John 15:10 (ESV): 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.
I have been looking at this verse for more then a week now and am still stuck on this verse for more then a week. I know its first word, "If" (Eav) is a third class conditional clause. How does that fit into the rest of the conditional sentence? Thanks!
Duane
Here the English translation is good and Jesus is saying precisely what he meant to say: IF you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.
Elsewhere, he makes it clear that if you don't, you won't. "What good does it do you to say you follow me if you do not keep my commandments?" He asks.
In Revelation, in speaking to the Churches of Asia, Jesus relentlessly speaks to them of their deeds, that they are not behaving right. Then at the end, on the last two pages of Scripture, Jesus twice gives a list of behaviors that will earn one an unfavorable final judgment and the Lake of Fire. Throughout John the same message beats a relentless tattoo: to be acceptable to Jesus and live in his love, you have to do what he said to do, and not do what he said not to do. There really is not much more to than that. It's quite straightforward.
Unfortunately, that causes some difficulties for certain Christian traditions. But as Jesus tells the Jews, those traditions should be set aside in favor of what Jesus very clearly SAID.
The logic is similar to that of this sentence: say, a judo champ, a member of a national team tells his less experienced teammates: "If you exercise diligently, you will overcome your opponents easily, just as I have exercised and overcame them"; so, what's a problem with regard of the logic and syntax? I do not see any, for the sentence is very clear.
However, most interesting thing here is to ask a question: why does not Jesus tell His disciples to imitate Him and keep the Father's commandments in this form: "If you will keep my Father's commandments, you will abide in His love, just as I have kept and abided in His love"? But such a sentence would have left a possibility that the Father's commandments could be abided without Jesus; that is to say, Jesus is a giver of the brightest example to humans of what they can also achieve, but not as somebody without whom it is ontologically impossible to approach God-the Father (John 14:6). Thus, in order to stress that He is co-divine with the Father and that Father is simply ontologically unable and intrinsically impotent to bestow His love upon humans without the co-agency or rather uni-agency (for divine agency of the Father and the Son is one) of His co-eternal, uncreated Son with whom He shared glory even before the creation of the world (John 17:5), Jesus gives His sentence this strange turn: "do My commandments as I do My Father's in order to remain in my Love"; but the Father's commandments are exactly the same as Jesus' commandments, with no difference whatsoever (Luke 9:35)!, with the result that Jesus by keeping the Father's commandments is keeping simultaneously His own commandments, for those commandments are inseparably intrinsic to Him, to the effect that it is ontologically impossible for Him not to keep them, for it is impossible for God not to be God.
Furthermore, if keeping the commandments is a necessary condition of love, then the Logos who is always keeping the commandments of the Father, i.e. also His own commandments, also always remains in love of the Father and thus the Father's love pertains eternally to Him as well, and thus He gives authority and lets also created beings, humans, to participate in this same uncreated eternal love that He always shares with the Father, to the paradoxical effect that the created beings, humans, become partakers of the uncreated reality and thus become also uncreated in virtue of this participation.
This is the gist of the Orthodox doctrine of deification, and John 15:10 is a clear expression of the divinity of Jesus.
The phrase "If you keep My commandments" in John 15:10 may imply a condition to keep it in a way of doing. However, when you study at the original word for the word commandments in Exodus 34:28, it is the word dabar, which literally means words. So the literal translation of the ten commandments should be ten words. But why does it is still translated as ten commandments?
Because man's typical response upon hearing the ten words is represented by what the children of Israel said in Exodus 19:8: "All that the LORD has spoken we will do." Thus the ten words is received as the ten commandments.
But did God really expect us to keep the ten words as commandments? The history of the children of Israel, which represents our own experience, shows us that no one can fully "keep" these commandments by the way of doing. Even Paul himself fails in the matter of coveting (Romans 7:8).
Now please compare the verse in question (John 15:10) with John 15:7 NKJV:
7 "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.
My words in verse 7 is the rhema words. And the rhema words is God Himself as the living Me. God as the rhema words need to be abiding in us in an organic way. Jeremiah used eating to describe the organic process in his response to the word (Jeremiah 15:16) and Jesus demonstrated this in Matthew 4:4 when He compared eating bread vs. eating the rhema word.
So how do we "keep" the commandments? It is by keeping it in our spiritual stomach. The proper response to the commandments of God should not be: We will do it! but to be spiritually "chewing and digesting" on them by praying them back to the Lord.
If we keep the word in this way, the word will then be assimilated metabolically and causes us to automatically abide in His love as promised by Jesus in John 15:10. To love Him with our whole being is to fulfill the greatest commandment in the Bible (Matthew 22:37-38).
John 15:10 to my understanding, it says that the only way to be able to receive God's Love is by keeping his commands. Love is the fulfillment of the Law and these include all types of commands from the Old Testament. To be in God's Love is a moment to moment action, we can get out of His love by not behaving righteously. If we follow the inner man regenerated by the Spirit and not the outer man, we will remain in His love and we will grow. Remember the comparison of Jesus being the vine and we the branches, if we obey and walk in the Spirit, then we will remain in His love and we will grow to a greater capacity to Love and to be victorious in our christian life.
I don't think there is any ambiguity in the Greek text. Metzger does not highlight any significant variants between manuscripts in his Textual Commentary. The different eclectic texts (Nestle-Aland, Scrivener Textus Receptus, Orthodox Patriarchal Text) even agree on how the phrase should be punctuated:
10 ἐὰν τὰς ἐντολάς μου
If the commandments of me
τηρήσητε
you [should] keep
μενεῖτε ἐν τῇ
will abide in you
ἀγάπῃ μου
My love
One might take 1 John 4:7-16 as a commentary on this passage:
Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only 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 expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No man has ever seen God; 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 own Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him (RSV)
Cyril of Alexandria (378-444) explained these verses as follows:
We must consider the mysteries set forth in the text with the clearer eye of understanding; for the saying has a deep meaning, and puts before us in its completeness, so to speak, the significance of the Incarnation. For He assures us that He Himself was loved by God the Father, and that He so loved us in turn, after the same manner, that is, according to which He Himself considered that He was loved by His own Father. What charge then did He lay upon them? That it is our duty to abide in His love. But He gives, as it were, an explanation and most reason of His being with justice loved by the Father, namely, the keeping of His commandments; and exhorts us, too, to hasten to fulfill this, and thus, He says, to remain in His love.
The 19th century Russian Orthodox cleric, Ignatius Brianchaninov, summarizes here:
The one condition for remaining in the love of God and in union with Him is the fulfillment of the Gospel commandments. Breaking them also breaks this condition, and the breaker is cast out of the loving arms and from before the face of God into outer darkness, into the realm of the passions and the demons.*
* The Field: Cultivating Salvation (tr. from Russian; Holy Trinity Publications, 2015), p.42
What is John 15:10 really saying?
Men and women that want to give God exclusive devotion, show their love to Him and dedicate their lives to God's service and follow/keep his commandments. By following God's commandment an individual shows that he/she loves God.
John 15:10-14 (NASB)
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. 11 These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full."
Notice Jesus qualifies the above, there is more than just loving God and Jesus.
12 “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are My friends if you do what I command you."
Jesus eventually gave his life for his friends/disciples, this self sacrifice , should move his followers to have the same self sacrificing love for one another. Having this type of love Jesus says, will distinguish them "among men, that your My disciples."
John 13:35 (NASB)
35 "By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Conclusion .
Jesus said that , we have to keep his commandments to have eternal life , but to be able to keep his commandments we have to make an effort to study God's word and so, perceive, recognize, become acquainted ,get intimate with Him, as well as the Messiah, Whom God sent.
John 17:3 (NASB)
3 "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent."
Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 (NASB)
13 "The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. 14 For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.
"
If/(then) is a statement of cause and effect. I can think of many examples of if/then statements in English where the cause and effect relationship is not absolute: If it snows tomorrow, they'll close the schools. This sentence expresses probability, not certainty. So, is it possible to interpret John 15:10 in a similar manner: If you keep my commandments, then it's highly probable you will abide in my love. Or, in other words: By keeping my commandments, you create the conditions in which you will perceive yourself to be loved by me. This dynamic would pertain in any intimate relationship. If you demonstrate by your actions that we share the same values, then it follows you desire my companionship. If your actions demonstrate we do not share the same values, then my companionship will become a problem for you.
“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” (Jn 15:10). Though this verse is written as a conditional clause (a third class conditional, as the question points out), I read it less as a conditional clause and more of a self-explanatory or self-referencing statement. Consider the context provided by verse 12:
Thus, to keep God’s commandments is to abide by and in His love. Reference:
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Mt 22:37-40)
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. (1 Jn 16-17)
For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Gal 5:14
John 15:10 (ESV): 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.
A specific set of instructions with a different (and unique) purpose were given from the Father to His Son, to be distinguished from those given by Rabbi Yeshua to His disciples to serve the purposes for which He chose them. But in both cases they were all based upon fulfilling the same Torah - the spoken instructions (which take the form of commandments, laws, etc.) that allow His people to know the will of the Father who lovingly cares for us.
The phrase "my commandments" is never used in the Scriptures by any earthly ruler in regard to his or her own decrees. Generally speaking it is instead used by the sovereign Lord either speaking directly (beginning with His words to Isaac in Genesis 26:4-5) or through one of His prophets (beginning with Moses in Exodus 16:27-29). For further evidence see Exodus 20:6; Leviticus 22:31 and 26:3; Numbers 15:40; Deuteronomy 5:10, 5:29 and 11:13; 1 Kings 3:14, 6:12, and 11:34-38; 2 Kings 17:13; 1 Chronicles 28:7 and 29:19, Nehemiah 1:9; Isaiah 48:18. The only exception to this general rule is found in Proverbs where a father is instructing his son that he should follow "my commandments" (see Proverbs 2:1, 3:1, 4:4 and 7:1-2). With so many allusions to the Torah and the Prophets the message to Peter and the others is clear. When Yeshua uses this phrase, as recorded three times in John (and nowhere else), He is affirming His divinity and correspondingly His divine authority over His disciples. This affirmation is akin to His repeatedly using the phrase "I am" to reveal His oneness with the eternal God and Father of creation. Since the phrase "my commandments" is also used in a different context in Proverbs as noted above, the disciples would in addition appreciate the reference that was being made to a human father-son relationship - with Yeshua acting as their (spiritual) father in keeping with the biblical model of discipleship employed in first century Judea.
My conclusion is that the Messiah was alluding to both the love of the heavenly Father for the faithful receiving His divine Torah given through Moses AND the very human experience of a father's love in providing guidelines for the benefit of his children. Once we recognize the dual connotation of the phrase "my commandments", we can then fully appreciate what Rabbi Yeshua - who identifies Himself as both Teacher and Lord according to John 13:13 - intends for all of His redeemed disciples. We who are saved by grace through faith can know the joy of abiding in His love as we abide by His loving instructions.
