Do You Love Me?

READ: John 14:15-27

If you love me, keep my commands.

There’s a love language I don’t speak well. You probably don’t either. “All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” (Romans 3:12)

Jesus, we break your commands daily. We don’t love you. Do you still love us?

“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)

Back up to 1 John 4:8, “God is love.” Think about that. God must love because God is love. What great irony, then, that love itself is unrequited!

Ever felt that pain? Ever been driven by an obsessive desire to bless someone in any way you are able only to see your efforts come to nothing? Your gifts not received; your warmth met with coldness; your love met with apathy or spite?

Multiply the pain by seven billion and you’ve got God’s relationship with this world. Big problem, but God has a big solution: He’s going to teach us how to love him by dwelling within us in the form of the Holy Spirit.

The night I put my faith in Christ, I received this Spirit. He does what Christ promised he would do. He teaches me. He reminds me. He advocates for me. He never leaves me. 

As it is written, “When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession - to the praise of his glory,” (Ephesians 1:13-14) and, “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6)

Glory to God! By the Spirit’s presence I see a miracle at work within me. I am learning to obey Christ’s commands, and in so doing I am learning to love my God.