John 15:7-11″ If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. 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. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.”
Jesu invites us to “abide in His love.” Jesus told the apostles to follow his model, for he said he was always abiding in his Father’s love. Just as Jesus abided in his Father’s love through obedience to his father’s will; the disciples would be able to continually abide in Jesus’ love by keeping his commandments. Keeping the Father’s commandments obviously didn’t obligate the Father to start loving him. The Father loved him from eternity past, and at his baptism declared Jesus to be His “Beloved”. Jesus was saying, that as the Son of Man, his obedience to the Father’s Commandments allowed him to consciously marinate in the experience of his Father’s love. This is the life Jesus was inviting his disciples, and us, to enter into. His love for them was settled, and his example of washing their feet made it very clear that he would never stop loving them, even if their spiritual feet got dirty from time to time. Instead, He was inviting them to live beyond just being aware theologically that he loved them. He was wanting them to know the fullness of joy of consciously marinate in the experience of his love. Quite simply, to Abide in His love is to obey. This is how we mature and grow and love. Somehow, our acts of obedience, even in the simplest things, awakens our hearts to love. John 14:21, says that if we love him we will keep his commandments. It is a glorious cycle: when we obey him for loves sake, we increase in love. The refrain of one of Misty Edwards songs says it this way, ‘The reward of love, is love.”