John 14:15 “If ye love me, keep my commandments. 16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; 17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.”
This is one of those passages where it is most clear that you either have it or you don’t, if you don’t, you can’t get it and your not even interested in it; but, if you have it, it is the most precious and dear thing in the whole world to you, and because you have it, you are never alone and never without comfort and help. It is impossible to just start truly loving the Lord on our own. John tells us that “We love him, because he first loved us.” (I John 4:19). One of the blessed benefits of Spiritual Birth (John 3:1-8) is that we both know and experience an extraordinary love for our Lord and we feel His “great love” (Ephesians 2:4) for us. Peter explains the uniqueness of this love, showing that it defies human reasoning: “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:” (I Peter 1:8). This most blessed “love” indeed brings us “joy unspeakable” and mightily works within us to show our love back to our Lord by our obedience to Him. The phrase “If ye love me” has the connotation of ‘considering that you’ “love me”; that being true, then He tells His Apostles and us to show it by keeping His “commandments”. John explains it this way, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.” (I John 5:3); “his commandments are not grievous” to us because we “love” Him! All of this is said to further comfort the confused and hurting Apostles and us when we often fall into that same painful state of mind. Then, the Lord tenderly and lovingly promises to send them “another Comforter”, Who is the Holy Spirit of God, to indwell them. It is the same Holy Spirit that enwraps us with the sweet presence of our Almighty God as He comforts and uplifts us in even the most dark and doleful times in our lives and He also wondrously heightens the joys of our pleasant times.