Flashback Episode — Jesus, Obedience, and the Source of All the Commandments: John 14:15-31

As we continue moving through the gospels looking at the night Jesus is betrayed and arrested, leading up to this betrayal, Jesus spends some time talking with His disciples. After Jesus had eaten the Last Supper with His followers, and right before they leave to go to the garden where Jesus will pray before being betrayed, Jesus challenges His followers with a powerful statement. While some might be quick to discount this statement as being only applicable for those in the first century, if we look at the context for this challenge, I doubt any dedicated follower of Jesus living today would want to give up what Jesus promises within the context of this challenge.

Let’s dive into our passage and uncover what Jesus challenges His followers with. Instead of slowly leading up to this challenge, Jesus actually opens our passage by stating this challenge in very clear, simple terms, before then including the promise in the verses following it.

With that said, let’s read our passage, which comes from the gospel of John, chapter 14, using the God’s Word translation. Starting in verse 15, John tells us Jesus told His followers:

¹⁵ “If you love me, you will obey my commandments. ¹⁶ I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper who will be with you forever. ¹⁷ That helper is the Spirit of Truth. The world cannot accept him, because it doesn’t see or know him. You know him, because he lives with you and will be in you.

¹⁸ “I will not leave you all alone. I will come back to you. ¹⁹ In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. You will live because I live. ²⁰ On that day you will know that I am in my Father and that you are in me and that I am in you. ²¹ Whoever knows and obeys my commandments is the person who loves me. Those who love me will have my Father’s love, and I, too, will love them and show myself to them.”

²² Judas (not Iscariot) asked Jesus, “Lord, what has happened that you are going to reveal yourself to us and not to the world?”

²³ Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will go to them and make our home with them. ²⁴ A person who doesn’t love me doesn’t do what I say. I don’t make up what you hear me say. What I say comes from the Father who sent me.

²⁵ “I have told you this while I’m still with you. ²⁶ However, the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything. He will remind you of everything that I have ever told you.

²⁷ “I’m leaving you peace. I’m giving you my peace. I don’t give you the kind of peace that the world gives. So don’t be troubled or cowardly. ²⁸ You heard me tell you, ‘I’m going away, but I’m coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I’m going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I am.

²⁹ “I’m telling you this now before it happens. When it does happen, you will believe.³⁰ The ruler of this world has no power over me. But he’s coming, so I won’t talk with you much longer. ³¹ However, I want the world to know that I love the Father and that I am doing exactly what the Father has commanded me to do. Get up! We have to leave.”

In this passage, Jesus’ first words are the clear, direct, straight-forward challenge: “If you love me, you will obey my commandments.” Ten times in these 17 verses, Jesus uses the word “love”, and in all ten instances, the love Jesus is talking about is us loving Him, us loving God the Father, or us receiving love from Jesus, or God the Father.

Three times Jesus connects obedience to Him to be the same as loving Him. Verse 15, which opened our passage by challenging us, says, “If you love me, you will obey my commandments.” Then if that wasn’t enough, the first part of verse 21 says, “Whoever knows and obeys my commandments is the person who loves me.” And to top it off, in verse 23, Jesus again restates this in the opening to His reply, saying, “Those who love me will do what I say.”

There is no easy way to get around Jesus’ challenge, except for people who want to debate exactly what Jesus’ commands are while working to exclude commands they don’t want or like. The point most people who want to debate Jesus’ commands start from is with the “new” command Jesus gave earlier that evening. Part way during the Last Supper Jesus ate with His followers, He gives them the new command to love one another.

However, this then leaves people to debate whether Jesus’ command to love one another replaces or is added to other commands Jesus taught, and whether the commands Jesus shared are added to or whether they replace what the Old Testament taught. In other words, this debate centers around whether Jesus’ commands are added to or whether they replace the Old Testament Ten Commandments that God spoke from Mount Sinai, and/or whether Jesus’ commands are added to or whether they replace the rest of the Mosaic law.

However, while preparing for this episode, a different question entered my mind. While preparing for this episode, I had the question enter my mind about whether Jesus was the voice that spoke the Ten Commandments while the children of Israel were camped around Mount Sinai.

With this question, hoping someone had answered or tackled this question before so I could look at what they concluded, I did a quick Google search about this, and the results that returned were fascinating. While I can’t speak to what you would get if you searched for this question today, the results I received did anything but answer my question.

Instead of answering my question, Google pulled together the age-old debate of the relevance of the Ten Commandments, and a surprising number of results that focused exclusively on the Sabbath commandment. Looking through the first 5 or so pages of results, and clicking through to several of the links, I found no websites sharing about Jesus’ role in the Ten Commandments, but instead, Christ-followers debating the relevance of either the whole group of the Ten Commandments, or just the fourth commandment.

In my mind, this is sad. Perhaps the debate over the Ten Commandments’ relevance is more important than the question I asked. However, I doubt this to be true.

If you haven’t guessed this about me, I am the sort of person who likes to look at the context and author of what I’m reading in order to understand their frame of mind. In the case of the Ten Commandments, regardless of whether Jesus was the member of the Godhead to speak them or not, the Author of these commandments is God, and the Author of the Ten Commandments should be our focus, not the commandments themselves. In the case of the times God speaks, how we treat God’s words says more about how important God is in our lives and less about the words themselves.

While I could piece together an argument that says since Jesus is the Word, as John opens His Gospel by illustrating, then the words spoken by God in the Old Testament, including the Ten Commandments, would have been spoken by Jesus. There isn’t really much of a question on whether God spoke the commandments, but John’s introduction is one of the few passages where the case could be made for narrowing God’s speech in the Old Testament down to a single member of the Godhead.

However, I suspect that my question really was a bad question. Perhaps a better question for us to ask ourselves is simply: where did Jesus get His commandments?

We don’t have to look far for the answer, because it happens to be found right at the heart of our passage for this episode. In verse 24, Jesus gives us the answer when He says, “A person who doesn’t love me doesn’t do what I say. I don’t make up what you hear me say. What I say comes from the Father who sent me.”

The question of whether Jesus spoke the Ten Commandments is not relevant when we understand that Jesus received everything He said, taught, preached, and shared from the Father. Regardless of whether you think Jesus’ words replace or overshadow commandments from the Old Testament, recognize that Jesus tells us that what He says comes from the Father – and with this being the case, anytime Jesus references back to Himself, He may be simply speaking on the Father’s behalf. This ultimately means that the Source behind Jesus’ words and commands is God the Father.

Regardless of who spoke the Ten Commandments, or even the commands Jesus shares in the New Testament, we can understand God the Father as the original Author. According to Jesus, we love who we obey. If we love the Father, then we will obey what the Father has commanded. In this case, Jesus is simply an Ambassador, speaking on behalf of the One who sent Him.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life and choose to apply the truth Jesus shared about love into your life, starting today. Know that according to Jesus, we love who we obey.

Also, as I always challenge you to do, intentionally pray and study the Bible for yourself to learn what God, the author of life, wants for us and from us. Other people can give you ideas to think about, but other people cannot grow you a personal relationship with Jesus.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or give up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!