“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word.” John 14:23
The first thing Jesus teaches is that our obedience to God is the natural result of loving God. Jesus said, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word (John 14:23). When our love relationship with the Lord is active and continuous, it inspires us to obey the Lord. If a person is having trouble obeying the Lord, they need to refuel their spirit’s tank with the love of the Lord. Remember, we can’t effectively love God unless we first receive love from Him (1 John 4:19).
When the Lord’s unconditional love fills our heart, it synchronizes our heart with the Lord. So, intimacy with the Lord transforms your will so you want to (instead of have to) obey Him.
The Lord’s extravagant and undeserved love wins and softens our heart. If our heart is hard and self-willed, it becomes yielded and surrendered. Our desire to do the Lord’s will arises from a heart melted by love rather than a heart forced to obey. This “new heart” is part of the glorious promise of the New Covenant. Jeremiah 31:31-34 discusses the coming promise. The Lord promises to “write His law on our hearts” so that we are changed from the inside out.
The law covenant gave us external obligations, but no power to obey them. Like Israel, we are doomed to keep breaking God’s law if we have no direct access to His love.
But Jesus is determined to show us a better way! He wants us to have the same lifestyle with God that He has always enjoyed: a joyful partnership inspired by love, instead of grudging obedience inspired by fear.
Old Testament history demonstrates the failure of God’s people to maintain obedience to God without direct access to His presence. In the Old Testament, obedience to God’s law was mandatory, but only a few leaders had a personal relationship with God. God’s people had good intentions to obey the Lord, but they ended up consistently disobeying. In 2 Corinthians chapter 3, Paul calls the Old Testament law “the ministry of death” and the “ministry of condemnation” (2 Corinthians 3:7,9). The law condemned people because it gave them rules but didn’t empower them to obey the rules. Under this covenant, God’s people were caught in a hopeless cycle of good intentions, failure, and then repentance.
In 2 Corinthians 3:7-9 it tells us, “But if the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away, how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory.”
Moses, on the other hand, had direct access to the presence of God. Intimate relationship with God transformed Moses so that his face shined. The face-to-face relationship Moses enjoyed with God infused him with divine power to obey the Lord. Moses had special access to God which was not available to the rest of Israel. Since Israel had no direct access to God, they couldn’t maintain obedience. Without access to God’s presence, no person can maintain obedience to God.
“Nevertheless, when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:16-18).
We are part of a superior covenant with God. Unlike people of God prior to Jesus’ sacrifice, we have now been given direct access to God by the blood of Jesus. The ministry of the Spirit of God is more glorious because now we can all look into God’s face and be transformed! The law that condemned us has been disannulled, and we now are ruled by a new law: the “law of liberty” (2 Corinthians 3:17; Romans 8:2).
We declare you are entering into greater intimacy with God than you’ve ever known. Your obedience will be inspired by a growing understanding of how deeply the Father loves you. We declare you will walk in greater freedom and carry increasing strength and glory in Jesus’ Name!
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