John 14:15 - Exposition

If ye love me, keep £ my commandments . This great saying is enlarged on in the subsequent section—the relation of love to obedience, obedience producing love, and love suggesting obedience and supplying it with motive. τὰς ἐντολὰς τὰς ἐμάς , "the commandments which are peculiarly mine" (see Westcott on John 15:9 ), "as either adopted and reuttered by me , or as originating in my new relation to you." "Guard them as a sacred deposit, obey them as the only reasonable response you can make to authoritative command." It is somewhat startling to find the great promise that follows conditioned by loving obedience, seeing that love and obedience in any sinful man, love to Christ itself, are elsewhere made the work of the Holy Spirit. But we here come across that which often perplexes the student, viz. the contrast between the general idea of the constant and continuous work of grace in human hearts, and the special manifestation in personal glory and Divine activity of the Holy Ghost on Pentecost.