John 14:15 · Passage · Obedience
If You Love Me, You Will Keep My Commandments
Jesus spoke John 14:15 to 24 to the eleven at supper on the night He was betrayed.
In ten verses Jesus joins love for Him to the keeping of His word four times, and He promises the Father's love to the one who keeps it.
If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.
- The passage
- John 14:15 to 24, John 13:34 to 35, John 15:10
- Book
- John
- When
- the night before the crucifixion (John 13:1 to 2; John 18:1)
- Hold in memory
- John 14:21, 1 John 5:3
Summary
In John 14:15 to 24 Jesus makes the keeping of His commandments the sign of love for Him and the failure to keep them the sign that love is absent. Beside the command He promises the Advocate, the Spirit of truth, and He grounds the whole in His own keeping of the Father's commandments (John 15:10). Obedience in this passage flows from love and is upheld by the Spirit.
- The commandment Jesus calls His own in John is that His disciples love one another as He has loved them (John 13:34; John 15:12).
- The law had already joined love for God to the keeping of His commandments at Sinai (Exodus 20:6; Deuteronomy 7:9).
- The King James Version reads John 14:15 as a command, and the American Standard and Berean texts read it as a statement of what love will do.
Spoken on the Last Night
The passage answers questions the disciples raised one after another at the table.
This passage belongs to obedience, the value Scripture asks of every follower of God. In John 14:15 to 24 Jesus names obedience as the form that love for Him takes. Peter's love was about to be tested that same night.
This study asks what Jesus meant when He joined love for Him to the keeping of His commandments, and what He promised with the command. It sets the sayings of the passage side by side and names the commandments Jesus calls His own. It traces the words of Sinai behind them and the Advocate promised in the same breath, and it weighs whether John 14:15 commands or promises.
It was now just before the Passover Feast, and Jesus knew that His hour had come to leave this world and return to the Father. Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the very end.John opens the supper with Jesus' love for His own, the love the passage asks them to return.
By the time Jesus spoke these words Judas Iscariot had gone out into the night (John 13:30), and Jesus had told Peter that he would deny Him three times before the rooster crowed (John 13:38). Thomas and Philip had asked their questions about the way and the Father (John 14:5 and John 14:8). After the teaching Jesus crossed the Kidron Valley with His disciples to a garden (John 18:1).
The Sayings of Love and Keeping
Five verses carry the pattern, four in John 14 and one in John 15.
Whoever loves keeps, and each saying names what follows the keeping, up to the Son's own keeping of the Father's commandments.
| Saying | Who loves | What is kept | What follows |
|---|---|---|---|
| John 14:15 | “If you love Me” | “My commandments” | Jesus asks the Father to give the Advocate |
| John 14:21 | “The one who loves Me” | “My commandments” | “loved by My Father”, and Jesus shows Himself to him |
| John 14:23 | “If anyone loves Me” | “My word” | The Father and the Son make their home with him |
| John 14:24 | “Whoever does not love Me” | Fails to keep “My words” | He refuses a word “from the Father who sent Me” |
| John 15:10 | Jesus, who loves the Father | “My Father’s commandments” | He remains “in His love” |
From Love to Keeping and Back
John 14:21 turns the first saying around, and John 14:23 answers a disciple's question.
In John 14:15 love comes first and keeping follows from it. In John 14:21 Jesus starts from the other end and names the keeper of His commandments as the one who truly loves Him. Keeping is the evidence by which love is known.
Judas (not Iscariot) asked Him, “Lord, why are You going to reveal Yourself to us and not to the world?”The question of the second Judas among the Twelve draws out the fullest promise of the passage.
In Jesus' answer the difference between the disciples and the world is love, and keeping is the form love takes (John 14:23 to 24).
Which Commandments Jesus Meant
John records one commandment Jesus calls new and His own, and the passage also speaks of His word.
A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.”Jesus gave the new commandment earlier the same evening, and it is the first commandment John records Him calling His own.
He names it again in the next chapter as His own commandment (John 15:12). In John 14:23 to 24 He also speaks of His word and His words.
Readers have taken the commandments in two ways. John Chrysostom, in his Homily 75 on John, ties them to the love command of John 13:34. Albert Barnes reads them as the love "which leads us to do all his will, to love each other, to deny ourselves, to take up our cross, and to follow him".
The two readings meet where Paul writes that "love is the fulfillment of the law" (Romans 13:10).
Love and Keeping at Sinai
The second commandment and Deuteronomy 7 stand behind the words of John 14:15.
but showing loving devotion to a thousand generations of those who love Me and keep My commandments.The second commandment promises loving devotion to those who love the LORD and keep His commandments, the pairing Jesus speaks of Himself in John 14:15.
Moses repeats the pairing when he names the faithful God of the covenant (Deuteronomy 7:9). In John 14:15 Jesus calls the commandments His own, in the words the law uses of the LORD's.
The Advocate Beside the Command
Jesus promised the Spirit of truth in the sentence after the command.
And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot receive Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you do know Him, for He abides with you and will be in you.Jesus joins the gift of the Advocate to the command without a break, so that the disciples keep His word with the Spirit in them.
Later that night Jesus said that the Advocate "will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have told you" (John 14:26). The words the disciples were to keep would be brought back to them by the Spirit.
Ezekiel had given the same promise for the days of the new covenant. The LORD said through him, "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and to carefully observe My ordinances" (Ezekiel 36:27).
Matthew Henry drew a rule for the reader from the moment Jesus chose for the command.
“Keeping the commandments of Christ is here put for the practice of godliness in general, and for the faithful and diligent discharge of their office as apostles in particular. When Christ is comforting them, he bids them keep his commandments; for we must not expect comfort but in the way of duty. The same word ( parakaleo ) signifies both to exhort and to comfort.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on John 14:15Puritan
Teachers on Love Shown in Keeping
Clement of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo wrote that knowing and loving Christ show in what a person does.
died 215 · Clement of Alexandria
Clement applied the test of 1 John 2:4 to anyone who claims to know God.
“It is the manner of life which shows up those who know the commandments; for as a man's word is, so is his life. The tree is known by its fruit, not by its blossom and leaves. Knowledge, then, comes from the fruit and from behaviour, not from talk and from blossom. We say that knowledge is not mere talk, but a certain divine knowledge, that light which is kindled in the soul as a result of obedience to the commandments, and which reveals all that is in a state of becoming, enables man to know himself and teaches him to become possessed of God. What the eye is in the body, knowledge is in the mind. Let them not call bondage to pleasure freedom, as if bitterness were sweet. We have learnt to recognize as freedom that which the Lord alone confers on us when he liberates us from lusts and desires and the other passions. ‘He who says, I know the Lord, and does not keep his commandments, is a liar and the truth is not in him,’ says John.”
Clement of Alexandria · The Stromata Book 3 · on 1 John 2:4Patristic
died 430 · Augustine of Hippo
Augustine, preaching on John 14:21, set the having of the commandments beside the keeping of them.
“‘He that hath my commandments,’ He adds, ‘and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me.’ He that hath [them] in his memory, and keepeth them in his life; who hath them orally, and keepeth them morally; who hath them in the ear, and keepeth them in deed; or who hath them in deed, and keepeth them by perseverance;-‘he it is,’ He says, ‘that loveth me.’ By works is love made manifest as no fruitless application of a name. ‘And he that loveth me,’ He says, ‘shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.’ But what is this, ‘I will love’? Is it as if He were then only to love, and loveth not at present? Surely not. For how could the Father love us apart from the Son, or the Son apart from the Father? Working as They do inseparably, how can They love apart? But He said, ‘I will love him,’ in reference to that which follows, ‘and I will manifest myself to him.’ ‘I will love, and will manifest;’ that is, I will love to the very extent of manifesting. For this has been the present aim of His love, that we may believe, and keep hold of the commandment of faith; but then His love will have this for its object, that we may see, and get that very sight as the reward of our faith: for we also love now, by believing in that which we shall see hereafter; but then shall we love in the sight of that which now we believe.”
Augustine of Hippo · Tractates on John 75 · on John 14:21Patristic
Command or Promise? John 14:15
English Bibles differ on whether the verse commands the keeping or says that love will keep.
The King James Version gives John 14:15 as a command to keep the commandments. The American Standard Version of 1901 gives it as a statement of what love will do, as the Berean text does.
The two readings differ by one letter of the Greek verb. The Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament of Tyndale House reads τηρήσετε (tērēsete), a future, "you will keep".
The command: keep My commandmentsKing James Version; Chrysostom; the Expositor's Greek Testament
Chrysostom's homily, in its English translation, gives the verse as a command. The Expositor's Greek Testament prints the Greek of its note on the verse as τηρήσατε, an imperative.
On this reading Jesus lays a charge on the eleven as He leaves them.
What would weaken it is the reading Marvin Vincent judged the better attested.
The promise: you will keepAmerican Standard Version; Berean Standard Bible; Vincent
Marvin Vincent, in his Word Studies in the New Testament, heads his note on the verse with the imperative and then states that the best texts read the future τηρήσετε.
On this reading Jesus describes what love for Him does, and John 14:24 and 1 John 2:4 then name the one whose life shows that he lacks that love.
What would weaken it is a showing that the future was read as a forecast that made keeping certain whatever the disciple did.
Both readings join love to keeping, and both set the keeping inside love for Jesus.
The Love of God in Keeping
John's first letter and Jesus' own words that night end where the passage begins.
For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome,The verse stands here because it carries the teaching of John 14:15 into the letters to the churches and adds that the keeping is no burden.
Jesus kept the same order Himself on the night He spoke these words: "I do exactly what the Father has commanded Me, so that the world may know that I love the Father" (John 14:31).
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- The Holy Bible, King James Version (1611)
- The Holy Bible, American Standard Version (1901)
- STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament, the tagged Greek text (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- STEP Bible TBESG lexicon of Extended Strongs for Greek (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0, based on Abbott-Smith (1922)
- The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll, on John 14:15.
- Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, on John 14:15.
- John Chrysostom, Homily 75 on the Gospel of John, on John 14:15.
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on John 14:15.
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Gospels, on John 14:15.
- Augustine of Hippo, Tractates on the Gospel of John, tractate 75, on John 14:21.
- Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, book 3, on 1 John 2:4.
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