This Word of life also emphasizes the keeping of God’s commandments. He who keeps them abides in God, and God in him. Jesus emphasized this truth when He said: “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.” On the evening before His death, Jesus said: “At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”(Jn 14:20-21)

The Apostle John testifies from his own experience that by this we know God’s presence in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us. The Apostle Paul emphasizes: “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.” The same is true in the opposite case: If anyone belongs to Jesus, he has His Spirit.

It is good to read chapters five, six and seven of Matthew’s Gospel, where many of Christ’s commandments are summed up.

The true meaning of the commandments is to create the conditions for God to be in us and for us to be in Him. Therefore we also have to find time for prayer, i.e. for God and for our immortal soul. Without prayer one can hardly speak of the love of God and the love of neighbour.

Download: Reflection on 1Jn 3:24