Chapter 14 in John’s Gospel has much for us to consider and to take to heart. The question Jesus asks here is as pointed and directly challenging of us today as it was when Jesus asks Phillip, “Have I been with you all this time, Phillip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father…Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (Jn 14:9-10)? How do we know if we believe this? Would it not be that this belief would be made manifest in the ways that I live my daily life?
In verse 15, Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you” (Jn. 14:15-17). He promises the Spirit to the Apostles (and to us) so that we will not be orphaned when he ascends back to the Father. He says, “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”
Love is not a passive thing. It is an action. It is a two-way street. It is a willingness to empty oneself to make space within oneself to receive the other’s willing and free gift. Jesus is our model for this. (See Philippians 2:5-11) The equation is quite clear here; if you love God, you will keep his commandments. Why? Because the commandments are consistent with the very nature of God, that is, love. The commandments of God do not constrict our liberty; rather, knowing them, knowing their wisdom, and their true purpose, frees us to love one another as God loves us. Think about it. The commandments are really God’s prescription for broken human beings to learn how to love.
We have been given the greatest of all graces in the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the love that abides in the Father and the Son, which has been given to us now as our Advocate. The Spirit was given to us by the Father in Jesus’ name. It is the Spirit who will “teach [us] everything, and remind [us] of all that I have said to you” (vs. 26). We are not alone. We have not been abandoned to fate or to destiny. We have a guide, an Advocate. Through the Spirit we can come to know and to love the wisdom of God, and grow in our desire to love and to practice his commandments.
This is what gives the meaning to Jesus’ words, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them” (v.23). There it is! To believe is to keep true to God’s word, his commandments, in all aspects and areas of my daily life. This is how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit will come to abide in me, and I in them.
It is one thing to be able to recite, to quote passages of sacred Scripture by memory. That is easy. But Jesus tells us in another place: “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of the Father” (Mt. 7:21-23). To do the will of the Father is to keep his word, that is, to “keep the commandments”, that is, to love one another as God has loved us. Our faith, our religion, has meaning only in the living of it. The purpose of our religion, the practice of our faith in Jesus Christ, is not to get into heaven; it is to get heaven into us here and now.
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