If you love Me, you will obey what I command. John 15:1

These words, from anyone but God, would be manipulative and dangerous. But His ownership of me warrants such a preserving love.

It’s not that He’s saying to me, Do everything I command to prove that you love Me.

In that lies the essence of all religion. It tries to earn love and acceptance. It always strives to lay hold of temporary accomplishments and struggles to stay above water. It is often content with crumbs because the real food of life seems desperately out of reach. It camps inside the sombre lines looking longingly out at what is forbidden, not wanting to risk the loss of its rickety shelter or suffer the searing shame of being discovered; falling prey to many border crossing escapades when it thinks no one is looking.

I know—my abandoned tent pegs are probably still stuck in the ground there.

But He wasn’t saying that. He wasn’t soliciting mindless allegiance–a dynasty of drones.

He was saying,

Obedience follows love for Me the way goslings are glued to their mother.

Obeying Me is the geyser that gushes out of a heart bursting with love for Me.

He meant,

A heart that loves Me has no other flame to warm itself with in this cold, dark world—and it will stoke its fires often.

His is not a call to die under a dictatorship, but an invitation to live in freedom from religious works.

Free to be me, in His love,

opens the way to living in submission.