Sermon text: John 14
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
A young woman purchased a book she thought might be of interest. She read a few pages of it and then laid it aside, finding very little interest in the book and finding it a bit disappointing. Sometime later she met and became acquainted with the author of the book. In time they became friends, and friendship turned into something more, and more turned into an engagement, and an engagement turned into a wedding and love. The acquaintance involved evolved to a friendship, which changed her whole outlook on how the book read. Every page offered new insights, depths not only in the story told, but as an extension of the author himself. His love for her and her love for him brought his life’s work to a new and brighter light, a greater appreciation for that which he had produced. So it is with Jesus, the Word of God, and Christians. Through the assigned gospel lesson this morning, Jesus says to us, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him and disclose myself to him.”
So if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Easier said than done, especially if the commandments are understood as pure law — law in the sense of the Mosaic law, the Ten Commandments. The phrase here used, tas entolas, is the Greek phrase for my commandments, or literally the commandments of me. Tas entolas is a phrase that embraces the whole scope of the person and the work of Jesus Christ, of the Old and the New Testaments, of the faith of the individual Christian, and of the doctrines and practice of the true Christian church. When a person is converted and baptized into Christ, loved by God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the result is that God, through the church, creates a person who has been created and redeemed and sanctified in the sacrament of Holy Baptism. So we — you and me — we in fact do love, because he first loved us. 1 John 4:19.
If the word “commandments” is understood in the legalistic way, however, in the moralistic way, we find that there’s very little comforting in this passage. Love gives way to a harsh law in that case. As sinners, we don’t keep the Ten Commandments. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and the wages of sin is death — Romans 3:23 and 6:23, respectively. We know what the law brings. It brings with it knowledge of sin, and more sin, and ultimately death. But we are saved through Christ. First, note that Jesus uses the word entolas, commandments, and the word logos, word, interchangeably in this text. These two words describe our relationship to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and they describe our relationship to our neighbors and to one another.
So, when Jesus says, for example, in verse 21, “He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me,” he is telling us that those who repent, those who trust in the gospel, those who love their neighbor and who take up their cross and follow Christ, do so because God first loved them. And now we, Christians, love in return. Now, when you read this text and other texts, it makes it sound as if Jesus is speaking conditional statements. If we do not earn God’s love by loving Jesus and keeping his commandments — then we are condemned in unbelief. But Jesus is not saying that if we love him by keeping the commandments, the Father will love us. That’s a hopeless scenario, because we can’t love Jesus and keep his commandments as we are. Keeping the Ten Commandments is what Jesus did. It’s not what we do. We break them. His commandments are the things he did for us and that Jesus does for us through his bride, the church. As Paul wrote of himself, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.”
Here in John 14, Jesus is preaching a sermon on the marks of a Christian and the marks of the Christian church. And he uses the word entolas, commandments, to denote the marks of a Christian and the marks of his Christian church. So, there’s actually an outline at work here. It goes like this. Part one: a description of what Christians do — love and commandments. Namely, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments / my word.” Part two consists of a promise from Jesus: the Father will send you a helper, the Spirit of truth. Part three: a contrast between you and the world. At least the contrast is supposed to exist. That is, the world does not know God, therefore it does not and cannot keep his word or his entolas, his commandments. To know God is to have faith in Jesus, which keeps his commandments by way of faith in Christ. Part four: you’ve been made different from the world, and you’ll be kept that way by God’s word as long as you keep the word, too. You know him because he abides with you and will be in you. Part five: another promise. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. Part six: another promise. In that day you shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Part seven: the summary. He who has my commandments, my entolas, and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And who loves me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will disclose myself to him.
The sermon is not so much issuing a series of conditional commands: if you do this, then I’ll do that. For the Greek word used here for the word “keep” means to cherish, to take care of, in the same way that you would cherish or take care of a family heirloom or a gift of great value. Jesus is not demanding perfection from you, his followers. He’s commanding that they value, cherish, take care of his words, his doctrines, his law, and his gospel. But the third commandment teaches that Christians should gladly hear, learn, inwardly digest God’s word, and hold it sacred. Love keeps, treasures, cherishes the commandments, the entolas, the words of Jesus Christ. For his words are life.
What is true of the Christian is true of the faithful Christian church as well. It’s how people should select a church: not because it’s happy-clappy, but because it cherishes, uses, wisely administers the word and sacraments of God’s holy house. That a church is bound to teach everything that Christ has commanded: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe — that is, to pay attention to — everything that I commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” The Father and the Son send the Paraclete, the Advocate, the Helper, namely the Holy Spirit, who is promising that he will never leave you as an orphan, and that he will come to you. And then a few words later Jesus says, “Because I live, you shall live also.”
When a person is made a Christian, the Holy Spirit comes upon them, and the closest possible union between the believer and the Holy Spirit is affected. For the past three-plus years, the disciples walked with Jesus, ate with Jesus, had fellowship with Jesus, learned from Jesus, and they loved him. And when he began to speak of his departure, his separation from them, they grew very sad. Yet in the midst of this seemingly bad news, that Jesus would soon depart, Jesus describes for them a closer union than anything that they had ever known before. By faith in Christ, and in one another, for one another, they would keep his commandments, his words, his doctrine, his fellowship intact by clinging to the things that they were to cherish, namely his word and his sacraments. And the Holy Trinity would remain with them and you, and the believing heart and the true Christian church. They would be in the Father and the Son, and the Father and the Son would dwell in them by virtue of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. All this happened precisely because Jesus was leading them, for a time, for an express, specific purpose: the purpose of dying on the cross, rising on Easter morning, ascending into the heavenly realm to sit at the right hand of God, and to administer the affairs of the church, the Christian, and the world.
The disciples’ first reaction to the news of separation was sadness. They wanted to have and hold Jesus, like Thomas wanted to have and hold Jesus with his eyes and his hands. But Christ wanted them to trust in something far greater than what the natural eye sees. So, he comforts them: “Let not your hearts be troubled, or let them be fearful. You heard that I said to you, ‘I go away and I will come to you.’ And if you loved me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I am.” Jesus tells them that there’s something greater to come. They need not worry as long as they have and hold the word, the entolas, and are held by the Holy Spirit, the pneuma. Our Lord teaches that no one or nothing can snatch us out of his hands, even though it seems as though he is absent from us. Jesus says in John 15: “Just as the Father has 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.” In our sinful nature, we cannot keep the commandments or abide in Jesus’ love. For Jesus is not the new lawgiver; he’s not the second Moses. For John 1:17 teaches us: for the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Jesus is teaching here that he has placed us into his word, and the word has been implanted into us. As long as those things are true, we remain in God’s love, and we live out our love by confessing our sins, listening to the holy absolution, partaking of the Lord’s Supper, trusting in the Lord’s gospel, receiving our baptism and using it daily, and loving one another in Christ Jesus alone.
All of this, of course, is only possible because God the Father’s love for the author and perfecter of our salvation, Jesus Christ, was whole, perfect, and complete. It was Jesus’s love for God the Father and sinful humanity that sent Jesus to the cross. The Father already loved us so much that he sent his Son and the Holy Spirit on a mission to save us from unbelief, sin, death, and the power of the devil. God knew his children would break every one of the commandments, yet he was determined to give his only-begotten Son into death to pay for our sins. The fact is, though we do not act like it from time to time, and it does not seem so from our language and our life, but we do love Jesus and we always want to keep his commandments. This too is why the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit as our advocate, our helper. But the Father gave his Son, the Son gave his life, the Spirit has given us faith, not because we first loved him. These are expressions of absolute, certain proof of God’s love for us instead.
God’s love for us is not iffy. It doesn’t bend with the wind. It is sure and certain and solid, and seen in the person and the work, the crucifixion and resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ himself. When God looks at you and everyone who believes, he sees Christ. He sees Christ’s work. He sees Christ keeping the commandments and the laws. He sees all of that and credits it to you. Knowing that God has loved us so much, we do works of love and obedience for each other. They’re imperfect, very imperfect, but you do love God and you love your neighbor. It’s the natural result of true Christian faith. “This is real love,” John writes in 1 John. “Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” So, know this: even in your worst moments, God sees you in his love. Amen.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.