He that has my commandments and keeps them, he it is that loves me; but he that loves me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him.
It is the night before the cross, and Jesus is alone with His disciples. He gives them a test they can apply to themselves and a promise that is hard to take in: love shows itself in obedience, and obedience opens the door for Christ to show Himself to a person while the world sees nothing.
The Lord names two things, not one. You must have His commandments before you can keep them. And having them is itself grace.
"He that has my commandments, and keeps them, that is the person who loves me." So two things mark him out: having them, and keeping them. The world will say, How can we keep them if we do not have them? But the believer knows it is grace to have them. Grace finds them out by God's revelation. And when desire finds them by the grace of God, he treasures them with delight in that grace.
It can look odd that simply having His commandments should count as proof of love. But the wish to obey is what finds out what to obey.
To a shallow mind it may seem strange that our Lord speaks of having His commandments, and not only keeping them, as a proof of loving Him. But it is deeply true. The wicked, the disobedient, the careless, do not understand... The single eye is full of light. The desire to do His will finds and knows what it is. So the loving heart has and keeps His commandments. And in loving Him, it draws down His Father's love, for the Father honours the Son and will not be exalted at His expense.
The Lord had already put it the other way round. The two statements answer each other.
The Lord has already said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." Now He says, "Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me." As has been truly said, the first presented love as the spring of obedience; the second presents obedience as the proof of love. Every expression of the Father's mind was a commandment to Christ. In the same way, every expression of the mind of Christ is a command to the one who loves Him.
This obedience is not a rulebook. It listens for wishes.
One listens to the voice of divine wisdom, like a child who wants to please its parents, or a wife her husband. They notice the words of the parent or the husband, even when those words are not given as commands, and they know what they wish. So the Christian pays attention to the words of Jesus; he is familiar with what the Lord wills, and desires to do His will. This is the proof of true affection.
The love promised here is not the love that rescues a sinner. It is a Father's response to a child who is walking well.
This is not, "We love Him because He first loved us" — that is the work of grace. Here it is, "If a man loves Me, my Father will love him." This is God dealing with children. The question is not whether they are children, but whether they are obedient children... A parent does not scourge his child when it is doing well, nor is he pleased with it when it is doing ill.
Yet nothing here makes salvation something we earn.
They are saved by pure unconditional grace. But once saved, their blessing and their enjoyment of spiritual blessing depend on their walk, on obedience to the Word. They do not obey in order to be saved... Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ has brought them to God, and their blessing during their stay in this world depends on their submission to the mind and will of God.
The next verse records the confusion of one disciple, Jude. How could Jesus show Himself to them and not to the world?
When He speaks here of manifesting Himself, He means a showing of Himself, and from Him, to the soul. He makes the soul realise His presence and feel it. Jude does not understand this. He does not see how Jesus could show Himself to His own without showing Himself to the world. Sadly, it is just what too many Christians do not understand.
God loves every one of His children. But not every child enjoys the same nearness. The difference lies in the walk.
He loves all His children perfectly. But the one who follows the Lord most closely will enjoy the largest showing of that love. The Lord loved Peter as much as John, yet only John laid his head on the Saviour's breast... It was equally open to Peter; but Peter's own condition of soul was what kept him from enjoying it.
- Have — having His commandments is itself grace. The heart that wants His will is the heart that finds it.
- Keep — love is the spring of obedience, and obedience is the proof of love; the two verify each other.
- Loved — the Father's love here is His response to obedient children, not the love that first saved us.
- Manifest — Christ makes a soul aware of His presence, while the world sees nothing.
- Measure — the love is equal to all His own; the enjoyment of it is not. John leaned on His breast, and that place was open to Peter too.
Judas, not the Iscariote, says to him, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself to us and not to the world?
Jesus had just promised to show Himself to the one who loves and obeys Him. One of His twelve disciples stumbled over it at once. Judas expected the Messiah to take His kingdom in public. How could He appear to a few followers while the world saw nothing?
John names the questioner and keeps him clear of the betrayer. Commentators say this disciple appears elsewhere in the Gospels under another name, and that Scripture records little else about him.
Another disciple breaks in here — Judas, called Thaddaeus in Matthew 10:3 and in Mark 3:18. This Gospel carefully sets him apart from the traitor Iscariot. This is his only recorded remark.
Judas was not slow-witted; he simply expected something else. He hoped for a visible kingdom, and a private showing did not fit that hope. Writers say the same mistake repeats today.
Judas has Jewish thoughts and Jewish hopes in his mind, and these words baffle him. He does not realise the change that was coming. He still holds to the idea of a visible kingdom about to be set up. So he cannot understand how this can be if the Lord does not show Himself to the world. His own brothers had a similar thought when they said, "Show yourself to the world" (John 7:4). The same ignorance is still with us. Many true Christians do not grasp the calling of the church, or the character of the day we live in. In various ways they still say to the Lord, "Show yourself to the world."
Judas was trying to hold two of Jesus' sayings together, and they would not fit. One writer says his question is the one we all want answered.
He voices the question we all long to have answered. ... Here the Lord had brought together two ideas that seem to clash: "the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me," and again, "I will manifest Myself to him." How can He be hidden from the world and yet show Himself to the individual? ... Love in the heart for the Son of God produces obedience to His commandments. Where obedience to the Lord's revealed will grows out of love for Him, He discloses Himself — His glories, His offices, His graces.
The mistake lay in what Judas pictured. He assumed any showing of Christ must be one the eye could catch. To him, seeing Christ and seeing Him in public were the same thing.
Judas (not Iscariot) did not understand this. He saw no further than a bodily showing of Christ, the kind the world could also see. So Jesus adds that the Father would love the truly obedient disciples, and that the Father and He Himself would come and make their home with him. Here He speaks in a wider and more spiritual way of His word, not just of His commandments. So where there is obedience, He and the Father live in us. We wait for the day when we shall go and live with Jesus in the Father's presence.
Christ will still show Himself to the world one day. One writer weighs the obedience of that day against obedience now.
One day the Messiah will show Himself to the world. That will be when the world-kingdom of our Lord and of His Anointed has come. Then many will offer a pretended obedience, held in check by the display of His power and glory. Obedience now, while He is absent, faces a harder test, and is precious to Him because it is real.
In His reply Jesus moves from keeping His commandments to keeping His word. Commentators say the change asks for a different depth of obedience.
Where obedience is only skin-deep, and self-will or worldliness goes unjudged, a commandment is always needed to enforce it. So people ask, "Must I do this? Is there any harm in that?" To such people the Lord's will is only a matter of command. There are commandments, and they express His authority; they are not burdensome. But there is more. Where the heart loves Him deeply, His word is enough to show His will to the one who loves Christ. Even in natural life a parent's look will do it.
- Asked — The questioner is Judas, also called Thaddaeus, not the betrayer. This is his only recorded word.
- Assumed — He expected a bodily, public showing of Christ — the visible kingdom he had hoped for.
- Answered — Jesus points instead to an inward showing. The Father and the Son make their home with the one who obeys.
- Advanced — The reply moves from commandments to word: from "must I?" to a love that reads His will without a command.
- Awaited — The public display will come. Obedience given while He is absent is real, and precious to Him.
Jesus answered and said to him, If any one love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him.
Judas — not Iscariot — had just asked why the Lord would show Himself to His followers and not to the world. This verse is His answer, and it ties three things together: love for Christ, keeping His word, and the Father and the Son coming to live with the one who loves.
The disciples had only known Christ in bodily presence. His answer points to another kind of presence.
He could not understand how the Lord would show Himself to them, and not to the world. They had of course never known a spiritual presence of Christ apart from a bodily one. The Lord answers him... He joins the Father with Himself. So it was plain, and Judas no doubt understood it, that He was speaking of showing Himself in spirit, and not in bodily presence.
Here the Lord asks for keeping His word, not only His commandments. One writer marks the difference:
The word differs from the commandments of Christ in one way only: it is the full revelation of His mind, while the commandments have to do with details — for instance, the often-repeated one, that we love one another. There is not a commandment for everything. But His word covers the whole range of life, and it leaves no room for the subtle plea of self-will that His will is not revealed.
One writer tells a story:
A loving mother goes out from her house one morning. Before she goes, she calls her daughter and names several jobs to do while she is out, and several more that she herself will do when she gets back. When she comes back, she finds her child has been obedient and has done what she was told. But when she turns to do the things she meant to do herself, she finds them all done. She says to her daughter, "I did not tell you to do these things." "No," replies the child, "but I thought you would be pleased if I did them." She has kept her mother's words... Keep My commandments, says the Lord, and I will pay you a visit; keep My word, and My Father and I will make our abode with you.
This verse names a love that is not where salvation starts:
It is not sovereign grace which first loves the poor sinner: here the Father loves the soul which shows its affection for the Saviour in keeping His words. It is fatherly government, the satisfaction of the Father's heart because the Son is honoured and obeyed.
The promise carries a condition:
See how large a blessing depends on our keeping His Word. Never overlook this: the love of the Father in this passage, and the Father and the Son coming to make their abode with us, are entirely conditional.
The Lord does not say "I". He speaks in the plural, and one writer counts that plural wider still.
One loving and obedient heart becomes the abode of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The shrine of the Trinity is in the heart of one who loves the Lord.
The word translated "home" here is the same word used in verse 2, which older translations render "mansions."
"We will take a mansion in his heart." It is a wonderful thing to say, "He has a mansion for me up there." But it is far more wonderful to think that He will come down and take a mansion for Jesus and the Father in our hearts!... The Father and the Son doing what? Visiting? No, but dwelling.
One writer sets the two homes in order:
Note the position of believers: until we make our home in the Father's house, He makes His home in us.
The promise names no rank, no setting and no advantage — only love and a treasured word.
Christ has gone to prepare an abode for you in the Father's house. So you prepare an abode in your house for the Father and the Son, as you love the Lord and treasure His word. It may be an attic up the stairs, with only a few sticks for furniture and not many comforts in this world. But there your Father and your Saviour will abide with you.
- Love starts it. It begins with affection for Christ, not with duty. Obedience is the evidence, not the cause.
- Word widens it. Commandments cover details. His word is the full revelation of His mind, and it leaves self-will no excuse.
- The Father joins it. His love here is His satisfaction in seeing His Son honoured. It is His dealing with a child, not grace first reaching a sinner.
- "We" enlarges it. Father and Son together — and by the Spirit — so that one obedient heart becomes their dwelling.
- Home crowns it. The word is the same as "mansions" in verse 2: until we go home to Him, He makes His home in us — dwelling, not visiting.
He that loves me not does not keep my words; and the word which ye hear is not mine, but [that] of the Father who has sent me.
On the evening before the cross, Jesus promised a home with the Father and the Son to anyone who loves Him and keeps His word. This verse turns that promise over, shows its other side, and traces His words back to the Father.
The verse works as a mirror. What a person does with the sayings of Jesus reveals what that person feels about Him.
His sayings, which carry His word to us, become the test of our love. They lead us to the word of the Father who sent Him. If we disregard them, we prove our claims of love for Him empty and insincere.
Commentators differ on who this half of the verse describes. Some say it marks off the unbeliever. Others read it as spoken to His own followers.
One who does not love Him does not keep His words (v. 24): he is not a believer.
The word of the Lord in verse 24 is clear, "Whoever does not love Me"; He is speaking to the Christian company, not to the world.
The chapter moves from His commandments, to His word, and then to His words. The shift raises the standard, not lowers it.
Now that He is absent, obedience must be tested more, and it is precious to Him because it is real. It should also grow, since it comes from life in the Spirit, as we come to know His will better. So it deepens from His commandments to His word. His commandments were not a burden; we treasure His word because we love Him.
Why "words" here, and not "word"? A heart that does not love never takes in the whole mind of Christ. It leaves the separate sayings unheeded.
The contrast is short and simple: "Whoever does not love Me does not keep My words." He does not say "word" here. "Word" means His mind as taught, given to a willing heart and ear, which takes His mind as a whole. But here the words are not kept. They are not taken as commandments either. The Lord does not press them as commandments here. His words are ignored.
Then comes the reason the stakes are so high. Jesus does not speak as a man offering His own opinions.
The Son passed on the Father's word with nothing mixed in, in all its purity, in the words He received from the Father. Accepting or refusing those words decided a person's attitude to the Father and to the Son.
That is why refusing His sayings is never a small thing.
He was not merely sent to speak for the Father. While the words were His, they were the Father's; and if they were His, they were the Father's. So there is real responsibility, and the mark of sin, in rejecting Him and not seeing the Father in Him.
Because every word He spoke came from the Father, nobody can plead that the claim on them was unclear.
Yet the word spoken by the Lord was not merely His own, but the Father's, this being another insistence on the fact that He was in no detail of His ministry independent of the Father: no one therefore has a valid excuse for not loving Him.
Why is this word worth keeping? Because of what His words hold.
His word — the word He says is not His own but the Father's — is the revelation of the Father and of the Son... When the Lord Jesus spoke those wonderful words revealing the Father's Name, they were not mere words such as we might speak; and the truth of the Father and the Son are not mere doctrines to be learned mentally and talked about, as we might talk about some science. These words revealed living Persons, and when you have got the words, you have got the Persons.
- Test — What you do with His sayings tests your love for Him; ignoring them proves the claim of love empty.
- Deepening — The call rises from commandments to word. His commandments were no burden, and we keep His word because we love Him.
- Source — The word He spoke was the Father's, passed on pure, with nothing mixed in.
- Weight — To reject His words is to miss the Father in Him. That is no small mistake; it is the mark of sin.
- Reward — Keep His word and you gain more than doctrine. His words reveal living Persons: have the words, and you have the Father and the Son.