If You Love Me...

 This Sunday's reading from John 14:15-21 contains the answer to the the title of this post.

All too often revisionist preachers will focus on the promise of the Holy Spirit and ignore that the promise is predicated on the first sentence in this passage.

‘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 for ever. 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.

‘I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.’

People love following their own wills, not the Father's.

This world needs more love for Jesus, and only then will it see us keeping his commandments. 

Whenever I encounter John 14:15, an anthem by Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585) runs through my mind. It is one of my favorites.