That is part of the verse found in John 14:23 and because we are quoting from the book Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible by John Haley and since it was published before his death in 1927, the verse is from the KJV:
And Jesus said unto him, If a man love me. he will keep my words; and my father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him…
Those are very powerful words but as you can see, love for Jesus means obedience to his instructions. This is where people get confused as they think that Jesus’ instructions stop with the red letters in the red letter edition.
They pass off the other biblical books as the words of the disciples and not Jesus’ words. Thus there is a lot of disagreement among those who are Christian and those who claim to be Christian.
The former understands that the entire New Testament are Jesus words while the latter put the content down to human ideas. But we know from the Gospel of MAtthew that Jesus gave the words his father gave to him to his disciples. Thus, the whole NEw Testament are the words of Jesus.
What that means is that Paul is not writing his own version of Christianity, nor are Peter, James or John. All the words in the other books of the New Testament are Jesus’ words and the work together to help Christians live right and make the right choices.
The latter group decides which verses they will accept and often those words are defined according to their limited human understanding. For example, this people group will take a verse like ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ or ‘love your neighbor as I have loved you’ and falsely define and apply it to mean that government laws are not scriptural nor to be followed.
They use a very limited application for whatever reason they may have and distort the scriptures to fit their points of views, instead of changing their points of views to fit the proper meaning of scriptures.
This people group limit the word love to what they think it means without taking the time to see how Jesus defined and applied it. Another here is ‘Love one another as I have loved you’. Here what many people do not do is look deeply into the meaning opf this passage.
How did Jesus love his disciples and us? Here are a few points to ponder (To borrow a Readers Digest phrase):
- Jesus did not lie to his disciples, he always told the truth
- Jesus did not teach his disciples to break government laws
- Jesus made sure his disciples and the p[eople around him were fed, clothed, and healthy and he did it properly
- Jesus did not teach his disciples to commit sin to get what they wanted
- Jesus provided the right example to his followers and family
- Jesus was not a hypocrite nor taught his disciples to be hypocrites
That is just the start of how Jesus defined and applied the term love. Also, for ‘love thy neighbor as theyself’ Jesus did not support illegal activity even if he did not like the laws the government implemented.
As long as those laws did not viol;ate his and his father’s commands and instructions, the laws were to be obeyed. Plus, he never put his disciples or other people in harm’s way. He fed people and di dnot let them go away hungry.
He healed everyone even though they may not have had to sit through a gospel message b efore he acted. Loving one’s neighbor means keeping the borders closed to illegal immigration because love does not let criminals and other people who disrespect the nation’s immigeration laws inside the country.
If one wants to love their international neighbor, they do not put their domestic neighbors at risk. We cannot use the move by Mary and Joseph to Egypt as an example of making illegal immigration legitimate.
We do not know what the immigration laws were at that time and since Joseph was a righteous man, he would not break the laws if it meant breaking God’s laws. But there are other passages of scriptures that certain ‘Christian’ groups ignore.
They see the passages on who can be a pastor of a church and then use faulty arguments of ‘the culture of that time’ to twist the passages to allow women to gain access to positions they are not allowed to have.
They are not disobeying Paul, as those instructions come from God or Jesus. Thus they are disobeying Jesus when they try to find loopholes in those instructions. These are not the only examples of people disobeying Jesus’ words.
Many people lose their faith because they start to listen to unbelievers over Jesus and God. When you do that, you are not loving Jesus. There is no biblical instruction to listen to unbelievers over God and his word.
This includes listening to unbelieving scientists who claim God did not create everything as he said? Who are those scientists who think they can say what God did or didn’t do? Are they omnipresent and saw God act?
Are they omniscient and know what God did or can prove that God does not exist? No, they are blind, deceived, and lost people who cannot determine what God did in the past. Their knowledge and experience do not trump God’s.
If one loves Jesus, one accepts that God created everything in 6-24 hour days. The reason to do that is because Jesus spoke of creation. Jesus was very clear in John 5 in the following words:
46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. 47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?
Loving Jesus means believing Genesis 1 & 2 as written. Disbelieve Moses and you will have difficulty believing all of Jesus’ words throughout the NT. This is one reason why many ‘Christians’ ignore Paul’s, Peter’s, James’, and John’s words in their epistles.
They do not believe Moses and they do not believe Jesus’ words. If you love Jesus, you will take the time to find out how God defined many terms and use those new thoughts to change your point of view.
If you love Jesus, show it by following his words correctly.
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