"Whoever has My commands and keeps them is the one who loves Me. The one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I too will love them and show Myself to them"- John 14:21 (NIV).
Jesus instructed His followers that if they loved Him, they would keep His commands (v.15). How many parents have echoed those same feelings and been let down by one of their children? Have you heard a parent say, when dispensing punishment, "This hurts me more than it hurts you." What hurts is that all parents internalize their child's disobedience as lack of love for them. Now, as a parent, I can understand how God felt seeing His children in disobedience. Punishment was required. The punishment truly hurt God the Father more than it hurt us; Jesus suffered our penalty and sponged the offenses from our record. The stark difference, in this case, is that the guilty person didn't suffer the consequence; instead, God provided His innocent Son to take our penalty. We, as God's adopted children, in each act of disobedience, tell our Heavenly Father we don't love Him, but each time we are obedient we tell God we truly love Him. "See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!" (1 John 3:1a).
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