If you love me, obey my commandments.

Dear Jesus, if I may. IF? That’s another one of those loaded words on both our parts. IF can mean something that’s conditional, or whenever, or even though, or whether (or not). “If I may,” is a way of asking, “Allow me”. Somehow, I don’t think you’re asking permission in saying this. You’re putting out there two things, love and rules.

Ok, love needs boundaries. I get it. Boundaries protect people from controlling and using one another. Otherwise, this becomes a statement of manipulation, more like, Prove you love me by obeying my commandments. A healthy love and relationship is shown by respecting boundaries. So you’re saying this is how you want to be loved, how you want to be known, what you are assertively saying you want the relationship to have in it.

Commandments sound like they are orders. Do this or else. Still, prefacing it with love doesn’t mean it has to come off that way. You always offer choice, not insisting on it, not forcing someone into it. But to see things from your perspective, it’s life on your terms. Until you enter into another’s understanding, you can’t know who they really are.

 You give that choice.

He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth.

 You don’t give promises here that life will be grand if we do. But you do promise a Counselor, whom you call Holy Spirit. And you say that Spirit will lead into truth. Oh good, just what we need. Another proclamation of supposed facts coming from a holy spin doctors with slick marketing, fear-based fake news, and interference from a foreign state. You say the world doesn’t recognize this Spirit. Oh, but we do. We’ve seen this thing before. Happens all the time. Do I have to tell you everything we went through not so long ago during an election right in the middle of a global pandemic?

All right. You get this much. You don’t say find this truth out there like we usually see it on the internet, cable tv, social media platforms, podcasts, and blogs (allow me an exception with that one for now.) This is different. Truth for you comes from this Spirit you say is in us. If this Spirit is inside, something beyond conscience, really the essence of the soul, then that means my truth, who I am is what you’re dealing with. Not an esoterical, philosophical, universe-beyond-me kind of thing, but instead my core self.

I will not abandon you as orphans—I will come to you.

You’re not giving up on me then. If you know my core self, you know the good, the bad, and the ugly. But you won’t turn away. Love can go far but usually it has its limits when really pressed. When we realize that, we know our deepest fears and anxieties. Abandonment by those who should love us no matter what, but don’t. You want the kind of relationship that sticks for good. That’s love.

When I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.

So this isn’t going to last? You’re going to die? Thanks for the warning. That’s honest truth for you at least, why you made the point about abandonment and orphans. But life again? You in your Father, us in you, and you in us. Heads hurt for a long time with that kind of talk. It’s not like losing one’s identity in another. That’s a little dysfunctional. But it does mean a closeness, an intimate knowing of one another. You know me better than I can know myself, and I know you in all the ways you showed us. It’s compassion wrapped in Godly-glory, judgement tempered with grace, wounded flesh on a cross followed with new life.

Those who obey my commandments are the ones who love me.

Loving you then is willingness to be in your truth. It’s being in a relationship that leads to fulfillment of one’s self and purpose. It’s being in community that lives such that “Thy kingdom come” is apparent in the love expressed for God and neighbor. It’s an abiding Spirit that remains within and is lived out by those who make the choice to obey your commandments.

John 14:15-21

“Love one another just as I have loved you.”

John 13:34



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