GOD’S WORD FOR JUNE 21

OUR PERSONAL PROMISES:

JESUS, YOU…….. WILL MAKE ME SHINE FORTH LIKE THE SUN THE THE FATHER’S KINGDOM … MT. 13:43

JESUS, YOU…………..SURROUND ME WITH FAVOR AS WITH A SHIELD  PS 5:12

JESUS, YOU………..ARE ABLE TO KEEP THAT WHICH I HAVE COMMITTED TO YOU 2TIM 1:12

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JUNE 21  ~ ~ In the classic book by Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ, today we begin chapter 24, “Obeying His Commandments”

THE WORD FOR TODAY

John 15:10

“If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”

How clearly we are taught through this Scripture the place that good works are to occupy in the life of the believer!  Christ as the beloved Son was in the Father’s love.  He kept His commandments, and so He abode in the love.  So the believer, without works, receives Christ and is in Him; he keeps the commandments, and so abides in the love.  When the sinner, in coming to Christ, seeks to prepare himself by works, the voice of the gospel sounds, “Not of works” (Ephesians 2:9).  When once in Christ, lest the flesh would abuse the word, “Not of works,” the Gospel lifts its voice as loud: “Created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (Ephesians 2:10).

To the sinner out of Christ (someone who has not accepted Christ as their personal Lord and Savior), works may be his greatest hindrance, keeping him from the union with the Savior.  To the believer in Christ, works are strength and blessing, for by the faith is Made perfect (James 2:22), the union with Christ is cemented, and the soul established and more deeply rooted in the love of God. 

John 14:23 is like John 15:10 above:

“Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.”

The connection between keeping the commandments and abiding in Christ’s love is easily understood.  Our union with Jesus Christ is not a thing of intellect or sentiment, but a real vital union in heart and life.  The holy life of Jesus, with His feelings and disposition, is breathed into us by the Holy Spirit.  The believer’s calling is to think, feel, and will just what Jesus thought, felt and willed.  He desires to be partaker, not only of the grace, but also of the holiness of his Lord; or rather, he sees that holiness is the chief beauty of grace.  To live the life of Christ means to him to be delivered form the life of self; the will of Christ is to him the only path of liberty from the slavery of his own evil self-will.

To the ignorant or slothful believer, there is a great difference between the promises and commands of Scripture.  The former he counts his comfort and his food, but to him who is really seeking to abide in Christ’s love, the commands become no less precious.  As much as the promises, they are the revelation of divine love;  they are guides into the deeper experience of divine life, blessed helpers in the path to a closer union with the Lord.  He sees how the harmony of our will with His will is one of the chief elements of our fellowship with Him. 

The will is the central in the divine as in the human being.  The will of God is the power that rules the whole moral as well as the natural world.  How could there be fellowship with Him without delight in His will?  It is only as long as salvation is nothing to the sinner but personal safety that he can be careless or afraid of doing of God’s will.  No sooner is it to him what Scripture and the Holy Spirit reveal it to be – the restoration to communion with God and conformity to Him – than he feels that there is no law more natural or more beautiful than this:  Keeping Christ’s commandments is the way to abide in Christ’s love.  His inmost soul approves when he hears the beloved Lord make the larger measure of the Spirit, with the manifestation of the Father and the Son in the believer, entirely dependent upon the keeping of His commandments.

(See John 14:15, 16, 21 and 23)

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