If you love Me...

John 14:15

If you love me,  you will obey my commands.

If you love me.  How can you help but love Jesus Christ?  Whether we want to believe it or not, whether we like it or not, we live in a messed up world.  It is messed up because of sin. ..not just the awful murder, maim, and rape sins, but the subtle sins of white lies such as no one will notice if you don't attend church, blaming someone else so you don't have to take responsibility, reflecting blame onto someone else and away from us so we look good, not doing something we know we should do, not saying something when we know we should have said something.  All subtle sins, right? Not as bad as murdering someone, right? 

Wrong! Unfortunately for that way of thinking, God doesn't differentiate between sins.  He is so holy and perfect,  that even subtle sins are too much to allow us in His presence (both by pray and at death). However, He still loves us so much that He gave us a way to be with Him for eternity and talk to Him all the time anyway. He sent His holy son, Jesus Christ. Jesus was crucified on the cross to take the punishment for all of our subtle and major sins. Each and every one of them each and every day! He now sits at the right hand of God  as our mediator, so our sins are cleaned up by Him in order to allow us the opportunity to talk to God. To live with Good eternally! 

So, no matter how much we mess up,  if we just keep trying to do things the way God wants us to, Christ will make us righteous in God's eyes. We can spend eternity in the heavenly, holy, perfect, presence of God with no more pain, no more heart ache, no more sin! 

His commands are to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, our soul, our mind. The second greatest commandment is to love our neighbors (everyone else) as we love ourselves. So, if we love Jesus Christ (God), we will continue to show our love for Him by then loving our imperfect friends, acquaintances, neighbors, strangers. Giving them the same mercy we have been given over and over again every single day through Jesus Christ!