1 John 5:3

"For this is the Love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are Not Burdensome."

Littered throughout the writings of John are clues, or evidences, that John gives us to let us whom believe in the Son of God know that we have Eternal Life. From the first verse to the last we see that there are many tell tale signs that we can rest assured in our salvation. Or, on the contrary, that we need to closely examine ourselves and our faith should we fall short of them. Today, I want to look at only one.

"For this is the Love of God"

In other words, we might re-phrase this "So we love God if" or "You know you have Gods love in you if".

"We keep his commandments"

This is not the first time we see this phrase in the New Testament. Remember in John 15:10 ~ "If you keep my commandments you will abide in My Love, just as I have kept my Fathers commandments and abide in His Love."

So we understand that when we abide in God's love and He abides in us, we will keep his commandments. But John takes it one very important step further in the latter part of verse 3 when he states "And his commandments aren't burdensome."

I think John went out of his way to phrase this like this for a reason.

What reason? I think there are at least two reasons.

1. I believe that he is simply trying to cut off at the knees any remaining belief system that would have you believe in a "works" based salvation.

2. I think he is showing and emphasizing the relationship we should have with God. i.e., that we hold the same views as our Father in Heaven on issues of sin and of the great commandments.

Here's an example of what I mean.

Before I found the love of my life and married her, I would have never imagined being "tied down" to just one woman. In fact, the thought of spending the rest of my precious, self centered, life with just one person seemed "burdensome" to say it mildly. But then, one day by the grace of God, I met Heather. Now, I can't imagine spending one day away from her. The thought of being close to another woman is repulsive and I can't believe how wrong I was in the past about monogamy.

In the same way, before we enter into a relationship with God through the blood of His Son Christ Jesus, we do not have the ability to love Him, much less the desire to. But, when we are truly born again, we are in a real relationship with God and we strive to keep His commandments. Not because we have to, but because we want to. And, to go one further, looking back we can't believe how we managed without Him for so many years.

Like any other relationship, we need to nurture our relationship with God if we want to grow in it. We should be willing to be in constant communication with him through prayer. We should desire to read his word daily so we can learn about our Lord. And we should naturally be drawn towards other brothers and sisters of our Father in Heaven. All of which should come naturally and with joy. None of which, to those of us who love Him, shall be burdensome.