Keeping Christ's Commandments

“If ye know these things, blessed are ye if ye do them.” — John xiii. 17.

The blessedness and the blessing of God’s “Word is only to be known by Doing It.

The subject is of such supreme importance in the Christian life, and therefore in our Bible study, that I must ask you to return to it once more. And let us this time just take the one expression, Keeping the Word, or keeping the commandments.

Let us take it first in the farewell discourse. You may be familiar with the passages, but it will be of use to look at them together.

“If ye love Me, Keep My Commandments, and the Father will send you the Comforter” (John xiv. 15, 16).

“He that hath My commandments, and Keepeth Them he it is that loveth Me, and he shall be loved of My Father” (v. 21).

“If a man love Me, He Will Keep My words, and My Father will love him” (v. 23).

“If ye abide in Me and My Words Abide in You ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (xv. 7).

“If Ye Keep My commandments, ye shall
abide in My love’’ (xv. 10).

“Ye are My friends, if Ye Do Whatsoever I Command You” (v. 10).

Study and compare these passages, until the words enter the heart and work the deep conviction that Keeping Christ’s Commandments Is THE Indispensable Condition of All True Spiritual Blessing. For the coming of God the Holy Spirit, and His actual indwelling, for the enjoyment of the Father’s love, the inward manifestation of Christ, the abode of the Father and the Son in the heart, the power of prayer, the abiding in Christ’s love, and the enjoyment of His friendship, the keeping of the commandments is the one requisite. And for the power to claim and enjoy* these blessings in faith day by day, the childlike consciousness that we do keep them is indispensable too. And no less indispensable is, for fruitful Bible study, the quiet assurance that dare expect Divine light and strength with every word of God because He knows that we are ready to obey to the very utmost. Through the Will op God, Delighted in, and Done, Lies Our only Way to the Heart of the Father, and His only Way to Our Heart. Keep the Commandments: this is the way to every blessing.

See how strikingly all this is confirmed by what we find in John’s first epistle.

“Hereby do we know that we know Him, if We Keep His commandments. He that saith, I know Him, and Keepeth not His commandments, is a liar. But Whoso Keepeth His word, in him verily is the love of God perfected” (ii. 3-5). The only proof of true, living, saving knowledge of God; the only proof of not being self-deceived in our religion; of God’s love not being an imagination, but a possession, is, keeping His word.

“If our heart condemn us not, we have boldness toward God; and whatsoever we ask we receive, Because We Keep His commandments. And He That Keepeth His commandments, abideth in Him” (iii. 21, 32, 24). Keeping the commandments is the secret of confidence toward God, and true intimate fellowship with Him.

“This is the love of God that We Keep His commandments, for whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the world” (v. 3, 4). Our profession of love is worthless, except as it is proved to be true by the keeping of His commandments in the power of a life begotten of God. Knowing God, having the love of God perfected in us, having boldness with God, and abiding in Him, being begotten of Him and loving Him — all, all, is dependent on the one thing — Keeping the Commandments.

It is only as we realise the prominence Christ and Scripture give to this truth, that we shall learn to give it the same prominence in our life. It will become to us one of the keys to true Bible study. The man who reads his Bible with the longing and determined purpose to Search out AND TO Obey Every Commandment of God and OF Christ, is on the right track to receiving all the blessing the Word was ever meant to bring. He will specially learn two things. How he needs to wait for the teaching of the Holy Spirit to lead him into all God’s will. And what blessedness there is in performing daily duties, not only because they are right, or he delights in them, but because they are the will of God. He will find how all daily life is elevated, when he says as Christ did:” This commandment received I of My Father.’^ The Word will become the light and guide by which all his steps are ordered. And his life will become the training school in which the sanctifying power of the Word is proved, and the mind ever prepared anew for its teaching and encouragement. And so the keeping of the commandments will be the key to every spiritual blessing.

Make a determined effort to grasp what this life of full obedience means. Take some of Christ’s clearest commands: — Love one .another even as I have loved you; ye ought to wash one another’s feet; ye should do as I have done to you: and accept a Christlike love and humility as the law of the supernatural life you are to live.

So far from the sense of failure or impotence leading you to despair, or to rest contented in what you think attainable, let it only encourage you to put your hope more entirely on Him, who by His Spirit will work in you both to will and to do.

Once again, our one aim must be perfect harmony between conscience and conduct. Every conviction must be carried out into action. Christ’s commands were meant to be obeyed. If this be not done, the accumulation of Scripture knowledge only darkens and hardens, and works that satisfaction with the pleasure which the acquisition of knowledge brings, which unfits us for the Spirit’s teaching.

I pray you, do not weary of my repeating so often the blessed, solemn message. In your inner chamber the question is to be decided whether you will through the day keep the commandments of Christ. And there too will be decided whether in future life you are to bear the character of a man wholly given up to know and do the will of God.