He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me
Love to Christ
I. THE REASONS WHICH JUSTIFY ITS EXERCISE. If we love an object, it is because of something amiable in that object.
1. And is there not real excellency in Jesus Christ--“the brightness of His Father’s glory,” etc. “He is altogether lovely!”
2. Is He not nearly related to us (Hebrews 2:11; Matthew 12:48-50)?
3. Is He not our Friend, our kindest and best Benefactor? “He gave His life a ransom for us.”
II. THE PROPERTIES BY WHICH IT IS DISTINGUISHED. It must be
1. Sincere (Romans 12:9).
2. Supreme. Love to any object should rise according to its worth.
3. Constant.
III. THE TEST BY WHICH IT IS ASCERTAINED. It is good to have the commandments of Christ, to be born in a land of Bibles; but this is not enough. He that hath them, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Him. And what is this keeping the commandments of Christ? Do they keep them
1. Who are ignorant of them, and who discover little concern to become acquainted with them?
2. Who have no relish for them?
3. Who do not obey them?
IV. THE REWARD WITH WHICH IT IS CONNECTED.
1. The favour of the greatest Father.
2. The affection of the kindest Saviour.
3. The presence of the best Friend. From the whole, learn
1. The insufficiency of external privileges.
2. The honour which attends real Christianity.
3. The proper use of religious ordinances, and the spirit in which we should attend them. (T. Kidd.)
Love to Christ
I. THE OBEDIENCE WHICH IS THE SIGN AND TEST OF LOVE. The words are here substantially equivalent to John 14:15. Only the former begins with the root and traces it upwards to its fruits, love blossoming into obedience. Our text reverses the process. Note
1. How remarkably our Lord here declares the possession of His commandments to be a sign of love to Him. “He that hath,” etc. There are two ways of having: in the Bible, and in the heart; before my eye as a law that I ought to obey, or within my will, as a power that shapes it. And the latter is the only kind of “having” that Christ regards as real and valid. Love possesses the knowledge of the loved one’s will. Do we not all know how strange is the power of divining desires that goes along with true affection, and how the power, not only of divining, but of treasuring, these desires is the thermometer of our true love. Some of us, perhaps, have laid away in sacred, secret places tattered yellow old bits of paper with the words of a dear one on them that we would not part with. “He that hath My commandments” laid up in lavender in the recesses of his faithful heart, he it is “that loveth Me.”
2. Obedience: There are two motives for keeping commandments, one, because they are commanded, and one because we love Him that commands. The one is slavery, the other is liberty. The one is like the Arctic regions, cold and barren, the other is like tropical lands, full of warmth and sunshine, glorious and glad fertility.
3. The form of the sentence suggests how easy it is for people to delude themselves about their love to Jesus Christ. That emphatic “He,” and the putting first of the character before He states its root, are directed against false pretensions to love. The love that Christ stamps with His hallmark is no mere emotion, however passionate and sweet; no mere sentiment however pure and deep. The tiniest dribble that drives a mill is better than a Niagara that rushes and foams and tumbles idly. And there is ever so much so-called love to Jesus Christ that goes masquerading up and down the world; from which the paint is stripped by the sharp application of the words of my text.
II. THE DIVINE LOVE AND MANIFESTATION WHICH REWARD OUR LOVE AND OBEDIENCE. Note
1. The extraordinary boldness of that majestic saying: “If a man loves Me, My Father will love him.” God regards our love to Jesus Christ as containing in it the germ of all that is pleasing in His sight. And so, upon our hearts, if we love Christ, there falls the benediction of the Father’s love.
2. Of course, our Lord here is not beginning at the very beginning of everything. “We love Him because He first loved us” digs a story deeper down than the words of my text. That being understood, here is a great lesson. It is not all the same to God whether a man is a scoundrel or a saint. God’s love is a moral love; and whilst the sunbeams play upon the ice and melt it sometimes, they flash back from, and rest more graciously and fully on, the rippling stream into which the ice has turned. God loves them that love Him not, but the depths of His heart and the secret sacred favours of His grace can only be bestowed upon those who love Christ and obey Him.
3. If, then, we seek to know that dear Lord, the path is plain. Walk on the way of obedience, and Christ will meet us with the unveiling of more and more of His love. To live what we believe is the sure way to increase its amount. To be faithful to the little is the certain way to inherit the much. He gives us His whole self at the first, but we traverse the breadth of the gift by degrees. The flower is but a bud when we get it, and as we hold it, it opens its petals to the light. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Obedience the proof of love
I. SOME WHO THINK THEY LOVE JESUS ARE MISTAKEN AS TO THE GENUINENESS AND SINCERITY OF THEIR LOVE TO HIM. There is an emphasis on “He it is,” singling Him out as the only real lover. Men may be misled as to the reality of their love.
1. By regarding strong, keen and frequent feelings of sorrow and compassion for Christ as an innocent sufferer, as evidence of true love. Such an emotion is an element in, but is not love.
2. By substituting an intellectual and moral admiration of Christ. But many infidels evince this.
3. By counting sufficient an outward and decorous attention to His laws and institutions. This is sufficient to keep from sins of a gross nature; but at the bottom it may be self-love, a bid for the world’s good opinion.
II. THEY ONLY WHO HAVE AND KEEP CHRIST’S COMMANDMENTS TRULY LOVE HIM.
1. Having Christ’s commandments implies
(1) A recognition of them as of binding authority being enforced by His love.
(2) An intelligent appreciation of their meaning and spirit.
(3) Treasuring them in the head and heart.
2. Keeping them. We may have without keeping them. Practice and knowledge must keep step.
3. Here is
(1) A test of Christian profession (1 John 2:3-5; 1 John 5:1-3).
(2) A ground of comfort to doubting Christians. Their Lord does not insist on warm feelings which are fluctuating, but on obedience.
(3) An inducement to obedience. (A. Warrack, M. A.)
Obedience the sign of love
A king in ancient times made some wise laws for his people, and most of them loved and reverenced him as a father, but not all. Some who professed a great affection for him were very unwilling to obey him; and a few complained that his laws were too strict, and, whenever they could do so without fear of punishment, they broke them. Now the king had a country far off where troubles and tumults bad arisen, and the governor wrote to ask the king to go and visit his discontented people, and try if his own presence would win them to obedience and love. The king promised to go; but before he left, he gave every family a copy of the laws. He was away a long time, and on his return there were loud rejoicings. But when he came to his council chamber, there were some sad stories of rebellion and disobedience, not among the poor alone, but among the nobles, who had been louder than all the rest in their professions of love and songs of welcome. But when the king, having discovered the offenders, asked for a copy of the laws, and one by one read them to the rebels, they were confused and silent. Some, indeed, had lost the paper he had given them; some had wilfully burnt it, and declared that they would not obey; many had broken one or more of the rules. He was a gentle king, but firm and just; and so he gathered his disobedient subjects together, and looking sorrowfully at them, he gravely asked each, “If he loved his sovereign?” They all answered “Yes,” but on holding up a copy of his laws, they all hung down their heads. “He that hath my laws and keepeth them,” he said, “he, and he only, loves me.” So with Christ’s laws. (Mrs. Geldart.)
Christ known only to the loving
I. WE CANNOT KNOW CHRIST THROUGH THE INTELLECT. The intellect has tried for ages to find out God, and after all its investigations it has pronounced Him unknowable, “The world by wisdom knew not God.”
II. WE CANNOT KNOW CHRIST THROUGH THE IMAGINATION. Imagination has filled the world with myths, superstitions and idols, but has never, unaided by the heart, found Christ.
III. WE CANNOT KNOW CHRIST THROUGH AN EXCITED CONSCIENCE. Conscience has formulated a god of vengeance. Christ is God and reveals Himself to the loving. (Homiletic Monthly.)
Character and privilege of true Christians
I. THE PECULIAR CHARACTER OF TRUE CHRISTIANS.
1. They love Christ.
(1) They love Himself
(a) As a Divine person, glorious in moral perfection and loveliness.
(b) As the incarnate Divinity, the image, of Him whom we should “love with all the heart, and soul, and strength.”
(c) As the God-man Mediator, the Only-begotten of Him whose name and nature is love.
(d) As the man, Christ Jesus, possessed of every quality which can command esteem and excite love.
(2) This love extends to everything in the Saviour--His holiness, as well as His grace; His laws, as well as His promises; the yoke He lays on them, as well as the crown He is to confer; His house, His word, His day, His people, His cause.
(3) This love leads them to seek intercourse with Him; they cannot be happy away from Him.
(4) This love is common to all the saints. They have not all the same measure of it--that depends on the measure of their knowledge and faith and capacity of affection; but they have all the same kind of love.
(5) And as this love is common to all the saints, so it is peculiar to them. To the unbelieving world “He has no form nor comeliness,” etc.
2. They have His commandments, words, sayings. These are not to be confined to what was preceptive in our Lord’s teaching; they include all His communications.
(1) To “have” is something more than to possess the Bible, or even to have a general knowledge of its contents. It is to have it in the mind and the heart.
(2) They who receive our Lord’s words cannot but love Him, for they, in the degree in which they receive them, know and believe Him to be the proper object of supreme affection.
3. They keep His commandments. As it is by having the words of Christ that men come to love Him, so it is by keeping His words that they manifest and prove their love to Him. They must be kept
(1) As He gives us them. We must not detract from them, nor add to them, nor modify them (Deuteronomy 4:2).
(2) In the mind. There are men who find it disquieting to them, and seek to get rid of it as soon as possible. There are others who, ceasing to give it any attention, suffer it to “slip out of their mind.” And there are others who permit, who invite, “the wicked one to come and take away what was sown in their hearts.” But the lover of Christ “lets the word of Christ dwell” in his heart, and often reviews it as his most precious treasure.
(3) By our having no other opinions on the subjects to which they refer than those unfolded in them, and by fashioning the whole system of our sentiments and judgments with a reference to them.
(a) The promises are to be kept by firmly believing them in the most trying circumstances.
(b) The warnings are to be kept by keeping at a distance from their subjects, and by cherishing a habitual holy fear of sin.
(c) His commandments, with regard to tempers and dispositions, are to be kept by “keeping our hearts with all diligence.”
(d) Those with regard to our general conduct are to be kept by our not following “the course of this world,” but walking according to the will of God.
(e) Those with regard to institutions are to be kept by ‘observing all things whatsoever He has commanded.
II. THEIR PECULIAR PRIVILEGES.
1. They are loved of the Father and the Son.
(1) As elected in sovereign love to eternal life.
(2) As actually united to Christ by believing.
(3) As transformed and sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
2. This love is discovered in the Son’s manifesting Himself to them, and in the Father and the Son coming to them, and making their abode with them.
III. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE TWO.
1. He only who possesses the character can enjoy the privilege.
2. He who possesses the character must enjoy the privilege.
3. The measure in which the character is possessed is the measure in which the privilege is enjoyed. The more a man loves Christ, the more must both God and Christ love him. (J. Brown, D. D.)
The secret of self-consecration
Here is the secret of self-consecration: in our being “possessed” by the love of Christ; and feeling--He loves me more than I love Him. Possessed by this love, I yield myself wholly and joyfully to Him. My hand is His, redeemed by Him, sacred to Him, and cannot do unholy work; my foot is His, and cannot go on unholy errands; my ear is His, and cannot listen to unholy words; my eye is His, and cannot look upon unholy deeds; my tongue is His, and cannot utter unholy speeches; my mind is His, and cannot think unholy thoughts; my heart is His, and cannot cherish unholy feelings and desires; my whole being is His, redeemed by Him, sacred to Him, and is surrendered to His will. (J. Culross, D. D.)
Practical religion
Since a vestment ornamented with gold is a beautiful and conspicuous object, but seems much more so to us when it is worn upon our own persons, thus also the precepts of God are beautiful when but praised, but appear far more lovely when they are rightly observed, and conspicuous in our own life. (T. H. Leary, D. C. L.)