If, Then Conditional Confusion and Legalism

If you love me, you’ll obey my commands. – John 14:15

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this from the non-legalistic point of view.

Forever people have read this – I have read this – like "If you love me, then you will do what I say so go figure out what I said so that you can do it and that will show that you love me."

I’ve messed up the cause and effect here.

If you love me => then you’ll do what I say.

The other unspoken message here is the guilt that comes daily when we fail to obey Jesus. "You must not love me, because you didn’t obey my commands." Which is of course a lie from Hell. You don’t have to go far in scripture to find folks that loved Jesus a lot, failed to follow His directions, and didn’t get the lightning bolt treatment.

But from some of the other stuff Jesus says, and because He doesn’t elaborate here or in any other place around this statement of what His rules and laws are, I think we have it backwards.

What if we looked at it like this:

"Love me, which is my command."

That might be a better way of expressing what I’m thinking. "The work of God is this, to believe in the One He sent." and to obey Christ’s commands is to love Him.