Yesterday, I heard an interview with the son of a famous Bible teacher, and he was reflecting on his father’s life. He made the point that his father was not just a man of belief—he was a man of conviction. Having seen his father’s ministry and public life, I would say that’s true. He obviously had clear convictions toward biblical truth, and that’s to be commended.
But to me, in my mind, it’s like… that’s fine, but it’s not nearly enough.
Jesus said in the Gospel of John, “If you love Me, you will obey Me” (John 14:15). Notice the beautiful assumption in Jesus’ words—He’s speaking to those who already do love Him. This isn’t meant to be a burden; it’s a promise about what naturally flows from a love relationship. When genuine love is present, obedience follows as surely as fruit comes from a healthy tree. There is something about obeying. But it is a problem to obey God without love. And I think this gets into at least some of the problems with the scribes, Pharisees, and teachers of the Law in Jesus’ time. They obeyed God—they tried to obey God as much as they could through the law—and they failed. In fact, they failed so spectacularly that when the Messiah Himself showed up, when Jesus came on the scene, they completely missed who He was. They didn’t understand that He was coming as the Son of God, in the image of the Father, as the long-awaited Messiah. But they plotted to kill Him, and succeeded in doing so.
There is a difference between obedience without love and obedience with love.
What would have made a difference in their lives if they had obedience with love? Well, when you have love, you’ve got relationship. In fact, you’ve got relationship to the highest degree. Think about what is communicated to us and revealed to us about the nature of God’s love. In 1 Corinthians 13, the great love chapter, we see a powerful picture of what God’s love is like. In Ephesians chapter 5, it says that Jesus has a relationship with His church like a bride, and He laid down His life for her, and that becomes an injunction or a model for husbands: “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and He laid down His life.”
So we see in the love relationship where there’s so much more that can be offered than in a relationship of mere obedience.
I think we have very little understanding of what was really going on in the minds of the Pharisees. We tend to nitpick on them and wag or shake our fingers at them, but we don’t understand the Pharisee in ourselves. We have to understand the universality of sin and the condition of sin that is throughout the whole human race, which is clearly and vividly portrayed in Romans chapter 1, beginning in verse 18, all the way through to Romans 3:20. That isn’t just the Pharisees and their condition that’s listed there in Romans—it is the condition of the entire fallen human race.
And so what was going on in the Pharisees’ lives was the problem of sin, the fundamental problem of sin in the human race, except it manifested itself in the lives of religious people, in the lives of people who I believe sincerely wanted to obey God. But they were so far from God, they didn’t have a relationship with God. They certainly didn’t love God.
How do we know that? Jesus said, “If you knew My Father, you would know Me” (John 8:19). Those who had a true relationship with God the Father—when the Messiah Jesus showed up, they recognized Him and they embraced Him and they believed Him.
There is a vast difference between obedience with love and loveless obedience. And that love and obedience working together is what Jesus shared with His disciples in the upper room in John chapters 13 through 17.
But here’s the beautiful truth that transforms everything: We love God because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). The source of our love isn’t something we manufacture or work up within ourselves—it flows from His love for us. This is the “God First” approach that changes everything. When we understand that He is the source of all love, all good gifts, all righteousness, then our obedience becomes the overflow of His love working in and through us (1 John 5:3).
Scripture tells us that “every good and perfect gift is from above, from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning” (James 1:17). Every good thing—including our love for Him, our desire to obey Him—comes from God Himself. He is the source. We are not trying to generate love or obedience from our own hearts; we are receiving His love and allowing it to flow through us in loving obedience.
This is what the Pharisees missed completely. They were trying to produce righteousness and obedience from their own resources, apart from relationship with the God who is the very source of all that is good (1 John 4:8). They had missed the heart of it all—that God is love, God is the giver of every good gift, and we come to Him not to perform but to receive.
The love of God is coupled with obedience. The obedience of God is coupled with the love of God. But it all begins with His love for us, His goodness toward us, His grace poured out upon us.