John 14:20,21 - Whoever keeps my commands

14:20

“On that day”. Which day is this? It is certainly after the resurrection. It became all the more real at Pentecost. “Day” is probably not referring to a specific day, but talking in general about the time after the resurrection. Everything would change after that. Why? Because Jesus would send the Holy Spirit. What will we realise? That Jesus is in the Father, we are in Christ and He is in us. So we see that the unity that exists in the Godhead is also a unity that will exist with us. This is the goal. When we rebelled we were cut off from God, separated from Him. This was the judgement and the consequence of our sin. The consequence of the cross is that we are reconciled with God, and the intimacy of the relationship is beyond anything we can imagine. However well you may think you know God (and a lot of the time God may seem far off), we need to realise that God’s intention is that we know Him, that there is a close relationship between Him and us.

As an aside, note that Jesus says “He in us” when it is the Holy Spirit who is in us. There is complete unity between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You cannot have one “part” of the Godhead without the others, for God is One. And when we know the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit we know all of God.

14:21

This gives a very simple test of how we can tell if we, or someone else, loves Jesus. Do we obey His commands? This does not mean we earn salvation, rather it is the fruit of salvation. Note that this is consistent with what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount when He said “by their fruit shall you know them” (Matt 7:21). The corollary of this is that if someone says he or she loves Jesus or is following Jesus but blatantly disobeys His commands then they are lying. Today the most obvious example of this is so-called Christians who claim that a homosexual lifestyle is consistent with Christianity, but it applies to all sin. Now this does not mean a Christian will never sin, we all know that is not true, rather it is the direction of our lives.

If we love Jesus then the Father loves us too. Jesus will love us and show Himself to us. Again, let me say this not salvation by works, rather Jesus is teaching us about the depth of the relationship between God and us, and the nature of our relationship. Jesus demonstrated this within Himself. He lived a life of complete obedience to, and dependence on, the Father, and was in close relationship with Him. The goal for our lives is exactly the same.