THE NEW COMMANDMENT

"If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever -- the Spirit of truth .. .. .. .. for He dwells with you and will be in you." John 14:15-17 Yeshua gave us an exhortation -- If we love Him - keep His commands!

Then He goes on to say that for that purpose, to enable us to be able to keep His commandments, He will pray the Father for the holy Spirit of truth to be imparted to them/us. The difference being that whereas the Spirit of God was with them up to that time, He would after ward be in them.

And that is the difference between the previous covenant and the one which Yeshua made through the sacrifice of Himself for the atonement of our sins, in the new covenant. His grace, or enabling power is imparted to us so that we are empowered to keep the commandments He has given us.

He has said earlier in the same discourse with them, "As the Father has loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love." John 14: 9-10

Yeshua says that He loves us with the same type of self-sacrificial agape love, that the Father has for Him. Remaining in that love relationship, requires our obedience to His Commandments. And this is likened to the same principle that is the basis for Yeshua being in the relationship which He has with the Father.

YESHUA'S RELATIONSHIP TO THE FATHER

He presented the relationship which He had with the Father to the people, as the basis for everything which He did, "for the works which the Father has given Me to finish -- the very works that I do -- bear witness of Me, that the Father has sent Me." John 5:36

"He who sent Me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I heard from Him."

"When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself, but as the Father taught Me, I speak these things." John 8:26, 28

Here He states that He does nothing of Himself. That is the evidence of the complete obedience which was the basis of His relationship with the Father. His whole heart, mind and strength was yielded to the Father's will so that He only spoke those things that He saw the Father speaking. As He said, "I speak what I have seen with My Father" John 8:38

He was in such a place of intimacy and unity with the Father, that He could behold His intended responses for Him in each situation and transmit them into action, so that what He did and said and how He judged every person, was what the Father was doing and saying in each given instance. He was the perfect expression, the exact enactment of the Word of the Father to the people. He perfectly kept the Father's commandments in this way because He stayed in that relationship of self-sacrificial love and abrogation of any personal interests, to the will of the Father. As He said,

"I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me." John 5:30

"Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me; or else believe Me for the works themselves." John 14:10-11 .

THE BELIEVER'S RELATIONSHIP TO YESHUA

This same type of relationship that Yeshua had with the Father, is now made possible for the believer by the new covenant and brought into effect by the indwelling of His Spirit within their being. Each believer is now brought into unity with Yeshua, so that they also may live out of a relationship with Him, as He did with the Father. And this is what He calls us into,

"As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, even so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me." John 6:57

Out of a relationship of feeding on His Word, we will be sustained in spiritual life, and this life is through the impartation of His Spirit which we must maintain through obedience, as He said,

"If you keep My commandments you will abide in My love" (John 15:10)

That which has been imparted to us is His very own life which overcame the temptations of the enemy, kept Himself without sin and walked in perfect obedience to the Father. Yet with one difference, we still have the fallen human nature to overcome, hence the need for the exhortation to remain in that life-flow which He has made available to us, "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the Vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me." John 15: 4

The fruit of His life is only possible by being connected to the source which produced it. We must walk in a spiritual bond with Him, just as He did with the Father. It was in and through that relationship that He kept the commandments which is the original standard of behavior and lifestyle for man created in God's image. He became the living example of the principles which were laid out in written form in the scriptures.

As He said, "He who has seen Me, has seen the Father" John 14: 9

He was the perfect reflection of the Father, a man made in the image and likeness of God.

Just as Yeshua said "the Father who dwells in Me does the works", so it must be the Spirit of Christ in us that produces the works, and not our own efforts borne out of our own will. It is living by the life of Yeshua and not by a set of commandments. The written commandments are an outline, a framework. But the framework of the house needs an outer covering to define its shape properly and that was provided in the human life of Yeshua the Messiah. He was the visible flesh upon the basic framework of God's principles by which man should order his life spiritually and socially.

THE EXAMPLE OF HIS LIFE

With all the commandments Yeshua sought to take men's understanding to a higher level of what was required of them; that it was not just the outward performance of the commands, but that it also included the origins of those things in the heart. Murder included hatred and adultery included lust. Loving your neighbor included going the extra mile for him.

But it went even further than this in the new covenant. Through the impartation of God's love, Yeshua now asks us to love each other at a new level. He says, "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you" John 15:12

He calls us to love each other with the same type of love through which He laid down His life for us. It is a higher calling than loving one's neighbor as oneself. This is the heart attitude of loving our brother more than ourselves -- for His sake!

By the impartation of His nature, His love is in our hearts, and so He calls us to walk in that love with each other, "because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us." Romans 5: 5b

"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and every one who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love." 1 John 4: 7