“He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.” John 14:21.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
When you actually take the Bible and study it line by line, as we have been doing so you may know “these things” that Jesus shared with you at the Last Supper so His joy is in you and your joy is complete (unspeakable and filled with glory), you will find that My Word has may layers of revelation in it that are not all revealed to you at first reading but grow as you grow in your understanding of the spiritual beyond the temporal.
For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. 1 Corinthians 2:11-13.
But as Jesus told you just a few lines above the Scripture we are studying today, the mind set on the flesh, devoid of spirit, cannot understand or receive the Holy Spirit.
I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. John 14:16-17.
If you are focused on yourself, that is, your flesh, and what you can see with your physical sight and know with your physical senses alone you cannot receive from Me. Because with Me you are receiving from a realm that is accessed only by faith, which is of your spirit (you believe with your heart), for though it is real and eternal you are not attuned to see by your physical senses into the spiritual realm. This happened with sin when it first entered the world with Adam rejecting My eternal Word as truth for a perishable lie.
But a natural carnal man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ. 1 Corinthians 2:14-16.
To know and do My Word as the ultimate truth worthy of trust you are walking in faith and that is walking in the Spirit and not in the flesh. When things in the natural look impossible and flesh has no remedy, you turn to another realm and find the answer, the solution, and the way to achieve it now. The answer is conceived in the spirit by faith and is then born and manifested in the flesh by releasing the Words with faith. The Word became flesh and dwelt among you by that exact process. It is the way I work and the way you must work to obtain My magnificent Covenant Name promises which are all fulfilled and “yes” to you in Jesus.
Now at this time Mary arose and went in a hurry to the hill country, to a city of Judah, and entered the house of Zacharias and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. And she cried out with a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And how has it happened to me, that the mother of my Lord would come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord.” Luke 1:39-45.
It is not the hearer only. It is the hearer and doer of My Word that gets the result, that is, the harvest of what he has heard. The Israelites I redeemed out of Israel failed to enter the Promised Land because though that had seen My works they did not know or understand My ways. Their response to Me and the physical world around them was totally inappropriate and defeated every good plan I had for them in the Promised Land.
My Word works, it is living and active sharper than a two-edged (two-mouthed) sword going through everything to the very core of the spirt and the soul and the body. And My Word operates to make you complete in all your parts.
My Word must be received by faith, and it works through faith, it is the substance of which the Spirit brings it into manifestation from the spirit realm but there is one other part that must be in place for it to endure and that is love. Faith works by love. And what does that mean? Not what you think though there are aspects that make faith work in acting in compassion for others and considering other’s interest of primary purpose on your agenda, and I will discuss that in this Life Lesson as well, but faith, and that unwavering trust in Me that makes faith work, is knowing and believing in the love I have for you. That I am not only able to do all good things for you but that I desire and am always willing and available to do them for you.
Jesus understood this: “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I knew that You always hear Me; but because of the people standing around I said it, so that they may believe that You sent Me.” When He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.” The man who had died came forth, bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” John 11:41-44.
It is easy, if you have eyes that see and ears that hear, to know and believe in the love I have for YOU. You were lost in your sins and trespasses, trapped in the desires and whims of your flesh, your focus was off Me and only on yourself and the things that the world had to offer but then you found My Words and a whole new world, a whole new realm, a whole new life opened before you and if you went through that open door by receiving Jesus as Lord, believing I justified you as clean of all sin in Him, by His precious eternal blood shed for you, I formed you anew into a new creation in Christ and you are spotless, holy, and without reproach before Me. That is what My love did for you. What you could not do, I did for you.
But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:37-39.
My love for is the basis, the foundation, the reason for everything that I made and sustain.
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom the whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. Ephesians 3:14-21.
So now you must walk in that. And that is the way of obedience to the Word that made you and saved you. And rejecting to follow My Word, as Adam and Eve found, is not only unwise, but fatal for it keeps you out of the Kingdom whose foundation is truth and its atmosphere is love. How you respond to My love for you determines everything in your life.
My fearless apostle Paul began with no love in his heart for anyone or anything except in his achievements and education and it made him arrogant though he thought he was keeping all the Law of Moses. But he was persecuting and bringing believers in My Son to death for believing and following the Way, the Truth, and the Life. But once he saw Jesus, He saw love, and once he began to grasp the truth in My Word that somehow he had missed and came to see My Word as beathed by love that wanted to love and save all men and bring them to the knowledge of the truth that he then learned the truth that set him free and brought him before Me overflowing with joy. 2 Corinthians 7:4.
He changed. He became a man so filled with love of Me and neighbor that no matter who betrayed, beat, imprisoned or condemned him, he just kept giving them My Word seeking salvation for all men for this is the mission Jesus gave him when He was so enlightened on the road to Damascus:
“To open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.” Acts 26:18.
Now listen to what Jesus told you so that His joy may be in you and your joy complete. For blessed are you if you know these things and do them. John 13:17.
“He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.” John 14:21.
The first thing you should ask is “What are His commandments?”
“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.” John 15:12.
And Jesus’ beloved disciple John gives you My perspective in the risen and glorified Christ:
This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us. The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us. 1 John 3:23-24.
Jesus was speaking to those who believed in Him that night of the Last Supper and He called them friends because He had given them My Word, but to get to the place of a disciple and a member of His body so that you are in Him and He is in you, you must first have believed in Him as Lord and that is what John points out by the Spirit in his letters to you.
To love one another though, you must first have a revelation of My love for you.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. 1 John 4:7-14.
I have poured My love, My nature, into your heart by the gift of the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised to those who believe in and obey Him.
“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.” John 14:15-17.
All good things return to the one who loves. I make all things, no matter who meant them for evil, work together for good for you who love Me and are called according to My and your purpose. And what is that? To be love, for you and Me to operate together as one in fellowship and partnership to bring about My Will, and to be fruitful. And you can fulfill all those in the teaching Jesus soon gives you at the Last Supper. Yes, the teaching of the vine and the branches.
But this is enough for today. In the next life lesson we will continue with today’s Scripture and move on to its further elaboration.
I love you. Have you come to know and believe in My love for you that your faith as gone from little faith to great faith? It is simply a matter of how well you know Me and trust Me. Have you found yet that there is nothing I cannot fix for you if you come to Me in love and give the problem to Me to fix with faith that I will? If you do not know that, you do not know Me.