John 14:15-26: A Relationship of Mutual Love

John 14:15-26: A Relationship of Mutual Love

Please turn with me to John 14. If you’re using the Story Bibles we provide, that’s on page 747. We’ve been going passage by passage through the Gospel of John, and the passage we come to this morning in John 14:15-26. John 14:15-26: 15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. 18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” 22 Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” 23 Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me. 25 “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. 

There’s no question that God has created a lot of beautiful things in this world. If you’ve ever gazed at the orange glow of a sunset or stood on top of a mountain and looked out over the miles and miles of landscape that unfolded before your eyes, you know that God has created some beautiful things. But I think one of the most beautiful things he’s created is the marriage relationship between a husband and a wife. This ring symbolizes the essence of that relationship—the love between the husband and wife that never ends. It goes on and on and on—for better or for worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. That love is a love in which both partners selflessly give themselves to each other in every conceivable way. Now of course, no marriage is exactly the way God intends it to be; every married couple deals with their fair share of conflict and frustration. But even so, as I think about the idea of two people becoming one flesh and being united by a mutual love for one another and giving themselves to each other selflessly and sacrificially, I’m left to marvel at what a beautiful thing God created when he created marriage.

And yet, as beautiful as marriage is, God created it as a picture of another relationship—a relationship that’s even more beautiful than marriage itself. He designed marriage to picture the kind of relationship he desires to have with us. God wants to have a relationship with us that’s similar to marriage in that it’s characterized by mutual love, mutual devotion, and mutual delight. And here in our main text of Scripture, Jesus describes the beauty of that relationship. Here’s the main point of the text: Jesus describes the beauty of a love relationship with God. Jesus describes the beauty of a love relationship with God—that is, a relationship where we love God and he loves us. So let’s look at those two items in that order. First, our love for God. And second, God’s love for us. 

Our Love for God

First, point number one, our love for God. Jesus says in verse 15, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” He then repeats that down in verse 21: “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.” And then yet again, in verse 23, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word.” So even if you’re not a linguistic scholar, it’s pretty apparent that Jesus really wants to drive home this point; he repeats it three times. If you truly love him, you’ll obey his commands. 

Now of course, that assumes that we desire to love Jesus. And if we’ve truly been converted, we do have that desire. We don’t just follow Jesus because we think he’s going to make our life better or because he saves us from hell. We follow him because we love him. Jesus has changed us from within so that instead of being consumed with love for ourselves, we’re instead consumed with love for him. That’s why we do the things we do as Christians—it all comes out of a love for Jesus. That’s the fountain from which everything else flows. 

However, there are some people who might claim that they love Jesus but don’t really show much interest in actually doing what he says. And if that’s the case, Jesus teaches, their claim to love him is just words. It’s just empty words. Because if you truly love him, you’ll do what he commands. I think a lot of times, many people who identify themselves as Christians like to pick and choose what commands they’re going to obey. They might obey a lot of the commands of Jesus, but they don’t seem to have any problem conveniently overlooking others. But if we truly want to follow Jesus and love Jesus, that’s not really an option we have. 

Imagine that one day my wife asks me to take out the trash. Now that’s a fairly simple request: please take out the trash. But let’s say that I don’t really want to take out the trash. It’s smelly and gross and just isn’t a chore I feel like doing. So instead of taking out the trash, let’s say I decide to do other things I think will make my wife happy. I decide to dust the windowsills and rake the leaves in the yard and vacuum the carpets. But meanwhile, the trash can is now overflowing. It’s so full, we’re having to get very creative in the way we throw things away, balancing things on top, stuffing things into the nooks and crannies. And on top of that, it’s making the whole house smell bad. And yet, I still neglect to take out the trash. Let me ask you a question: in the eyes of my wife, do you think me doing all those other chores will make up for my failure to do the one thing she asked me to do? Under normal circumstances, I’m sure she’d love to have me do all those other things. But on this occasion, guess what she wants? She just wants me to take out the trash. 

Now that may seem a bit obvious, but how often do we approach the commands of Jesus in a similar way? How often do we think that we can neglect some of his commands simply because we’re doing okay following other commands he’s given? It’s almost like we think that as long as we do most of the things Jesus tells us to do, that kind of earns us a few “freebies” where it’s okay to conveniently disregard some of his teachings that are more difficult to obey. And so, we allow ourselves to continue on in that disobedience without even thinking that much about it. After all, we tell ourselves, nobody’s perfect. 

And not only do we convince ourselves that those sins are permissible, we also convince ourselves that those sins are harmless. We think we can just ignore those sins and that they won’t really affect anything as long as we keep them from becoming too pervasive and do well in other areas. Maybe if we just ignore it, everything will be okay. Not too long ago, Becky and I had an issue with some kind of unidentified creature scampering around from time to time in our attic. We wouldn’t hear it every night, but at least one or two times a month, as we were going to bed and everything was quiet, we could hear this little creature scampering around up there. Now, I didn’t really feel like paying hundreds of dollars to get this creature taken care of, and I also didn’t relish the thought of going up there myself and having any kind of encounter with this creature in an enclosed area. And so, I did what was most convenient thing for me to do and just tried to pretend he wasn’t up there. I thought to myself that maybe if I just ignore him, he’ll go away on his own, and everything will be okay. And I went on like that for a number of months. Now eventually, I did end up calling somebody and it ended up being a little flying squirrel and the person I called was able to send him to flying squirrel heaven, but for a good number of months, I thought I could just ignore the issue. And it’s a good thing I didn’t ignore it longer because, as the pest control person told me, flying squirrels like to chew wires and have babies and things like that. One time, he said, he actually discovered a colony of 26 flying squirrels in a single house. 

And that’s a lot like what happens if you don’t deal with sin in your life. It never gets better; it just gets worse. It will grow and multiply and end up derailing your relationship with Jesus. And even if it hasn’t gotten to that point yet and it still seems like a relatively small, harmless thing you can just ignore, be assured that sin is never harmless. You may not be able to see how it’s affecting your relationship with Jesus, but it is. The fact that you can’t see its effect is probably itself an example of how it’s affecting you in that it’s making your heart hard and your vision dim. And even beyond that, it’s keeping you from deeper intimacy with Jesus and it’s robbing you of your joy in Jesus. In fact, if you don’t remember anything else this morning, remember this: Whenever God shows you a sin in your life, you stand at a crossroads. You have a choice to make: God or the sin. You can’t have both. Because Jesus says, “If you love me, you’ll keep my commands.”

You know, you can memorize a Bible verse every single day, you can spend an hour in prayer every day, you can attend church and Community Group every opportunity you get, you may share the gospel all the time, but until you repent of whatever sin you’re still holding onto, can you really say that you’re loving the Lord? Think about it. Can you really say that you love the Lord if you’re being sexually immoral—if you’re having any sexual contact with someone before or outside of marriage? Can you really say that you love the Lord if you’re constantly engaging in gossip about other people, tearing people down instead of building them up? Can you really say you that you love the Lord if you’re not making any effort to handle your money or material possessions in a way that honors him? Can you really say you love the Lord if you’re habitually looking at pornography without making any effort to keep yourself from it? Can you really say you love the Lord if you’re content with any kind of partial obedience? According to Jesus, you can’t. If you really love him, you’ll do what he commands. 

God’s Love for Us

However, please understand that the way we overcome these sins and live in obedience to Jesus isn’t just by sucking it up, gritting our teeth, and trying really hard. We need something more than just our efforts. We need what Jesus talks about in the next part of our text. Not only does Jesus describe what our love for God looks like, he also describes what God’s love for us looks like. And that’s point number two: God’s love for us. Look at verses 16-17: 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. 

So the way God shows his love for us is by giving us the Holy Spirit. Think about what a loving act that is. We’ve been talking about the beauty of the love relationship between God and his people. Think about what a loving act it is for the God of the universe to actually dwell within us. In verse 17, we just read that the Spirit “dwells with you and will be in you.” Then, further down in verse 21, Jesus says that “he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” The way Jesus manifests himself to us is through the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is a manifestation of Jesus to us. And then down in verse 23, Jesus says, “If anyone loves me he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” Again, that happens as the Holy Spirit takes up residence within our hearts. 

You know, as a dad, I understand that the greatest gift I can give my kids is the gift of myself. Sure they get birthday presents and Christmas presents, but I know the best gift I can give involves me just spending time with them—spending time hitting the baseball off of the batting tee in our front yard, taking them to Burger King for 50 cent ice cream cones, letting them ride on my back as I crawl around on the living room floor. The greatest gift I can give is the gift of myself. And that’s the gift God gives. He doesn’t just give us a ticket into heaven and then leave us on our own. He actually comes to dwell within us in the person of the Holy Spirit.

And I think the reason Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit right after he talks about obedience in this text is because you can’t do what he says in verse 15 and “keep [his] commandments” on your own. It’s impossible. It’s futile. In order to keep the commandments that Jesus gives, you need the Spirit that Jesus sends. I’ll say that again: In order to keep the commandments that Jesus gives, you need the Spirit that Jesus sends.  Way too often, I think we look at verse 15 and say to ourselves, “Okay, I’ve gotta obey Jesus. I’ve gotta try really hard to obey him and demonstrate that I love him.” But then we set ourselves up for failure by totally missing what Jesus says in verses 16 and 17 about the Holy Spirit. 

If you want to see what we’re capable of apart from the Holy Spirit living within us, just look at Israel in the Old Testament. Most of the Old Testament stories about Israel are stories of Israel’s failures. Every once in a while, they’ll have a decent leader and God does some wonderful things for them. But for the most part, we see them turning away from God and being unfaithful to God again and again. Despite their apparent best efforts, they can’t even come close to any kind of consistent devotion to God. But listen to what God says to them through the prophet Ezekiel while they’re in exile in Babylon because of their disobedience. He says, in Ezekiel 36:25-27: 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. 

So basically, God says to them, “Here’s what you need: you need a new heart, a new spirit, and you need my Spirit, capital ‘s’. Apart from my Spirit, there’s no way you can ever live the way I’m calling you to live.” And eventually, God would fulfill his promise and give them his Spirit a few hundred years later under the new covenant. And as Jesus makes clear back in our main text in John 14, that promise is about to be fulfilled. And it’s a promise that extends not just to Israel but to all of us who become his disciples.

Look at how Jesus describes the Holy Spirit here in John 14. First, he uses a unique word to describe him in verse 16 and elsewhere—a word that’s been translated into English in a number of different ways. The ESV translates it, “Helper.” Other translations render it “Comforter” or “Advocate” or “Counselor.” The original Greek word παράκλητος was often used in a courtroom setting to describe someone who gave help or counsel to one of the parties. So the ESV’s translation of “Helper” seems to be as good as any as long as we understand this isn’t an inferior Helper but one who’s very much higher than us. Then in verse 17, Jesus refers to him as “the Spirit of truth.” So that title, “the Spirit of truth,” gives us an idea of how the Spirit helps us. He takes the truth of God and, more specifically, the truth of God’s words in the Bible and uses those truths to grow and develop us and help us be what we need to be spiritually. And that goes right along with what Jesus says the Spirit will do in this passage. In verse 26, Jesus says the Spirit will “teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” So the Spirit teaches us and helps us and makes us into what God wants us to be. He’s the principal agent of our spiritual growth and transformation. 

Without the Holy Spirit, we’re kind of like this deflated balloon. This balloon, in its current condition, isn’t worth very much. It’s not festive, it’s not gonna make kids happy, it’s worthless. In order for this balloon to be what it was made to be and do what it was made to do, it needs to be stretched out in every direction so that it resembles a ball. That’s the only way it has any value. However, as you and I well know, it can’t do that on its own. The material it’s made of is flimsy and contracted. There’s no way this material on its own can every stretch itself or otherwise manipulate itself to be what it was made to be. Obviously….it needs to be filled with air. And I realize that’s a very simple illustration, but I hope it paints a picture in your mind of the way we need the Holy Spirit. In order for us to be what we need to be and do what we need to do, we need the Spirit to come and dwell within us. Again: in order to keep the commandments that Jesus gives, you need the Spirit that Jesus sends.

Conclusion

Maybe this morning, you’ve sitting here and you’ve been trying to be more religious. Maybe you’ve been trying to do the things Jesus tells us to do and live the way Jesus tells us to live. But no matter how hard you try, you never seem to quite get it. Something always seems to be missing. Could it be that you’ve been trying to live for God without truly possessing the Holy Spirit—without truly being converted? You see, the Bible teaches us that the very first sin we need to repent of us the sin of our self-sufficiency. We have to realize that we can never be good enough for God on our own. In Isaiah 64:6, the Bible says that even the most righteous things we can do apart from God are nothing but “filthy rags.” But that’s why Jesus came to this earth. He came to this earth precisely because there was no way we could ever rescue ourselves, and he knew that he would have be the one to rescue us. So Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins, suffering the punishment we deserved. And then he defeated sin once and for all when he rose again from the dead. And because of that, when we look to him for rescue, he rescues us. And that rescue includes not only rescue from the penalty of sin that we would have had to endure in hell, but it also includes rescue from the power of sin in our lives. Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit so that sin will no longer have any power over us. Through the Spirit, we can live the way Jesus wants us to live and the way we were originally created to live and the way that ultimately brings us the most fullness and wholeness and happiness. That life is only possible through the Holy Spirit. 

So this morning, let me invite you to embrace that rescue. Embrace Jesus and the rescue he offers. Repent of your sin, repent of your self-sufficiency, repent of any way in which you’re rebelling against God. And turn your life over to Jesus and put your trust in Jesus as the only one who can save you—the only one who can bring you hope and wholeness and rescue. Even this morning, just call out to him and tell him that you’d like to turn away from your sin and that you’re looking to him and him alone for rescue. And if you’ll do that, you’ll discover that there’s nothing he can’t save you from. 

And if you have any questions about looking to Jesus in that way, please know I would absolutely love to talk with you about those questions and be helpful for you in any way possible. Feel free to talk to me before you leave this morning. I’ll be downstairs after the service. Or you can also take one of the Connection Cards at the end of your pew, fill out your information, and down at the bottom in the prayer request section, just write, “Schedule a conversation.” Then after the service, simply put that card in the box at the back of the sanctuary. So fill out a card, put down that you want to “schedule a conversation,” and drop the card in the box—and I’ll follow up with you in the next day or two so we can work out the details. But please, if God is tugging at your heart, don’t ignore him. This may be the only chance you have. Let’s pray.