Commentary on the Gospel of John

                                  Chapter Fourteen

                                                                                                                                               Verse 15

Jesus gave only four commandments while He was on the earth: that a person should love God and his neighbor, that a person should believe in Him, and that His followers should love one another. Matthew 22:35-40; John 6:28-29; John 13:34-35. Love and faith replace the Ten Commandments for those who are saved by grace.

The Ten Commandments are a rigid, objective standard that requires obedience whether a person loves God and his fellow man or not. Exodus 20:1-17. God provided severe punishments for those who deliberately disobeyed the law and refused to offer a sacrifice for their forgiveness. Numbers 15:32-36. God gave His people the law because they rejected His offer of a covenant of grace. God reminded His people that He alone had saved them from slavery in Egypt. God alone can save. His people can only have faith that He alone can save. In His offer of grace, God promised His people that He would make them a "peculiar treasure" unto Himself and a "kingdom of priests" and a "holy nation." To be a priest means that a believer can know God personally and can directly talk with God and can be filled with God's Spirit of Love and compassion which will cause a believer to love God and his fellow man with no need for a rigid law. Exodus 19:3-7.

The people of God refused God's covenant of grace and demanded that Moses ask God to give them a law for them to obey. They actually desired that God provide for them laws that they thought they could obey to show God how good they could make themselves so that God would accept them because of their goodness. But every human has an evil nature within them that inevitably causes them to commit sins and evils to the extent that they can never make themselves good enough to be accepted by God. Romans 3:23. Even the desire to try to make oneself good enough to be accepted by God demonstrates the sin of pride. Pride is the effort to tell God that one does not need Him anymore. Romans 3:9-29; Romans 1:18-32. God's people should have realized by their past record of sin and rebellion that they could not obey the law. Exodus 19:8. When His people refused His grace, God demonstrated His fiery wrath against evil from the mountaintop to cause His people to strive to obey His laws because of their fear of Him. To fear God is to have a type of dependence on Him. Exodus 19:9-25. But God also gave His people a sin offering and a burnt offering which also happens to be a part of His law so that if a believer humbled himself to bring an offering for his sin, then God would cleanse and forgive that sin. To bring such an offering demonstrated humility and faith that only God can save from sin and evil. Leviticus 5:7-10.