A Prayer About the Obedience of Love
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. John 15:9-10
Dear Lord Jesus, there are times when just the right Scripture comes into view at just the right time. Today is just such a day. These words, your words, are incredibly helpful in cutting through my confusion and “cutting to the chase” about the relationship between your love for me and my obedience to you.
In my zeal to safeguard the good news that all my efforts, works and obedience could never gain or maintain my acceptance with you, I have sometimes been less clear about the place of obedience in a life shaped and transformed by the gospel. But how incredibly “spot on” this passage is!
First of all, I’m staggered to hear you say, once again, you love your Bride just as much as the Father loves you. How can you possibly love us with the same degree of passion and delight you have shared within the Trinity for all eternity? That is nearly beyond my comprehension and clearly beyond my capacity to grasp, except in brief stretches. It is only as I survey the cross that I can begin to wrap my heart around such an affirmation of affection.
Secondly, I hear your calling for me to “remain” in your love by obeying your commands. This would feel like an oppressive depressive impossibility, if I didn’t read the whole passage. When you tell me you remained in the Father’s love by obeying his commands, my worry gives way to worship. For you never had to gain or maintain the Father’s love while you walked among us in the days of your incarnation. What an absurd and insulting notion that would be.
Yet your obedience to the Father’s commands was a primary way of communing with him-of reveling, “remaining” and revealing the Father’s love for you and your love for him. May the same be true in my life, Lord Jesus. Deepen my awareness of your love for me, even as you draw forth from my life a more consuming and consistent obedience to your commands. Because the gospel is true, your commands are not burdensome to me, they are beautiful-not a yoke of self-centered striving, but a yoke of God-centered loving. So very Amen I pray, in Jesus’ name.