John 14:15 (If You Love Me)

The Shepherd's Church

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English is the language we know, but English is also a confusing language to say the least.

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There's one word in English that describes love, and it's up to the hearer of your statement to help fill in the context of what it is that you actually mean.

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So for instance, I could say, I love lamp. And then you could say, well, do you really love the lamp?

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And I could say, yes, I love the lamp, but I don't love the lamp like I love a person. But the same word is used.

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Today, the foolish and insanity is now abounding. You hear phrases like love is love.

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And what they mean by that when they say love is love is that there's a moral equivalency that's happening where a man can sexually love a woman, a man can sexually wanna love a man, or a man can sexually wanna love a child, and then the same category for women, and all of it is love.

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It is a phrase that's now in trying to promote pedophilia when you hear that.

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So when you hear love is love, there's a statement being made about the essence and nature of it. That's one word in English, love lamp, love is love.

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There's more examples. Love can be used to talk about good, godly affection.

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It can be talked about connection. It can be used in intimacy, romance, commitment, trust, respect, empathy, sacrifice, forgiveness, compassion, loyalty, happiness, fulfillment, passion, devotion, acceptance, support, gratitude, and I'm not even listing all of them.

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It's one word that's describing all of those things. So that in one sentence, or in one day,

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I could go through my day and say I love tacos, I love the Celtics, I love working out, new hobby,

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I love people, I love my mother, I love theology, I love my children, and I love my wife.

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And I hope that you will provide the context to know that I do not love all of them the same way.

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I don't love the Celtics like I love my kids. And I certainly do not love, although I do love every woman who's here and every woman on earth in some way,

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I don't love them in the same way that I love my wife. I think that's intuitive for us now as English speakers, but there leaves room for confusion.

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Now the Greek is actually so much better at this. The Greek is actually a better language than English altogether.

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It's just a deadling, which no one speaks it, the ancient version of it anymore. But it's so much more helpful.

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There's four primary words for love in the Greek. There's five or six secondary words for love in the

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Greek. And there's up to 30 tertiary words that you can use to describe what we call with one word, love.

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For instance, there's the word eros, which is where we get the English word erotic. It's a love of a sexual nature.

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It's a passion, it's a sort of arousal sort of term, never used in the

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Bible by the way, but it is used in the poets and it's used in Greek culture. And often this word in the

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Greek is looked at as a negative thing. It's looked at as lust. That's sort of the idea of it. There's philia or philos, which is brotherly love and affection.

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It's where we get the word Philadelphia, even though there's not a lot of brotherly love going on in Philadelphia, especially after tomorrow or after the night.

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But it is a word that is used in scripture. It's a word where Jesus says that he loves Lazarus.

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He loves Lazarus as his brother, as his friend. He doesn't love Lazarus in the same way that he loves a good

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Mediterranean meal. There's also the word storge, which is the word that is applied to parental affection.

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When a mother looks at her child and she wells up with joy and love towards her child, when a father has enough love to protect the child, like if Jackson's riding down our little driveway on his little scooter towards the road, it's that storge inside of me that causes me to run after him and pull him back and say, no, we don't play near the road.

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And then there's also agape of the four major types. Agape is the one that's most prevalent in the

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New Testament and it means sacrificial, selfless, caring love. It is putting someone else above yourself.

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It is loving someone in a way that is for their benefit and not primarily for yours. It's giving generously, it's caring for someone else.

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Now there's other words for love. There's secondary words like matria, which means religious love to the gods.

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There's pathos, which is sort of like empathy. There's ludus, which is playful or flirtatious love.

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For all of those who are dating, you need to make sure you in moderation perform ludus or you will go to the wrong place.

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There's pragma, which is enduring love. And then there's mania, believe it or not. A lot of our English words come from the

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Greek, which is irrational love. That's the way the Greeks talked about when you're manic. It's that you have an irrational affection for something that's wrong, which is interesting.

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Now this concept is very important for when we go to our passage today because our passage is going to be calling us to love.

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But what kind of love is it gonna be calling us to? And what is the end result of that love?

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Well today, it's what we're gonna be talking about. How do we love Christ rightly? What does that mean?

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What does authentic love actually look like? The kind of love that the elect will have for their savior.

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The kind of love that will fill your heart and that will cause you to love God and worship him and obey him.

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So today, we're gonna cover three things in our sermon today. We're gonna cover the grammar of love.

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Yes, we're gonna be talking about grammar, but I'm gonna make it fun. We're gonna be talking about the gospel of love and then we're gonna be talking about the greater works of love.

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So if you will turn with me to John 14, 15, as we're gonna look at a single verse today.

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We're gonna examine these three things. The grammar of love, the gospel of love, and the greater works of love,

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John 14, 15. The text says this.

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If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Let us pray.

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Lord, what a powerful statement that is. If we love you, we will keep your commandments.

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If we love you, we will obey you. If we love you, we will do the things that you have told us to do.

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And Lord, obviously the inverse is that if we are not doing the things that you have called us to do, if we are not obeying your commands, then our love, at the very least, is called into great question.

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Lord, help us to be a people who love you. Not just with warm, fuzzy feelings.

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Not just with placations or with sort of songs that we sing or the way that we present ourselves, the mask that we put on when we come to the

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Lord's house. Lord, help us to truly love you. To love you in such a way that we would sacrifice for you.

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To love you in such a way that we would live for your glory and your benefit and your renown.

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And Lord, I pray that this verse would be true, that as we grow in love for you, Lord, that we would also grow in obedience to you.

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Let us not be afraid of obedience. But Lord, let us get it in its proper place.

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Let us not obey to get you to love us. Let us pursue loving you so that we may obey you.

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It's in Christ's name we pray, amen. Now, the grammar in this passage is absolutely critical.

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And we need to look at it for a moment before we move along. We're gonna talk about three things when it comes to the grammar.

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We're gonna talk about the conjugation of love. English is not a conjugated language, so we're gonna, maybe you'll remember from your

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Spanish class that there is such a thing as conjugations, Greek is conjugated. So we're gonna look at the conjugation of love.

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We're gonna look at the condition of love and the category of love. Now, as far as the conjugation goes, the word love in this passage is a subjunctive verb.

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Say it with me, subjunctive verb. Now, this is the verb type that creates conditions.

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This is not a verb type that talks about a certainty. This is, I might do something, I could do something, maybe

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I should do something, maybe I would do something, but you're not currently doing something.

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It's simple, or it's not simple action. Simple action is, I'm doing it. I'm hitting the ball,

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I'm running in the field, I'm playing outside. Those are things that you're currently doing. The subjunctive is talking about uncertain action in the future that you might do, you may do, you could do, you should do, you would do, you might, if, unless, until, it's not certain that you're gonna get to it.

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There's conditions that need to be met before the action happens.

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That's why the subjunctive talks about possibility and not actuality. It communicates things in probabilities, not in certainty.

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So for instance, if I say that I'm gonna go try out for the

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Red Sox and I'm gonna hit one of the fastballs from one of their best pitchers, forgive me, I don't know any of the pitchers of the

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Red Sox, but let's say I was gonna hit a fastball from one of them. Okay, that's a conditional statement.

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I can't tell you I am going to hit the ball. I'm saying that I might, that I may.

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Maybe my timing is too slow, which is likely the case. Maybe I totally whiff at it and I don't even hit it at all.

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Maybe I'm a little early because I'm so nervous, I'm just kinda holding my bat out there thinking I just need to tap it. It's not certain whether the action is gonna be accomplished, there's conditions.

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I need to be conditioned as an athlete before I would wanna endeavor on such a thing. I need to have a good eye,

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I need to be able to see timing, I need to get my swing right. There's conditions that need to be met in order for me to hit the ball.

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And if I don't hit the ball, it's because I didn't meet the conditions. It's not certain, it's something that needs to be met first before I can do it.

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Now, if you've met my wife, if not, she's joyful, lovely, wonderful person, you should meet my wife.

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My wife knows the subjunctive better than anybody that I know. My wife is so good at the subjunctive, she's actually created an entirely new category of grammar, which is often what we do in North Carolina, which is where we're from.

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And I call this the double subjunctive. This is not a grammatical term, so if you went to college for English or for any other language,

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I'm making this up. This is what my wife does. Now, someone could come up to you, here's an example, someone could come up to you and ask you for the favor of a lifetime, and maybe you're too tired, or maybe you have an important meeting, maybe you just don't have the time, and you're struggling for the words to say.

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My wife has got this figured out better than anybody that I know. Instead of struggling on what to say, she will simply offer the phrase, well,

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I might could, double subjunctive. Might and could together, she's put them side by side to increase the intensity of the moment.

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And she's done it with a smile on her face so that you walk away feeling loved but uncertain about what she said.

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Offering both a sense of affection to you, but also a false hope.

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Because what a double subjunctive does is it increases the unlikeliness that it will actually happen.

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She could have said, I might do this, which means that it's low probability that she will be able to do it, or she might have said that I could do this, which means it's low desirability, but she said

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I might could. Not only is there low ability, there's low desire.

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You are basically told no in the kindest possible way that a

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Southern woman can tell you. That's the value of subjunctives.

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That's the value of subjunctives. You're talking about things that aren't yet reality. In English, we can say might to express limited possibility.

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We can express could to talk about limited ability. Would is limited desirability, and should is limited moral ability.

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So we're limiting the possibility of something. You can say if to create a condition. You can say unless to create a contingency plan.

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You can say suppose to create a hypothetical. I suppose I'll do that if, or you can say, well, whether or not

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I get to it, we'll have a good time either way. You're creating, already planting the seeds of, this is probably not gonna happen.

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You're sowing the seeds of doubt. Subjunctives do not tell us what is. They tell us what could be, and that is the mood that Jesus uses to describe love in this passage.

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He doesn't say you will love me. He says if you love me.

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You can insert an English word here to help us out. If you would just love me, the condition's there.

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Jesus is admitting to us right now that our desire is quite feeble.

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If you would just love me, if you would love me in the way that God has called you to love me, if you would love me in a biblical way, instead of being wishy -washy like we always are, barely able to keep ourselves loving him for a second,

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Jesus is describing a condition. We all have ifs when it comes to loving

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Jesus. That's the condition that he's talking about. You can write your own in if you want.

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If I had more time, I would love Jesus better. If I had more knowledge, I would love

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Jesus more. If I was like so -and -so and I could do what they do, or if I had time to do this or that, then

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I would love him more. If I felt his nearness, if he didn't feel so distant, if, if, if, we're always creating conditions around the love of Christ.

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And the question I wanna ask you is what is the condition that you've placed in your heart to say if I had this, then

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I would love him more? You're using the subjunctive.

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Now again, Jesus understands us. He understands that we are half -hearted creatures. He understands that we bumble between idols, food, drink, sex, power, boredom, recreation, entertainment, being over busy, a million other things that choke out the pure love of God.

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But one of the things that I want you to think about here is when we think about this, we tend to have a very negative view.

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If you love me, Lord, how am I gonna do that? We're Calvinist. We're totally depraved.

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We're people who are rotten to the core. Of course, that's true.

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But that's not the whole truth. You've been given the Holy Spirit of God. You've been given the breath of life to grow in your love.

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Jesus doesn't create a condition that you can't meet by the Spirit's power. No one does that.

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No one tries to create conditions that the other person cannot meet or else there would never be anything that moved forward in the world.

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I could tell you, you know what? I want you to jump up and touch the moon with your right hand.

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And if you do, I'll give you $10. That would be utterly ridiculous. No one in here would do it.

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I could make it even a little bit more reasonable and say, if someone here could jump up and touch a 10 -foot rim, then

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I'll buy you a steak burrito and there'll be somebody here who will run and try and will probably fail miserably chasing after that glorious steak burrito.

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The rewards have to be reasonable. Conditions have to have some level of possibility to be met.

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If they're so unremote or so remote that no one could meet them, then no one would try. Jesus is not giving us that.

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He's not putting a carrot out in front of the donkey and saying, if you'll just love me, but I know you won't. That's not what

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Jesus is doing. He's gonna, in the very next verse, tell you that he's gonna give you a helper who's gonna help you love him.

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He's gonna cultivate the love of God in you, not by your power, but by God's power. So he's saying that if you love me by the spirit of God, by the spirit's power, then you will obey me.

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He's not saying that by your power you're gonna love anything that is holy.

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He's saying, by my power, I'm gonna make you into lovers of God instead of haters of God. The condition is gonna be met by him.

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Do you see the conditional element here? If you have good timing, then you'll hit a ball. If you have perfect pitch, maybe you'll get an album deal.

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If you have a well -aimed shot, maybe you'll knock a 10 -point buck. If you have the Holy Spirit of God, then you will love

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God. And if you love him, you'll be able to do what no man outside of the

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Garden of Eden has ever been able to do before. No woman has ever been able to do. The whole Bible is a story about how man cannot obey

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God. Every single person falls short. For all have fallen short of the glory of God.

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All have become liars and murderers. The venom of asps, make sure

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I say that correctly, is on their lips. And yet, by the

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Holy Spirit of God, you and I will be made into new creatures who can love him, who can love him.

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This is what the Spirit has opened up for us. Now, are we gonna do that perfectly? Certainly not. Paul says in Romans 7, the thing that I wanna do,

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I can't do. The thing that I don't wanna do, I end up doing. So we're all in this boat where we're already been given the gift of the

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Spirit, but we're not yet perfectly sanctified. That's normal. The concept, though, is if you will continue to grow in love for me, then you will also obey me.

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Which means that obedience is not based off of more effort, harder work,

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Hail Marys, religion of the wrong variety, beating yourself up, tearing yourself down, none of that.

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Obedience flows out of love. If you wanna learn how to obey God, you need to learn how to love him. If you wanna know how to grow in your sanctification, you need to learn how to love

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God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. If you wanna, that area of sin that's afflicting you, that thing that's bothering you, that issue in your marriage that's harming you, that thing that you're struggling with at work, that negative opinion that you have of that other person, if you wanna grow in any of those areas, it's not because you're gonna work harder on that area, it's because you're gonna devote yourself to loving

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God. You want your marriage to heal, love God more than you love your spouse.

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If you want your children to grow up in a home where they grow up in the fear and admonition of the Lord, take your focus off of them and put your focus onto Christ.

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Our obedience is downstream of our love. So that if you wanna grow in obedience, you must first grow in love.

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In fact, if you, your obedience actually becomes a sign of how healthy your love is.

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If your life's a mess, do not grab the broom and the mop and try to clean yourself up.

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Start with your love. In the same way that a home run proves that you had an excellent swing, usually, in the same way that tender venison proves that you had an accurate shot, biblical obedience proves out that you have a biblical love for Christ.

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So that if you are not obeying, if you have no desire to live like Jesus, if you have no desire to know what

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Christ's commands are, if you have no desire to listen during a sermon, son, if you have nothing inside of you that's calling out to you to love him and obey him, then you have to ask yourself the question, are you truly loving

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Christ? Your behavior betrays where your love actually is.

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Your behavior is evidence of how you are loving Christ. That's the first grammatical point, and the second, excuse me, the third grammatical point is we need to know what kind of love it is because we've talked about a lot of different kinds of love in the

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Greek language. What kind of love is Jesus talking about here? Is he talking about eros?

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Of course not. Jesus is not saying if you must after me, then you will obey me.

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That's not what he's saying. Is he talking about storge? If you have a parental affection for me, then you will love me.

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That's not what he's saying. Is he talking about phallos? If you have a brotherly affection towards me and we're gonna go on mission together, which sounds really

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Christian, especially when we're talking about the church and the mission of God, but that's not what he's saying.

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The word that Jesus is using is not thermotos. I didn't even share that one earlier.

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Do you know what thermotos means? It's the Greek word where we get the word thermometer and thermostat. It has to do with heat, when you have warm feelings about something.

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If I had to tell you what word in the Greek the modern evangelical church has latched onto when it comes to loving

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Jesus, it's thermotos. Let's have warm affections for Jesus. Let's gather here and have our warm and fuzzies tickled.

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Let's have our liver shivers. Let's have our spirit bumps. Let's have all of this. Let's sing our songs and let's go and let's have an experience with God.

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They don't even call church the Lord's day anymore. They call it a worship experience because the goal is that you would have some sort of encounter, that you will have some sort of thing that happens to your emotions that inflates you and affects you so that when you walk out, you feel good.

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Christianity is not about whether you feel good. Oftentimes it doesn't feel good.

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The author and perfecter of our faith didn't feel good when he was being crucified on a Roman cross. The word is not thermotos, where we come and wave our hands and shake our hips and go away with some sort of religious experience.

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That is not, Hindus have that. Buddhists have that. Other religions abound with that sort of thermotos love.

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That's not what Christianity is. Christianity is to love Christ. And he uses the word agape.

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It's actually in the verbal form here, agapao, and it means love that is sacrificial.

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When you give to someone else and you're not expecting to receive anything in return, it's the kind of love that a mother gives over and over and over again to her children.

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I've watched my wife for years not have things because she wanted our children to have them.

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Sacrificial love. It's the kind of love that causes you to help someone in need. It's a self -denying, emptying, lay yourself down, take up your cross kind of love.

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It's the love that when, in your home, it doesn't matter if you're in a Christian home or not, you look at your toddlers and you see that at some point they get it and they go and they share the toy and you're like, that was agape.

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They laid themselves down right there for a moment and they did it and you celebrate that. It's the love when a husband, instead of putting his foot in his mouth because his wife said something that offended his ego, he shuts up and he says, that's a daughter of the king.

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It's the love that Jesus had when he left the splendor of heaven.

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He left all the benefits and all of the blessings and all of the glory and all of the angels singing 24 seven, holy, holy, holy.

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He left that to come down and dwell with you and I. He made himself down, that's agape love.

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It was that agape love that Christ and the Holy Spirit and God for all of eternity were laying themselves down in agape

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Trinitarian fellowship. The cosmos exploded out of the Trinity's love. It was agape that came down and formed

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Adam, breathed life into his nostrils and then rescued him with the skin of an animal once he fell.

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There was nothing that God got out of the relationship with him and Adam, nothing. It was all grace.

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Every bit of it was God pouring out his grace. That's agape. And from Genesis three all the way to Malachi chapter four, it is nothing but a story of God's agape love, his long suffering, his tenderness, his mercy, his patience, his endurance to love people who don't deserve it, that's agape.

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He loved them through their idolatry as they were sacrificing their children on the altar. Yes, he poured out his wrath on them, even that's loving.

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You hear people say that Old Testament is a God of wrath. Imagine what the world would look like if there was no justice, if there was no wrath.

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That's hell, that's what it's gonna look like. It was his agape love that raised up the patriarchs, that raised up the covenant heads.

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It was agape love that brought his people into a good land even though they didn't deserve it.

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It was agape love that rescued them out of exile. It was agape love that brought them back and allowed them to rebuild their temple.

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And it was agape love that caused him to come down and dwell among us in the flesh.

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He didn't just cover his people with the skins of an animal, he covered himself with the skins of us.

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It was his agape love that caused him to heal the sick and the broken and feed the hungry and go into the tax collector's house, the hopeless, the vermin of their society.

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It was his agape love that caused him to welcome the outcast and condemn the leaven of the Pharisees.

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It was agape love that caused him to call his friend Lazarus out of the tomb to save an entire

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Samaritan town who were the untouchables in their little caste system. And it was agape love that caused him to wash his disciples' feet.

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And it was agape love at the highest, most perfect, greatest, best level. You wanna talk about narrowing down what agape love truly looks like.

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It was most beautifully and gloriously displayed on the cross where Jesus forwent his own safety to make us safe, where he denied himself so that you and I would never be denied by the

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Father. He was forsaken so that you and I would be forgiven. He was abused so that you and I would be adored by the

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Father. That is agape love. That's the love that propelled him into action.

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Love is not sitting around in slothful emotionalism.

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Love propels us to duty. His love fueled him to be arrested, unjustly, falsely accused, called all sorts of names, blindfolded, punched, never spoke a word, mocked, beaten, scourged, nails clinging.

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All for love. What a sacrifice.

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What a depth of compassion that the Savior has for you. That would drive him to so much pain physically.

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That would drive him to so much anguish spiritually that he would actually cry out, my God, my

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God, why have you forsaken me? What a depth and what a beauty to the love of Christ that you and I can't even imagine.

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It's written all throughout the scriptures, John 3, 16, for God so loved, agape'd the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

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John 15, 13, greater love, agape has no one than this that he would lay down his life for his friends.

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Romans 5, 8, God demonstrates his own love, agape, towards us in that while we were yet sinners,

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Christ died for us. He died for us not while we were fixed. He died for us while we were broken.

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Ephesians 3, 17 through 19, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith and that you being rooted and grounded in his agape love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the agape love of Christ which surpasses knowledge and that you may be filled up to the fullness of Christ.

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Your obedience, your being filled, your growth, your sanctification, every aspect of your life is downstream of your love for Christ.

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It says in John 4, 9 through 10, by this the love of God was manifested in us that God has sent his only begotten son into the world so that we might live through him and in this is love, not that we have loved

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God but that he has loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

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The best example that I could give you is 1 John 3, 16. This is the other 3, 16. 1

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John 3, 16, we may know love by this, this is how you know love, that he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for others, for the brethren and that brings us to the point.

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We've been talking about for several weeks now what is the greater works that Christ is talking about? The greater work of prayer, the greater work of expansiveness where the gospel is gonna go to the nations and the greater work of love.

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Christ by his own selfless sacrificial agape love has died for you as an example so that you might live and so that you might love.

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So not so that you would have warm and fuzzies, not so that you would have a religious experience when you come to church.

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I don't know if you've noticed, we don't turn the lights down, we don't have fog machines, we're not trying to entrap you in some sort of mesmeric, mantric chaos.

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I could care less if you have an experience from a fleshly standpoint. I want you to know Christ. I want you to know his love.

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He died to make you men and to make you women and to make you children and to people who are finally able to love him back.

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Our call is to love him sacrificially. Back to the text for a moment.

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It says if you love him, that's the condition. If you love him sacrificially, if you rest in the work of the

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Holy Spirit and you love him by laying yourself down, by not seeking your own glory, by not seeking your own good, by not trying to build your little castle but trying to live and build his kingdom, if you love him like that, then you will grow in obedience.

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And if you're not growing in obedience, the diagnosis is not to work harder, it's to look at the way you love him and to diagnose that it's deficient.

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You will not grow one inch in obedience to Jesus until you grow in love.

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You will not grow in victory over your sin. You will not grow to have more affection.

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You will not grow to be more faithful. You will not grow to have a better whatever until you grow in love for Christ.

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Everything is downstream for that. Without that, you have nothing. It is our love that fuels our repentance.

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It is our love that fuels us to have joy to follow him. It is our love that causes us to sing with David, I delight in the law of the

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Lord. It is our love for him that causes us to respond back in love to him, to love him with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength.

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You can't love him unless you first, or you can't even express that unless you realize that you've been loved by him.

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That's the gospel. He loved us first so that we can love him, so that you can get to the end of your life and you hear those beautiful words, well done my good and faithful servant.

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You don't have a whole lot to be in charge of in this life. God didn't give us a whole lot. Spend every waking moment of your life loving him and I guarantee you obedience will follow.

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Don't go home thinking about which 10 commandments do I need to try really hard and juggle. There's a lot of commands in the

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Bible. The Pharisees tried to juggle 640 something of them. Look at how that happened for them.

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Focus on one thing. This is where we're gonna end. Focus on one thing. Love Christ.

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Love him with all you've got. Love him with everything and I promise you the spirit that loves

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Christ more than you do will start cultivating righteousness in you. Love him.

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The obedience will follow. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, let us not be legalist or moralist.

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Lord, help us not to be a people who think we can gain something by our righteousness. Lord, let us be a people who worship you, who love you, who love you more than our spouses, love you more than our children, love you more than our jobs, love you more than our accomplishments, love you more than everything.

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Lord, we know that that kind of love is supernatural. It's not something we can engender or stir up inside of us.

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Lord, we need your Holy Spirit to do that. Holy Spirit, please, please cause us to love you like that.

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Holy Spirit, I beg you in my heart to increase the love of Christ in me because I can't work that on my own power and strength.

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Lord, I pray for our men in this room that you would, by your spirit, by your power, that you would cause them to love

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Christ and that leadership, family worship, honor, hard work, integrity, provision, all those things would come downstream of their love for you,

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Jesus. Lord, I pray for our women that instead of thinking about all the millions of things that they have to do when they get home, and Lord, how easy it is to slip into that when you've got kids swinging off of ceiling fans and screaming and playing on the roof and you're like,

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Lord. Lord, help us, help our mothers, help our daughters, help our women to the degree that they can to grow in the love of Christ.

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Lord, help them to prioritize that. Help our children to see it. Oh, Lord, I pray that a group of children, that a generation of children would not grow up in a loveless house.

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Lord, we have so many competing things that are begging for our affection. Lord, would you please make us singularly focused and make us in love with Jesus.

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And Lord, would the world see how it changes us. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen.