John 15:10 If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love. What is implied in that keeping of His commandments, which is essential to abiding in His love? The keeping of all those commandments of His — I. WHICH REFER TO THE MAINTAINING OF SPIRITUAL COMMUNION WITH HIMSELF. He kept constantly all such commandments of His Father, and so continued in His Father's love. If we would abide in Christ's love, we must imitate Him and make an earnest use of the means of grace. There are those who neglect these, and thus plainly do not keep God's commandments. There are others who do not quite neglect them, and yet do not use them as Christ's commandments require, and therefore not so as to benefit by them. II. WHICH REQUIRE US TO BE LIKE HIMSELF IN SPIRIT. We must seek after the wisdom, truthfulness, delicacy of feeling, purity of heart, disinterestedness, patience, humility, charity, piety, and all those other excellencies which were included in His perfection. What a number of people there are so engrossed in business that they can find no time for moral, or mental, or spiritual culture! Others, again, feel that Christ has claims upon them, and that they should be at work in His service; but they are not thoughtful, and do not realize how much of Christ's work is inward, not outward. There is a great deal of so-called "doing good" which is very worthless and comes to nothing, because it does not flow naturally from real inward goodness. Be good and you will do good, without having to go out of your way to seek to do it. III. WHICH REFER TO THE ORDINARY COMMON DUTIES OF DAILY LIFE — to the relationships in which we are placed by nature and Providence; and if we would continue in Christ's love, we must be careful to obey these. The Christian life is to fill and beautify our whole existence. It is not by what a man does on special occasions in public, or to those who seldom come into contact with him, that you can form an accurate estimate of him, but by his daily ordinary life — by knowing what sort of son or brother he has been, or what sort of a husband he is. Love to Christ will show itself much better there than anywhere else. It is especially through these that God seeks to train into order and obedience, into nobleness and freedom, the souls of the children of men. IV. WHICH POINT US TO A LIFE OF ACTIVE BENEFICENCE; and if we would continue in His love, we must do good to all men. Christ's death for all men pledges us to the love of all men. To abide in the love of Christ, we must seek to lessen pain and suffering, ignorance and crime, wrong and injustice, and to make all to whom our influence can reach better and happier. Thus living in love to our brethren, for whom Christ died, we shall live in the love of Christ, who died for them as well as for us. (R. Flint, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love. |
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