![]() He took the burden of that responsibility away from you when He died on the cross. If you accepted Jesus and His sacrifice for your life, all your sins are gone-past, present and future! Jesus paid the price with His own body. You no longer have the responsibility of keeping all the “commands” and rules because He did it for you, and He is now One with you. If you are a parent, you can imagine what a sacrifice that must have been for God, the Father. He fulfilled every rule and every law in the Bible, and then as the perfect sacrifice (or substitute), which God required, He paid the penalty for our sins by giving up His life. But Jesus wasn’t just a man, He was both God and man. We cannot go one day without having an improper thought or word. As humans, we are unable to follow all the instructions set forth in the Bible, no matter how hard we try or how committed we are. Jesus already kept all the commands and lived the perfect life for you and for me. ![]() Well friend, you can be encouraged, and let me tell you why. Chances are, you have avoided the Bible or church for that very reason. So what about the “commands” Jesus told us to keep? Those commands not only sound intimidating, but quite honestly, burdensome. Being one with Him has great benefits and blessings. Then you are One with the Father and the Son, as John 14:17 says. That’s when the Holy Spirit (or Spirit of truth) makes His home with you. “Jesus answered and said to 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.’” Once you ask Jesus’ forgiveness and accept Him as your Savior, the Bible says in John 14:23 that He takes up residence in you. First of all, we must take that initial leap of faith to believe Jesus was the Son of God and died on the cross for our sins. Let’s get down to the basics to find out. John 14:15-16 says, “If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever“ In the two verses immediately preceding John 14:17, Jesus very plainly tells us who that is: those who love Him and keep His commandments. God has to work a tremendous miracle even to get us to be willing to come to Christ and begin to learn.John 14:17 is a Bible verse in the New Testament where Jesus is teaching us who has the Holy Spirit, or Spirit of truth. If it were not for that-for God's mercy in choosing us to be called-we would never make it off the starting block. Our calling is a tremendous act of mercy on God's part it is a miraclethat we even respond. If God did not do this miraculous work, the enmity against Him ( Romans 8:7)-coupled with our spiritual confusion-would never permit the process of conversion even to start. So it is with us: The Spirit is with us before conversion, and it is by this means that God brings us to Christ. This did not occur until Pentecost, in Acts 2. ![]() However, a time was coming when it would be in them, literally. If we fail to do the latter, even though God's Spirit is "with" us-leading us to Christ-it will never be "in" us unless we respond and meet the conditions.įor the disciples at the time, the Spirit was with them-in Christ, teaching and guiding. ![]() This clarifies the matter of coming to Christ. Notice that the Spirit is described as being with and in. He shows another condition (in addition to the ones in John 7:37-39) for the giving of the Holy Spirit: "Keep My commandments." Thus, the Spirit was not yet given either. When this was spoken, Jesus had not yet died, so He had not yet been resurrected and glorified. ![]()
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