John 14:15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.
John 14:30 “I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me;
John 14:31 but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Get up, let us go from here.
Acts of obedience are not primarily, if at all, acts of duty, instead they are acts of affection. To obey God because you are supposed to, or because you have to, or because you are afraid not to, brings no pleasure to His burning heart. He wants our obedience to be acts of adoration and love. Jesus is our Heavenly Bridegroom, not our Heavenly Drill Instructor. We express our affection not just with words or song, but we mainly express our love through delighting obedience.
Jesus is our great example and shares His example with His Disciples after calling them to love Him through their obedience. In those last two verses He is preparing them for the suffering that would lead Him to the Cross, that was to begin that very night. He warned them that the ruler of the world was coming and much evil, betrayal, and cruelty would be released. They would see much evil and would even participate in those who wound betray Him. Yet, He let them know that His sacrificial march to the Cross wasn’t about the Devil taking over His (Jesus’s) story. The Devil, He said, had no part in Him or His story. He said the truth about His journey to the Cross was a story of extravagant love.
The Cross and all of the suffering involved was first and foremost His way of showing the world how much He loved the Father. He was obeying the Father’s plan (commandment) to go to the Cross out of love. Love would rule these events, not the Devil, or evil men, or sin. O’ to love Jesus the way He loved the Father. How I long to so love Hi, that, through my extravagant surrender and obedience, I could show the whole world how much I love Him.