How do we obey Jesus?

Jesus outlined in his own life what obedience to God looks like, and how we can obey God like he did – the ‘how’ part being primarily driven by love. It’s love that stirs us to obey.

Jesus got that across three times in John 14: first, in verse 15, “If you love me you will obey what I command,” then in verse 23, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching,” and again in verse 21, “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me.”  So in asking the question: “How do we obey Jesus?” – the simple answer in Jesus’ own words is: “By loving me.”

It was the same in Jesus’ life too: in verse 31 it was because “I love the Father that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.” So, how did Jesus obey his Father? By loving him. And that’s what he wants the whole world to realize (31), that the reason he obeyed God – and therefore the reason for any of us obeying God – is because of love. 

In John 14, then, Jesus made two points clear, that obeying God is top priority, but right up there with it is our reason and motive for obeying, which Jesus summarized rather nicely for us back in John 5:30 when he said, “I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.” So Jesus’ focus was on obeying what his Father had sent him to do, but his motive for doing so was purely to please him.

But where did that desire to please his Father come from in the first place? Jesus answered that back in John 14:10 when he said, “it is the Father living in me, who is doing his work.” It wasn’t on Jesus’ initiative that he came up with the love that motivated and enabled him to obey. It was the Father living his motives, his words, and his actions in him.

And the same goes for us, because Jesus goes on to say in verse 19, “Because I live, you also will live.” Jesus now does for us what his Father did for him. The Father sent Jesus to obey him in motive, word and action. Jesus sends us to do the same, which we’re able and motivated to  do because – like his Father did for him – Jesus lives his motives, his words and his actions in us. It’s because of him living in us that we can now live like him.

So how are we stirred by love to obey Jesus? Jesus answers that in verse 20: it’s because “I am in you” – or as Paul put it, we’re “United with Christ”….(next blog)