Blessed Assurance Pt 5 – Keep my commands
Readings: 1 John 5. 1-6 & John 15. 9-17
We’re continuing our series on 1 John this morning. You’ll remember that John is principally concerned that his readers are assured that what they have been taught is true. True in history and true for them. And he’s been working through different tests, you’ll remember a fortnight ago he told us that if we are concerned that we aren’t in Christ to look for the evidence that we love our brother and sister Christians, and that this evidence wasn’t fuzzy feelings but concrete actions which reveal our love for them in big or small ways.
Last week we were reflecting on how that love for our brothers and sisters should flow from the love God has for us, and that it should be rooted in truth, rooted in reality. And now we come to John’s final test. How do we know that we love God? He’s said earlier that we can’t claim to love God if we don’t love our brothers and sisters, so there’s one test. But here he’s flipped it. He says that we know we love our brothers and sisters by loving God. The two are tied up so closely together that one is always the evidence of the other. The two are in many ways inseparable.
But what does it mean to love God? What does loving God look like? How do we know we love God?
John doesn’t leave us hanging here, he says it right off. ‘This is love for God; to obey his commands. Again it’s concrete isn’t it. He doesn’t tell us to go down inside ourselves and work out how we feel towards God, do we get warm feelings when we think about God. Our feelings come and go, they can be deceptive. And, as I’ve mentioned previously, love in John’s letters, indeed in all of Scripture isn’t rooted solely in feelings, it’s about action. Feelings are nice aren’t they, it’s good to feel warm towards God, to feel longing for him, but we can’t rely on them to sustain us. Love is rooted in action, here, keeping God’s commands.
John as he writes this probably has Jesus’ words in our Gospel passage in his head, that if we keep his commands we abide in his love. A chapter earlier in ch14 Jesus says much more explicitly ‘if you love me, keep my commands’. It seems that love for Jesus, love for God is tied up with doing what God tells us to, to live as he calls us to.
But perhaps that sends alarm bells ringing, particularly if you’ve been in difficult relationships ‘if you love me you’ll do as I say’. It can sound rather manipulative, a way of leveraging our feelings for the other person’s gain.
But with God, with Jesus, this couldn’t be further from the truth. For one thing because God can’t gain anything from us. He doesn’t need us. And perhaps that sounds rather discouraging, but it should be the most comforting thing in the universe; God doesn’t need you. He doesn’t need your love, your attention, he is already completely satisfied in himself, because God has always been a Father loving the Son in the joy of the Holy Spirit. He doesn’t need you to do things for him, he is already self-sufficient and able to do everything infinitely better than we can. He doesn’t need you to make up some lack, our God is overflowing. And that’s good news, because that means God will never manipulate you, never use you for his own benefit.
So why does he create us? For the joy of us, we are created to share in his life, to share in his love, to share in his universe, rejoice in him and the rest of his creation. He doesn’t need us, he wants us. He loves us. And so when he says ‘if you love me keep my commands’ that isn’t because he needs something from us, it’s because his commands are for our benefit, to enable us to enjoy life to its fullest. As John says ‘his commands are not burdensome’ for they are given to give us life. As Jesus says in our Gospel today ‘If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love… I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete’. His commands are given to bring us joy.
So what’s at the root of all this? If we boil down loving God meaning we keep his commands what does it mean? Trust. That’s what’s at the heart of this. Do we trust that God’s commands are for our good? Do we trust that he really loves us and isn’t just using us for his own gain? That’s what is at the root here.
If we think God is mean spirited, a bit of a killjoy, out to spoil our fun, well then we won’t be keen to do as he commands, he’s spoiling our fun, and we’ll struggle to love him, because we think he’s mean spirited, doesn’t care about us. If we think God is out to catch us out, out to trip us up so that we can condemn ourselves, we won’t trust him, we think he’s a bit of a conman, we won’t love him, who could love someone like that.
And it’s easy to claim we trust when God’s commands line up with what we wanted to do anyway isn’t it. Don’t murder. I have no immediate plans, sounds like a good shout, I’ll go with that. Don’t steal. Yep, good call God, I like having stuff and don’t want other people to take it so it seems fair that I can’t take it from them. But don’t lie? Most of the time that seems alright but what about to get out of this tricky situation I’m in. What about to try to smooth things over with someone, just a little lie to make things easier. Love your neighbour as yourself? Really? Even the people we don’t like? Even the people who aren’t like us, the immigrant, the outcast? Maybe we need to rethink things a little God.
There are all sorts of commands we find in Scripture, even in the New Testament which conflict with our contemporary worldview, which clash with our culture. And actually the Bible clashes with every culture in different ways, it’s always counter-cultural. God’s commands don’t line up neatly with any particular secular worldview. So what do we do then?
Well we’re faced with the question aren’t we. Do we trust God? Do we believe that he’s in this solely for our good and benefit? Because once we trust him we’re able to love him. Love flows from trust. Do we trust him, or do we trust our own judgement more? As Augustine of Hippo put it in one of his sermons ‘If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.’
So how do we cultivate trust in God? Well John gives us a really tight sequence of logic beginning at verse 3. God’s command’s are not burdensome. Why? Because if you’re born of God you have overcome the world, in other words it has no hold on you, you’re free to live as God commands. And what is this victory that has overcome the world? Our faith. And what is our faith? That Jesus is the Son of God.
If we want to cultivate trust in God we can do so only by belief that in Jesus we see God himself in human flesh. See his stooping love, his care and compassion for the weak and suffering and downtrodden. For broken sinners who long to come home. See his death for our sins, his rising to raise us to life with him. If we want to grow in trust we need to fix our eyes on God made visible, for in him we do see the God who is not in this for himself, even to the point of a brutal death. A God who is all stooping love for you, who will descend to the depths searching for you to raise you to his heights. You can’t manufacture trust, it grows on its own, and it grows when it sees love in action. And Jesus is God, the source of all love, covered over with flesh.
As with most things in our Christian life it’s a process rather than a switch that gets flipped. Trust grows as we trust God with some things, discover he’s for our good, and start to trust him with more. Obedience to his commands doesn’t often happen all at once, rather we grow in trust and love and slowly obey more and more. The question of whether we love God isn’t are you perfectly obedient, it’s do you want to be? And if not do you want to want to be? Are you growing in trust and obedience, or are you still going your own way.
Let’s run that logic in reverse. Once we believe that Jesus is God the Son, the invisible God made visible, once we put our faith in him, his victory over sin and death, over the powers of this world, becomes our victory over those things. And so God has set us free to live no longer bound by sin, by death, by this world, but free to live for him. And how do we use this freedom? By starting to live more and more the way God commands, trusting that his commands are solely for our good. They are no longer burdensome, for we find in his commands true life, true freedom.
When we only trust ourselves we become slaves to our desires, our wants, our selfishness. Yet who can we trust but ourselves in this world? Only the God who has shown his love for us right down to death.
My brothers and sisters. How do we know we love God? If we trust him. And how do we know if we trust him? If we keep his commands, knowing that in them is life and joy and freedom.
Amen.