Daily Devotions

Thursday, June 5, 2025

John 14:23-24 – Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. Whoever does not love Me does not keep My words. And the word that you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.”

Have you heard of a concept called a love language? It’s the idea that people have their own ways of understanding and communicating love. Some people do it by giving, some through service, others by spending time with the ones they love. In this passage, Jesus tells us His own love language, and that is “keeping My word.”

For Lutherans, that sounds troubling. We immediately think of all the ways we fail to obey Him, every day of our lives, and then we are filled with guilt! But that’s a misunderstanding. When Jesus says “keep My word,” He is using the Greek word tereo, which includes among its senses the meaning to protect, to guard, to preserve, like you would do with jewels or the photo of the person you love most in the world. We keep and guard in our hearts what Jesus says because we love Him dearly, and every word that comes from His mouth is precious to us.

Of course that includes obedience! But Jesus is no fool. He knows He’s not going to get perfect obedience from us, that’s the whole reason we needed Him to become our Savior! He suffered and died and rose again so that we could be God’s children—not by our own hard work, which could never be good enough, but by trusting in Jesus to make us right with God. What Jesus did for us is enough. Now we are set free to keep His word in a different way—out of free love, knowing that He will treasure and delight in even our weakest attempts to obey Him.

It’s like a toddler gathering dandelions for a parent or teacher. The dandelions have no real value in themselves—you can find them on any roadside. But when a toddler comes to you and hands you his gift of love, what do you do? You’re delighted. You’re overjoyed. You take those dandelions and you put them in water, like the rarest flowers on earth. Because they are a gift of love—and that is how Jesus treats our smallest efforts at obedience, however broken they may be. They are precious to Him.

And see how He rewards us! About those who love Him this way, He says, “My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.” Now that’s a promise to make any Christian drool. God Himself will move in with us, and live with us on a daily basis, making His home with us! We will have Jesus’ company all the time, as close and familiar as anyone we have ever loved in our lives. What could be better? What more could we want?

WE PRAY: Dear Lord Jesus, teach me to love You with all my heart, because You have loved me first. Amen.

This Daily Devotion was written by Dr. Kari Vo.

Reflection Questions:

  1. What is one object you treasure out of love?
  2. How do you get to know Jesus’ words?
  3. What is one tiny thing you could to freely say “I love you” to Jesus today?

Archive