“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” John 15:9-10.

Just as we have seen in the study of John 15:1-8 how abiding in Christ helps the Christian to bear, fruit, more fruit, and much fruit, John 15:2, 5 and 8, so now we see how we are to abide in Christ’s love.

These verses are really the other side of the same coin. Just as abiding in Christ produces fruit for the glory of God, so consciousness of the Savior’s love produces joy, peace and strength to remain in the Lord’s presence.

“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you…” John 15:9a.

It is hard to express something incomprehensible; like the love of God and especially as it is between God the Son and the Father.

Did you know that if you were able to completely convert one gram of matter into energy you would have enough energy to send 400 rockets, each weighing a little over 44 tons into space?

All that power from something that would not fill the palm of your hand. Yet God is sovereign over the atom and all matter, in fact His power is infinite; His love is infinite.

Just as we are unable to draw that much power from matter, how can we comprehend completely the love of God? Yet men who are willfully ignorant and continually groping in the dark accuse Him of evil.

This love is available to us, Jesus said, “…I also have loved you”, this is in the same strength that the Father has for the Son; in fact it has been demonstrated by Christ’s sacrifice at the cross.

It was shown by His willingness to give Himself for our sakes and further demonstrated by the Father’s willingness to allow men to treat Him so cruelly at the cross.

“Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise [crush] Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.” Isaiah 53:10.

The Christian is embraced by the fullness of the love of not just the Son but also the Father.

“In this the love of God was manifested [made known] toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation [full payment] for our sins.” 1 John 4:9-10.

“…abide in My love.” Live, dwell, reside, stay in the love of Christ.

“If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” John 15:10.

The first and most important thing to know about this verse is that to abide is not a condition for God to love you. God loves the Christian no matter what, and He loves them infinitely, right now; there is nothing His children have to do or can do to make Him love them more.

And there is nothing a Christian can do to make God love them less. However, that does not mean that they will not suffer the consequences of their sin – consequences which could even lead to death.

Christians who are out of control or give themselves over to evil will be loved no less, though they may be taken out of this world, and lose their rewards in the next.

“If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin which does not lead to death, he will ask, and He will give him life for those who commit sin not leading to death. There is sin leading to death. I do not say that he should pray about that.” 1 John 5:16.

There are actually parents who will say, “Dear, if you do not mind me, I will not love you.” There are few things more destructive for a parent to say to a child.

At other times it becomes obvious that a parent loves the cuter or more talented child more than the other. In a way these things, though wrong, are to be expected.

We live in a world that demands that if you want to get ahead, you have to work harder, be smarter, or more devious; this becomes a mindset that is hard to overcome when thinking about God’s love.

Working harder and constantly learning more are in God’s economy too, but that has to do with serving Him in spreading the gospel, not meriting His love.

“Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.” 1 Corinthians 9:24-27.

“Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:12-14.

“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:10.

Most of us do not have the discipline of the Apostle Paul, but that should not keep us from doing as much as lies within us to press on to the mark and gain the reward awaiting us in heaven. Paul was just a man as was Elijah, seen in James 5 below.

“Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months.” James 5:17.

One thing we tend to forget, but Paul and Elijah knew full well.

“Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21.

They both knew that God’s power is limitless to those who love Him and whose desire is to glorify Him in Christ.

Modern man has sopped up so much liberal pap that they think that God does not do any miracles today. I have news for them, the God who rules the cosmos still watches over this earth’s smallest things to its greatest powers.

So, what does it mean, “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love…”? Let us go back to the relationship of parents with children.

The norm is that parents love their children unconditionally. In a normal loving household, the child knows this. At the same time though, there are not only rules, which the house is run by, but rules that form boundaries for the child.

These are meant to protect the child and to make them feel secure. The child, in turn, loves their parents and respects their authority.

What happens then when in a fit of anger, mischief, or rebellion, the child breaks one or more of these rules? Take this a little further and say that the parents are not immediately aware of the infractions.

The child now has a guilty secret. Guilt becomes a barrier making it harder for the child to feel the love of the parents, perhaps even creating anger with the parents because they are perceived as being cold, calloused and unloving.

Fortunately, the infraction is usually found out quickly enough and with young children their guilt will make them break down and confess their rule breaking.

Whether, punished or not, the wound is healed and the loving relationship is restored, though the parents had never stopped loving their child.

This is why the Lord makes the condition, “If you keep My commandments…” It is really a warning to us that if we wander from the path we will eventually feel estranged from God; not His fault, our own.

Jesus even bears this out by saying, “…just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” So this is a rule that even the Lord Jesus kept.

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: ‘For Your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.’ Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us: For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:31-39.

“For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:14-19.

The love of God in Christ is inviolate, irrevocable, and always available to those who are His. Those who stay close under His wing and keep His commandments will feel this in their hearts far better than those who wander.

“Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ.” 2 Thessalonians 3:5.

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.” 2 Corinthians 13:14.

Matter converted to energy, taken from chapter 6, “Models of Atoms”; “Basic Science for Christian Schools”, by John E. Jenkins and George Mulfinger, Jr., Bob Jones University Press, publisher.

Abide in My Love, John 15:9-10 taken from godisrevealed.com posted on 4-17-13, updated on 2-17-18.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version, copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission, all rights reserved.