If We Love Jesus

With regard to the Christian faith and doctrine, we can’t make up our own version of the gospel message. We can’t ignore the Scriptures we don’t like and build our doctrine of salvation around a few select passages of Scripture which are being taught outside their context. We must look at the whole of what the New Testament Scriptures teach on salvation and our relationship with God and eternal life with God, in context, and let that teach us truth.

 

We can’t create our own god and our own jesus and our own salvation message out of our own minds and imaginations to suit our own lifestyles, yet that is what many are doing these days. You can show them Scripture after Scripture and they will still revert right back to their own made up relationship with God/Jesus Christ, and their man-created gospel message, and their false hope of salvation and of eternal life with God based on a lie.

 

John 14:15-17,21-24 ESV

 

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.”

 

“’Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.’ Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, ‘Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?’ Jesus answered him, ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me.’”

 

We Will Obey His Word

 

If we love Jesus, we will keep (obey) his commandments. We will obey his word. And we will be loved by God the Father, and Jesus will love us, and he will manifest (show, make plain, reveal) himself to us, and they (the Father and the Son) will come to us and they will make their home with us, and the Spirit of God will indwell us. But if we do not love God, we do not obey his words, and that means that Jesus, God the Son, will not make himself known to us, and God will not come and make their home with us, and the Holy Spirit of God will not live within us, so we will not be saved.

 

And Jesus also said that if any of us would come after him, we must deny self, and take up our cross daily (daily die to sin) and follow (obey) him. And he said that if anyone keeps (obeys) his word, he will never see death, i.e. he will have eternal life with God. And he said that if we keep (obey) his commandments that we will abide in his love. And he said that his sheep (his followers) listen to his voice and they follow (obey) him. And then he said that not everyone who says to him, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one doing the will of God the Father who is in heaven.

 

[Lu 9:23-26; Jn 8:51; Jn 14:15-24; Jn 15:10; Jn 10:27-30; Matt 7:21-23]

 

Then, we read in the other New Testament writings that God/Jesus will render to each one according to his works, and for those who are self-seeking and who do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and furry, not eternal life. And we read that we are slaves of the one whom we obey, either of sin, which leads to DEATH, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness and to sanctification, which ends in eternal life.

 

And we read that just as we have always obeyed (if we have) that we are to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in us, both to will and to work for HIS good pleasure. But if we love (prefer, long for) the world of sin, the love of God the Father is not in us, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. For if we say that we know God but we don’t keep (obey) his commandments, we are liars, and the truth is not in us, i.e. we don’t know God, even if we think that we do.

 

And then we read that whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother, and this is in the context of the teaching that says that no one who abides in Christ makes a practice of sinning. If sinning is your practice, you are of the devil, it says. And then we read that whoever keeps (obeys) the Lord’s commandments abides in God, and God in him. And this is love that we walk (in conduct, in practice) according to our Lord’s commandments.

 

And Jesus Christ became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, and we are sanctified of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ. And we are to be doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving ourselves, for it is only those who look into the perfect law (the gospel), the law of liberty, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts who will be blessed of God in his doing.

 

And then we have examples given to us of the Israelites and their disobedience to God in their sinful practices and how God killed many of them in the wilderness and how those who disobeyed due to unbelief were not able to enter into God’s eternal rest because of their disobedience (unbelief). They were destroyed, instead, because they refused to bow the knee to God and to forsake their sins and to follow him in obedience.

 

[Rom 2:6-8; Rom 6:16-23; Php 2:12-13; 1 Jn 2:15-17; 1 Jn 2:3-6; 1 Jn 3:4-10,24; 2 Jn 1:6; Heb 5:9; 1 Pet 1:1-2; Jas 1:21-25; 1 Co 10:1-22; Heb 3:1-19; Heb 4:1-13]

 

So, please take this to heart, for the Scriptures teach that if we don’t obey the Lord that we don’t know him and we don’t have eternal life with him. And they teach that if sin is our practice, we will not inherit the kingdom of heaven. So, don’t ignore these Scriptures, please! Your eternity depends on you believing and living the truth, not lies that are made up in the minds of humans who want to continue living in sin.

 

[Lu 9:23-26; Jn 6:35-58; Jn 15:1-11; Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-17; Eph 4:17-24; 1 Pet 2:24; 1 Co 6:9-10,19-20; 2 Co 5:10,15,21; Tit 2:11-14; Jas 1:21-25; Rom 12:1-2; Eph 2:8-10; Php 2:12-13; Col 1:21-23; Gal 5:16-21; Eph 5:3-6; Gal 6:7-8; Rom 2:6-8; Heb 10:26-27; 1 Jn 1:5-9; 1 Jn 2:3-6; 1 Jn 3:4-10; Matt 7:21-23; Rev. 2-3; Rev 18:1-6; Rev 21:8, 27; Rev 22:14-15]

 

My Sheep  

 

An Original Work / June 24, 2012  

Based off John 10:1-18 NIV

 

My sheep hear me. They know me.

They listen to my voice and obey.

I call them and lead them.

They know my voice, so they follow me.

They will never follow strangers.

They will run away from them.

The voice of a stranger they know not;

They do not follow him.

 

So, I tell you the truth that

I am the gate, so you enter in.

Whoever does enter

Will find forgiveness and will be saved.

Nonetheless whoever enters

Not by the gate; other way,

He is the thief and a robber.

Listen not, the sheep to him.

 

Oh, I am the Good Shepherd,

Who laid his own life down for the sheep.

I know them. They know me.

They will live with me eternally.

The thief only comes to steal and

Kill and to destroy the church.

I have come to give you life that

You may have it to the full…

 

They know my voice, so they follow me.

 

https://vimeo.com/114938263