We’ve been studying Jesus’ words to His disciples in John 15 about how to really grow to be like Him. He has been telling them that real growth is not produced primarily by willpower, but by abiding in Him. Using the imagery of a grapevine as a teaching tool, the Lord has been showing us that spiritual life does not come from straining harder, but from staying connected. Character change is not something we manufacture, but something He produces in us as we remain in Him.
Today we come to verses 9 through 11, where Jesus presses the question one step further. What does that growth actually feel like from the inside? What does it produce in real people living real lives? His answer is not merely outward improvement, but inward reordering. Abiding does not only change what you do. It changes what you want. It forms a new gladness to do what pleases Him.
That is hard for many of us to hear, because our instincts often put obedience and joy on opposite sides of the room. We tend to hear “obedience” and think restriction, loss of self, cramped living. We hear “joy” and think freedom, self-expression, and getting to do what we want. I want focus on how Christian obedience and joy work together and are not mutually exclusive experiences. Some of the most joyful moments a Christian ever has come on the other side of disciplined obedience. If you have ever trusted a doctor, coach, or someone who knew what they were doing and genuinely wanted your good, you obeyed without feeling smaller. When authority is trustworthy you feel helped. But when authority is untrustworthy, obedience feels misaligned with who you really are.
Jesus says that His aim is not to take their joy away, but to bring it to fullness. He says the end goal of His words is that His joy would be in them, and that their joy would be made full. There is a kind of obedience that deepens your enjoyment of life rather than diminishes it. We are going to see that joyful obedience grows out of receiving and remaining in Christ’s love. Let’s read His words:
John 15:9-11 NASB "Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. 10 "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. 11 "These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.
Notice how verse 9 begins, “Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you.” If you think this through, I hope you will see why this is a sentence. Jesus does not say, “I love you the way a shepherd loves his sheep,” or “I love you the way a father loves a child,”. Those would be breathtaking enough, but He says that the love He has for His disciples is measured by the love His Heavenly Father has for Him.
Christ’s love for us is measured by the Father’s love for the Son.
In order to properly understand that you have to understand the love between the Father and the Son. When Jesus speaks about the Father loving Him, He is not talking about a vague feeling of goodwill in heaven. John’s Gospel tells us what that love looks like. Before there was a universe, before there was sin, there was an eternal love within the triune God Himself. Jesus prays:
John 17:24 NASB "Father… You loved Me before the foundation of the world.
That love is not fragile and not reactive. The Father delights in the Son, and He has always delighted in Him. And that love is not passive. The Father loves the Son and gives all things into His hand (John 3:35). The Father loves the Son and shows Him what He is doing (John 5:20). The Father loves the Son, and the Son obeys even to the point of laying down His life (John 10:17). And Jesus says, “Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you.” Do you hear what He is doing? He is not measuring His love for you by your stability, your performance, or your momentum. He is measuring His love for you by the Father’s love for Him. The love that flows eternally within God Himself is the love Christ has set upon His disciples. The Apostle Paul prays in Ephesians 3 that we…
Ephesians 3:18-19 NASB may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
In other words, the love itself exceeds our capacity to comprehend it. That is the love you are standing in this morning, if you belong to Him. Not because you have earned it. Not because your theology is precise enough or your repentance deep enough. But because the Father, before the foundation of the world, chose to love you in Christ (John 17:24), and nothing in creation has the power to sever that bond.
Joy grows as we remain in the experienced love of Christ.
John 15:9 NASB …abide in My love.
Joyful obedience does not grow from fear or pressure. It grows from remaining in the you have already received. Notice that Jesus command to “abide in My love” comes right after the staggering comparison in verse 9. He does not say, “Now don’t do anything to make me love you less.” The command to “abide in My love” only makes sense if His love is already standing over them like a settled verdict. Jesus is not inviting them to prove they’re worthy of His love. He is telling them to stay where His love has already placed them. “Abide” means remain, continue, stay. It is the language of residence, not the language of audition. He is describing a life lived inside the reality of His love, where His love becomes the atmosphere you breathe, not a prize you chase.
It’s possible to hear the word “abide” and instantly translate it into “Do not mess this up.” But if Christ’s love for you doesn’t change then our job is to simply keep enjoying what is already true. It is possible to belong to Christ and still live like a spiritual orphan, always bracing for rejection, always trying to pay God back, always obeying with clenched teeth. Jesus is calling His disciples away from that mindset and to live like men who are actually loved.
That is why joyful obedience does not grow out of fear or pressure. Fear can produce compliance, but it cannot produce joy. Fear can make you busy, but it cannot make you free. Fear always keeps a hidden escape route open, obeying while secretly resenting the One who commands. It may look disciplined, but it is hollow. Scripture says it plainly:
1 John 4:18 NASB "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear…"
When fear is driving you, obedience becomes a strategy for self-protection. You obey to keep God off your back and your conscience quiet. You obey to feel superior about yourself. But when love is driving you, obedience becomes a response, not a negotiation. You obey because you trust the One commanding you and believe His heart is good. You obey because His love has changed what you want.
That is what Jesus is after when He says, “abide in My love.” He is saying, “Live under My smile; Stay close to Me; Do not treat My love like a doctrine you nod at and then leave on the shelf; Remain in it.” This is why the New Testament speaks of Christians not as slaves scrambling to avoid punishment, but as children brought near.
Romans 8:15 NASB "For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons…"
When Jesus calls you to obedience, He is not calling you into a cold relationship where you are tolerated as long as you perform. He is calling you into communion, the kind of nearness where His love becomes the strongest motive in the room. That is the difference between pressure and love. Pressure says, “Do this or else.” Love says, “After what He has done, how could I run from Him?” Pressure produces resentment or pride. Love produces humility and steadiness. Pressure makes obedience feel like shrinking. Love makes obedience feel like coming home.
When Jesus says, “abide in My love,” He is giving you the soil where joyful obedience grows. The root is not fear. The root is not self-improvement. The root is not the panic of proving you are real. The root is staying close enough to Christ that His love is not merely believed as a fact, but enjoyed as a reality. And when you stay there, obedience starts to change flavor. It stops feeling like a sentence and starts feeling like alignment with the One who loved you first.
Joyful obedience grows as we remain in the experienced love of Christ. He never stops loving us, even when we disobey. But we will not enjoy His love if we walk in disobedience. When you walk in disobedience, you do not undo Christ’s love, but you do step out of the enjoyment of it. That is why the Lord teaches us that the pathway to continuous joy is obedience to His commandments.
John 15:10 NASB "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.
That might sound like Jesus is making love conditional. But notice that He doesn’t say “If you keep My commandments, I will keep loving you.” He says, “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love.” In other words: obedience is not the price of love. Obedience is the pathway of abiding.
If you are standing outside in the cold, and someone says, “Come inside, stay by the fire,” and you refuse, you cannot complain that the fire is not warming you. The warmth is real and the invitation is real. But if you choose life outside, you will not experience what is offered inside. Jesus is saying there is a difference between being loved and living in that love. There is a difference between being united to Christ and enjoying communion with Christ.
Joy grows because obedience keeps us near Christ.
John 15:10 NASB "If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love;
Obedience is not how you get Christ to love you. It is how you stay close enough to enjoy His presence. If you trust someone, you take them seriously. If you believe someone’s heart is good, you stop treating their words casually. That is exactly why Jesus immediately grounds our obedience in His own: “just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” He is not describing servile compliance but loving fellowship. The Son’s obedience to the Father is the overflow of love, not the attempt to secure love. And Jesus is saying, “That is the kind of nearness I am calling you into with Me.”
Love expresses itself through loyalty, truth, sacrifice, and yes, even in obedience. In healthy relationships, love is not opposed to obedience. It produces a kind of healthy obedience. Not the obedience of fear, but the obedience of trust. Not the obedience of coercion, but the obedience of communion.
If that sounds strange, it is because our culture often defines love as unconditional affirmation and freedom as the absence of limits. But real love always moves toward alignment. If you love someone, you begin to care about what they care about. You begin to hate what harms them. You do not experience closeness by doing whatever you want. You experience closeness by walking in a shared direction. That is why Jesus can say obedience and abiding belong together. They are relational words.
But isn’t this still conditional? Doesn’t ‘if’ make everything fragile? That question makes sense, especially if you have lived under conditional love. Some of you learned early that affection could be withdrawn, that you were safe only when you performed. So when you hear “If you keep My commandments,” you instinctively translate it into, “Do not mess this up.” But Jesus is not describing a fragile love that depends on your daily success. He is describing the difference between relationship and enjoyment of relationship. Disobedience does not cancel the love of Christ, but it does cloud communion with Christ.
If you lie to a friend, you do not erase the history you have together, but you do damage trust. If you persist in bitterness, you do not stop being part of a family, but you do stop enjoying the warmth of the family. The relationship may still exist, but the fellowship is impaired. Sin does that vertically as well. Not because Christ becomes petty or distant, but because sin is, by nature, a step away from light, away from honesty, away from openness. Obedience keeps you in the light where fellowship thrives.
Even when you reject God’s commandments, you do not escape commandments. You just take commandments from somewhere else. Everyone obeys something. The question is whether what you obey makes you more alive or less alive. The idols we obey always leave us emptier than before. Jesus’ commands keep you near the One in Whom joy actually lives. Jesus is not offering you control. He is offering you Himself. His commandments do not steal joy but protect it because they keep you close to the One in Whom joy lives. And His own joy is not detached from obedience. It is lived inside obedient communion with His Father.
John 15:10 NASB just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love.
Why does Jesus perfectly keep His Father’s commandments? He is not motivated by the fear of punishment or the loss of some blessing or reward. His prefect obedience is the expression of His perfect trust and communion with His Father. And He invites us into that same fellowship with Him.
But here is also where we struggle. None of us trust, commune, and, therefore, obey perfectly like Jesus. If the standard is “just as I have kept,” we are exposed immediately. We do not simply fail at obedience. We resist it; We bargain; We obey selectively. We obey when it benefits us and resent God when it costs us. Even our “good” obedience can be tainted by pride, the need to feel superior, or our attempt to control outcomes.
Jesus not only taught us how to obey through abiding, but He is also the One Who obeyed in our place. He kept His Father’s commandments perfectly, not as a detached example, but as our Representative and Redeemer. His obedience did not end in a moral victory speech. It ended at a cross. And at that cross He bore the guilt of our disobedience, carrying what our wandering deserved. He absorbed the judgment that our rebellion earned.
This means the invitation to abide does not rest on your ability to stay near flawlessly. It rests on His ability to bring you near securely. The obedience that keeps you near Christ is not an obedience that earns acceptance. It is an obedience that flows from acceptance purchased by His blood. When you fall, you do not climb back into His love by doing better. You return by repentance and faith that His love is anchored in His finished work, not in your fluctuating week.
But if God loves, why does He not just accept me as I am? In one sense, He does. He receives sinners, not the cleaned up version of them. But He receives you to heal you, not to leave you in what destroys you. His love is not indulgence; It is rescue. He calls you away from sin because He knows that sin makes you less free, less human, less joyful. His commandments are not the enemy of your joy. They are the guardrails of it keeping us near Christ.
Disobedience may feel like relief for a moment, like freedom, control, or escape. But it always carries a hidden cost distancing you from the only Love that can actually satisfy you. Many people assume Christianity is mainly about being kept in line but Jesus says it is about joy.
John 15:11 NASB "These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.
Joy is not accidental but grows from believing what Jesus has said. His words are designed to shape our inner life. When His words are believed they fuel our love for Him, and our love fuels obedience, and as they do, His joy fills us.
Joy grows because Christ gives His own joy to those who abide.
Notice first that He refers to everything He has just said: “These things I have spoken to you”. Jesus speaks about abiding in His love, and calls for obedience, because He is after something deeper. He is after a joy that lives inside you and grows until it is complete. And isn’t just any kind of joy but His joy: “so that My joy may be in you.”
What kind of joy does Jesus have? He does not merely talk about joy but brings it, and He embodies it. The angels announce His birth as “good tidings of great joy” (Luke 2:10). Mary rejoices in God her Savior (Luke 1:47), and John leaps for joy at His nearness (Luke 1:44). Jesus is not a grim pleasure-hating legalist. He is not the guy who walks through your garden and only talks about the weeds. He calls Himself the Bridegroom at a wedding feast (Mark 2:18–20). He is not the wedding guest who spends the whole reception inspecting the bar instead of celebrating the bride. He “rejoiced in the Holy Spirit” (Luke 10:21). He promises His disciples a fullness of joy again in John 16:24. His parables culminate in heaven’s rejoicing, especially Luke 15. And His joy is strong enough for suffering, for “the joy set before Him” He endured the cross (Hebrews 12:2).
He has the joy of a Son resting in the Father’s love, doing the Father’s will, and living in unbroken communion with Him. It is a joy rooted in relationship, not in circumstances. Jesus is speaking these words on the night before the cross. That alone tells you He is not talking about a thin optimism that depends on everything going smoothly. He is speaking about a joy that can exist even when life is about to hurt. Why? Because it is anchored somewhere deeper than comfort and control.
Then notice where He intends that joy to be: “in you.” Not just around you or available to you in theory, but in you. Jesus is describing an interior reality. This is not the joy of getting your way. This is not the joy of winning the argument, landing the promotion, or finally feeling safe because you have enough money saved. Those joys come and go, and because they are fragile, they make you fragile. Jesus offers something sturdier: the joy that comes from belonging to Him and living in fellowship with Him. It is the kind of joy that can be present while you grieve. It can remain while you wait, because it is not built on the mood of the week but on the presence of Christ.
And then He says, “that your joy may be made full.” That word “full” matters. Jesus is not offering a boost, a temporary lift, or a religious high. He is aiming at a settled fullness, a joy that is growing into maturity. Full joy does not mean you never feel sadness, but it does mean sadness no longer owns you. Full joy does not mean you never feel fear, but it does mean that fear is no longer your master. Full joy does not mean you never feel tempted, but it does mean that temptation no longer defines you. Jesus is describing joy as something that can expand until it becomes durable, deep, and steady, because it is connected to Him.
We all want joy, but we chase it in ways that cannot hold it. Some of us chase joy through trying to be good enough, impressive enough, needed enough. Some chase it through control believing that if we can manage the variables, we can finally rest. Some chase it through political certainty, treating national outcomes like saviors. Some chase it through sexual validation, believing that being desired, or defining ourselves on our own terms, will silence our loneliness. The problem is that these joys demand more and more, and they never deliver what they promise. They offer excitement, distraction, and temporary relief, but they cannot make joy “full.” They cannot fill the heart because they were never meant to.
Don’t you get tired of letting joylessness live rent free in your head? Tired of letting your judgments of others control your mood and dictate the places you go or do not go? Believe it or not, that is not a harmless personality quirk. It is often the symptom of a deeper problem: not abiding in Christ. Some of us are not abiding in the Vine, we are just managing a vibe. We want Jesus to improve our week, not rule our heart. So we keep our pet sins, keep our petty verdicts, and we live chronically irritated. That is not spiritual maturity, that is spiritual dehydration. When I am living off comparison, suspicion, and silent contempt, I am not drawing life from the Vine. I am trying to squeeze joy out of being right, being superior, or being in control, and it never works. It cannot make joy full, because it is not communion, it is self-protection.
How can Jesus give you His joy? Only because He first gave Himself for you. The night He spoke these words, He was walking toward suffering He did not deserve in order to rescue people who did. He would go to the cross, not as a tragic victim, but as the obedient Son bearing our disobedience. He would take the judgment our sin earns so that His love could hold us without compromising God’s holiness. And He rose again, so that His joy is not a memory but a living reality. The joy He offers you is purchased by His blood and secured by His resurrection. That is why you can repent without despair and obey without bargaining. You are not trying to keep God from rejecting you. In Christ, you have been brought near.
If you want this joy, do not begin by trying to manufacture a feeling. Begin by returning to Christ Himself. Honestly ask yourself what you have been treating as your source of joy. What have you been obeying to make you feel alive? Then repent, not merely of bad habits, but of misplaced trust. Come back to abiding. Stay in His Word, not as a task to check off, but as a place to meet Him. Pray with specificity, not vague spirituality. Obey the next clear command you already know, especially where you have been delaying, because delayed obedience keeps you at a distance. And when you fail, do not hide. Run toward Him, because the pathway back into joy is not self-punishment. It is repentance and faith in the One Who loved you first.
Jesus is offering you nothing less than this: not simply joy from Him, but His joy in you, until your joy is made full.
