him, the primary means (at least in this passage) is not affection or emotion, but obedience. I'm not sure that I get this completely, until I start looking at those passages above again.

If the greatest commandment is to LOVE GOD, and the second, which is to love our neighbors as ourselves, is "like unto it," then the two are undoubtedly deeply connected. There is no command of God that does not fall under the realms of Loving God and Loving others. And so, our obedience to the commands of God are part and parcel with love itself.

1 John 3:16 and John 3:16 recound the sacrifice of Christ that has brought us life. I don't know for certain, but I do not see affection as the greatest reason for Christ's decision to allow Himself to be captured and tortured to death. For certain, I know that His affections for us were greater than we can imagine as he hung there and cried "forgive them, for they know not what they do," but in the end it was obedience to the Father that drove Him to the cross. Love and obedience were one in the same.

And so, Jesus tells us that to love Him is to obey Him. This should be comforting for us whose emotions seem to run rampant at times. In those hours when affection for the Father seems the farthest thing from our minds, obedience to the Father is still more than possible. And when simple obedience is all that we can muster day in and day out, maybe for months on end, we can remember that Jesus says this IS LOVE for Him.

Of course, I probably need to clarify a bit. Obedience with a rotten attitude is not true obedience, and, in my opinion, we should always strive to maintain our affection for the Lord. All I am saying is that we need not equate affection and emotion with love, especially when it comes to our relationship with God. Great moments of closeness are needed and appreciated bonuses, but they are not requirements.

Brothers and Sisters, let us learn to OBEY understanding that OBEDIENCE... IS... LOVE.

In Christ,
Andy