April 15th, 2020 – Morning Devotional With Pastor Dan
“If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept my Fathers commandments and abide in His love.” (John 15:10 – NKJV)
The question is often asked: How can I come to abide in Christ always? To live wholly for Him? Such is my desire and fervent prayer. In our text the Lord gives the simple but far-reaching answer: “Keep My commandments.” This is the only, the sure, the blessed way of abiding in Him. “If you keep My commandments, you shall abide in My love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” Loving obedience is the way to the enjoyment of His love.
Notice how often the Lord speaks of this in the last night. “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15). And then again twice over: “He that has My commandments, and keeps them, he is it that loveth Me; and he that love Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him.” “If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him. And so also thrice in chapter 15, “If My words abide in you, ask what so ever you will, and it shall be done unto you.” “If you keep My commandments, you shall abide in My love.” “You are My friends if you do the things which I command you.” Six times over the Lord connects the keeping of the commandments with loving Him, and with the promise of the great blessing following on it, the indwelling of the Father and the Son in the heart. The love that keeps His commandments is the only way to abide in His love. In our whole relation to Christ, love is everything; Christ’s love to us, our love to Him, proved in our love to the brethren.
How little believers have accepted this teaching. How content many are with the thought that it is impossible. They do not believe that through the grace of God we can be kept from sin. They do not believe in the promise of the new covenant.
“I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.” (Ezekiel 36:27 – NKJV)
They have no conception how to a heart fully surrendered and given over to Christ alone He will make possible what otherwise appears beyond our reach: loving Him, keeping His commandments, abiding in His love.
The wonderful promise of the Holy Spirit as the power of Christ’s life in them was the pledge that they would indeed Love Him and keep His words. That was to be the great secret of abiding in Christ, of having the indwelling of Christ end of God, and of the Divine efficacy of their prayer to bring down God’s blessing on all their work.