““If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. The one who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and the one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will reveal Myself to him.” Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will follow My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our dwelling with him. The one who does not love Me does not follow My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me. but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Get up, let’s go from here.” John 14:15, 21, 23-24, 31 NASB2020 https://bible.com/bible/2692/jhn.14.15-31.NASB2020
God in Jesus makes synonymous obedience to Him and love for Him. God in Jesus also makes synonymous obedience to Him and His spoken word. We too often measure our goodness by the lack of badness in our lives. We don’t steal, lie, murder, or rape so we are good people. This is not true. Not doing these things doesn’t make us good, it just makes us less bad than the worst of humanity. Being good is doing good. We are not good because we don’t do bad we are good because we do good. What is good? Good is the will of God recorded in the Word of God. Like evil, we too often ignore God’s word creating our own definitions of both good and bad. We do not go to Him Who is good incarnate, Who is good completely, to learn what good really is. When we ignore God’s word we ignore God telling us what He believes is good, the measuring stick by which all men will be judged. Our ignoring God’s word only causes us to miss God’s mark by which He will judge all people on that day when we meet Him face to face. Failure to know God’s word so that we can do God’s word is failure to obey God’s word which means we are ultimately failing at loving God. Failure to love God is to fail at the purpose for which we were created. We cannot do good, we cannot obey God, apart from knowing the Word of God. Jesus knew the Word of God because He is the living word of God and thus He perfectly obeyed and fulfilled the Word of God setting forth our example to know God and to do His will as described in His word.
