The most central doctrine of Christianity is to love God and love one another (Mark 12:28–31). Many preachers and commentators have said that love is not simply emotional in the Bible; love is an action. However, I think that sometimes we are in danger of simply equating obedience and love. I can obey someone’s commands for many reasons other than love. I may obey their commands because I want the benefits that obedience provide for me. I may heed their orders because I am afraid of their punishment. So, obeying God’s commands does not always mean that you love God.

Someone may say, “What about John 14:15, where Jesus says, ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments’?” I certainly used to think that this meant ‘love = obedience.’ Only about a paragraph later we also see, “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me” (14:21). However, after hearing part of a sermon on this topic, I realized that I may be thinking about this passage all wrong.

Now notice that this verse is a conditional or “if…then” statement. The “if” part must happen in order for the “then” part to occur. We often understand John 14:15 as “If you love me, you [must] keep my commandments” or more colloquially “You have to keep my commandments to prove that you love me.” However, the conditional implies that obedience to the commandments can only occur when you first love Jesus. What I am getting at is this: Love is what will lead us, motivate us, and enable us to keep Jesus’ commandments. We have had it backward this whole time. We must love in order to obey, not obey in order to love. But just as faith without works is dead, so also love without obedience is dead.