If you really love Jesus, you will obey Him. That is what He said.
If we really know Him, we will have the desire to obey Him. Will we stumble along the way? Yes. But we will get back up and continue to grow in our love for Him, the love the Holy Spirit put there.
For half of my life, I understood this verse in John 14 as a command. If I love Him, then I better obey Him. But I now understand it as a description of one who loves the Lord: if you love Him, obedience will naturally flow from your life.
Holiness is the byproduct of loving Jesus. Without holiness, we cannot see God. The grace of God should compel us toward holiness.
“The one who says, ‘I have come to know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.” 1 John 2:4-6 (NASB)
If we say that we know and love Jesus but we don’t obey Him, follow Him, make Him our Master, then we don’t really know Him. Again, this does not mean that we do this perfectly, but we should be growing and seeing our lives become more like His.
Holiness is the the only way that we can experience true freedom, joy, and peace. Repentance brings rest. If you have a hard time sleeping, if you have a hard time finding joy, if you feel anxious, try repenting of doing it your way.
What do I repent of? Usually we know if there’s something that we need to turn away from. If we don’t, we can ask the Lord and He is faithful to show us. Worry is sin (it shows we don’t trust God.) Comparison is sin. Jealousy is sin. Not trusting God to provide what you need, when you need it is sin. God hates sin because it destroys us. But we don’t have to be slaves to the sin that can ensare us. We can live in freedom.
In my early 20s, though I was a follower of Jesus, I hadn’t yet understood that I had been set free from sin. I believed that I was enslaved to my own emotions, my own desires. I allowed rage and bitterness and lust to toss me like a wave. I remember writing in my journal, describing that I felt as though I was locked up with a dragon guarding the way- just like in the fairy tales.
Shortly after, God showed me through Romans 6:22 that I was actually SET FREE from all of that because of my faith in Jesus and the work that He did on the cross and power of His Spirit in me. Once I began to see and believe this truth, my life changed.
That doesn’t mean that I never fall back into those ways, but I don’t have to STAY in those ways. As believers in Jesus, we are free.
Repentance is a gift to us. We should embrace it. Obedience is freedom. Being a slave to my every whim and emotion was a burden to me and those around me. The grace of God set me free to obedience. It did what I could not do for myself.
We love Jesus because He first loved us. When we begin to understand how much He loves us, we can love Him in return. And when we love Him in return, we will naturally begin to obey His commands because we want what He wants. And what He wants is our freedom. Holiness is freedom.
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