Does sin separate us from God’s love?

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons. This last week, as we’re continuing our series in the upper room, we covered the classic I am the vine, you are the branches text analogy that Jesus gives his disciples in the course of those verses. Verse 10, Jesus says, if you keep my commands, you will abide in my love.

As I have kept my Father’s commands, I abide in his love. And so the question comes in, if we don’t keep the commands, are we therefore kicked out of God’s love?

Can sin separate us from God’s love for us? And the answer is we look at Romans 8, of course, nothing can separate us from, from the love of Christ, right? Christ will always love us, no matter what. And all of our failings, all of our up and downs, his love for us endures. And so the question isn’t, is Jesus still loving us?

Have we somehow been separated from that? The question is, what are we abiding in? And he says, if you keep my commands, you will abide in my love. What are you trusting in? Like we talked so much about in the sermon, you know, what is your vine?

Where are you drawing life? Where are you drawing security, stability, hope? And the way to, you know, one way to tell if you are drawing all of those things from Christ is if you are, if you are trusting in him. You know, you can think about parents, how we discipline and teach our kids. We give them all of these commands.

What are we doing? I mean, we love them, we’re trying to set them up for how to have the best life, right? We’re telling you this is the way the world works. You need to trust me that I’m telling you this is the way the world works. And then the kid has a choice, right?

The kid can say, I’m going to trust my parents and follow what they say. That would be abiding in them. Or hey, I can ignore what they say. I can go my own way, I can write my own script, tell my own story and abide in something else. I could abide in my own understanding.

I could abide in what all my friends are telling me. I get abide in what I hear on social media about the best way to do life. That part is on the kid. But the whole time, the whole time, the parent is still loving the kid. And in fact, if the kid strays, there’s a sense in which the parent’s attention for the kid actually increases, right?

Because now the kids over here, I got to go over there and help my kid even more. My kid’s going to have more of my time, more of my attention. So there is no separating from the parents love. But there is a difference in what we are abiding, in who we’re listening to, who we are trusting, in who we’re leaning on.

Right?

And Jesus says, if you keep my commands, you will be abiding in my love. And so I hope that’s helpful in our understanding. No, nothing can ever separate us from God’s love but goodness. We have a choice, and in who we follow. Right?

And what commands we follow these over here or Jesus’s. And which commands we’re following demonstrates where we are abiding. Well, we hope that’s helpful and we’ll see you next time.