Loving Christ When Obedience Costs
by Bart Denny Most of us don’t struggle to admire Jesus. Who wouldn’t admire His courage, His wisdom, and the way He held truth and love together? Who wouldn’t admire His compassion, His purity, and His strength? That’s not usually where the struggle begins. The struggle begins when what Jesus commands conflicts with what we want. It begins when obedience costs us something we’d rather keep, our comfort, our approval, our control, our preferred timeline, or our pride. That’s where John 14:15–21 lands with unusual force. Here, we come to a passage where Jesus makes something painfully clear: loving Him means more than admiring Him. It means obeying Him when obedience gets expensive, relying on the Spirit He gives, and trusting that He won’t leave us alone. And that is a word many of us need to hear. Loving Jesus feels wonderful... until obedience gets expensive. This passage isn’t mainly aimed at people who hate Jesus. It’s aimed at people who really do ...