“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” John 14:15
Obedience is a consequence of love, love is not a consequence of obedience. We read the text as “Because you keep my commandments, you love me.” But did you know you can keep commandments out of fear and religious slavery and not love?
Religion, that evil human attempt to please God outside of God’s enablement, says ‘Obey, so you can prove your love for God.’ This is a grievous trap and many fall into it.
True love captures you, subdues you. It captivates your whole being, it is all consuming and all demanding. When you are totally devoted, when you are lovesick and a prisoner of the beauty of Christ, nothing else matters or makes sense, except in relation to your discovered treasure. A life of dedicated service, on the other hand, can still leave you in control and at arms length away from Christ. The ego is a crafty snake!
Obedience is a fait accompli, if you love Christ. Service is the overflow of another process at work, a human heart being captured by Christ. We have turned this thing the wrong way round … stressing service and commandment keeping, instead of the joy of ‘being in love’. The ‘doing in love’ kind of gospel is heard all over but the Mary of Bethany’s are seldom heard.
Your service and obedience does not equate to love just as a wife making breakfast for her husband does not equate to love. It is a fruit of love, perhaps a proof of love but it is not love per se. Love is a relational disposition of the heart. We have equated acts of endless service as demonstrations of great love of God and this is a grave error. ‘Rend your hearts, not your garments!’
Love is Love. Being in love is a state of being, not a state of doing. It is a terrible deception to be seduced into a gospel of works and not be a bondslave of love to Christ. As Oswald Chambers truly and profoundly observes, “It is easier to serve than to be drunk with love and devotion.” Let us not deceive ourselves thinking the equation is true, that the greater my acts of service, the greater my love for God is. This is a lie! Heaven is going to reveal some shocking things I believe. It is less about the abundance of services you have done and rather with what abundance of love, you only did the things He ordered.
Love is Love. He is way greater than mere acts. Acts are much easier than being entirely captured by a spirit of adoration. You can have it together, still be in charge while doing acts but love demands surrender, capitulation, bondedness, enveloping attachment … love takes no prisoners and is all consuming!
Love in essence in some sense cannot be seen, it is invisible in its purest form, it dwells in the private space of the heart, its a heart reality, a reality that though unseen, is more visceral and potent than a thousand thousand outward visible acts of service and professed love. “’These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” Mat 15:8
The legalists, the love haters, have made acts of service equate to love and have tempted many lovers of God back into dry service. First love acts are not dry. ‘Lovers acts’, ‘first love acts’ are what matters, first love acts are what He is after, keeping the commandments because of a heart overflowing with devoted love.
“Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.” Rev 2:4-5