Scripture: "If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love." —JOHN xv. 10.
The question is often asked: How can I come to abide in Christ always ? To live wholly for Him ? Such is my desire and fervent prayer. In our text the Lord gives the simple but far-reaching answer: "Keep My commandments." This is the only, the sure, the blessed way of abiding in Him. "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." Loving obedience is the way to the enjoyment of His love.
Notice how often the Lord speaks of this in the last night. "If ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments" (xiv. 15). And then again twice over: "He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him." "If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." And so also thrice in chap, xv., "If My words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you." "If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love." "Ye are My friends, if ye do the things which I command you." Six times over the Lord connects the keeping of the commandments with loving Him, and with the promise of the great blessing following on it, the indwelling of the Father and the Son in the heart. The love that keeps His commandments is the only way to abide in His love. In our whole relation to Christ, love is everything; Christ's love to us, our love to Him, proved in our love to the brethren.
How little believers have accepted this teaching. How content many are with the thought that it is impossible. They do not believe that through the grace of God we can be kept from sin. They do not believe in the promise of the new covenant (Ezek. xxxvi. 27): "I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments." They have no conception how to a heart fully surrendered and given over to Christ alone He will make possible what otherwise appears beyond our reach: loving Him, keeping His commandments, abiding in His love.
The wonderful promise of the Holy Spirit as the power of Christ's life in them was the pledge that they would indeed love Him and keep His words. That was to be the great secret of abiding in Christ, of having the indwelling of Christ and of God, and of the Divine efficacy of their prayer to bring down God's blessing on all their work.
