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 love Him. Hopefully, people like us. 

We say we love Him. We sing to Him. We pray in His name. 

We believe He is Lord. We’re grateful for His grace, thankful for His forgiveness, and eager for His comfort.

But then we run headlong into one of His commands.

Suddenly, the issue isn’t whether we admire Jesus. The issue is whether we’ll obey Him when obedience costs us something.

It’s one thing to say, “I love Jesus.” It’s another thing to forgive when you’d rather stay offended. It’s another thing to tell the truth when silence would protect you. Or to pursue holiness when the world laughs at purity. It’s another thing to surrender control when you’d rather keep your hands on the wheel.

That’s where love gets exposed.

If we’re honest, most of us don’t defy Jesus with a clenched fist. We resist Him with a quiet hesitation, a small delay, a polished excuse. We rename disobedience. We call it discernment. We call it timing. We call it needing to “pray about it a little more.”

And underneath all of that is the same old impulse: I want Jesus close enough to bless me, but not so close that He gets to overrule me.

That’s why this passage matters so much. Jesus loves His disciples too much to leave love undefined. He won’t let them reduce love to sentiment, and He won’t let us do it either.

If we’re not careful, we tend to drift into one of two bad versions of Christianity. Two distortions.

The first is softened obedience. We keep the language of discipleship, but quietly redefine it. Instead of asking, “What has Jesus actually said?” we ask, “What feels reasonable to me?” 

We want a Christianity that comforts us without confronting us, encourages us without pressing us, and offers grace without requiring surrender.

The second distortion is grim obedience. We turn following Jesus into bare-knuckled willpower. Obedience becomes cold, mechanical, and harsh. All duty and no delight. All command and no communion. That kind of Christianity may sound strong for a while, but it wears people down.

Jesus offers neither of those options.

He doesn’t invite us into sentimental love with no surrender. Nor does He call us into joyless obedience with no help.

He speaks of a way that's better than that.

And that’s what makes the Upper Room so powerful. Jesus isn’t speaking in a calm, uncomplicated moment. Betrayal is already in motion. Peter’s denial is just ahead. The cross is looming. Confusion is building. Fear is rising.

And in that moment, Jesus prepares His disciples for a world that won’t understand them, won’t applaud their obedience, and won’t recognize the deepest source of their strength.

Doesn’t that sound familiar?

And as we dig into John 14:15-21, the first thing we learn is to:

Love Jesus by Obeying What He Says

Jesus begins with a line that leaves no room for confusion: “If you love me, keep my commands” (John 14:15, NIV).

Then He says it again a few verses later: “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me” (John 14:21, NIV).

We need to hear that carefully.

Jesus isn't saying, “Earn My love by performing well enough.” 

He doesn't offer cold legalism or performance-based religion. 

This is relational obedience.

Jesus is saying that real love for Him doesn’t stay hidden in feelings alone. It takes visible shape in the way we respond to His words.

This fits the overall movement of Jesus' Upper Room teaching. In John 13, Jesus washed the disciples' dirty feet before they proved anything. Grace came first. 

Then Jesus said, “Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them” (John 13:17, NIV). 

Not that you'll be blessed if you understand them. Not just if you admire them. If you do them.

So now in John 14, Jesus presses the issue deeper: How do you know your love for Jesus is real?

Love obeys.

And that shouldn’t surprise us, because this theme runs through the whole Bible. In Deuteronomy 10:12–13, Moses ties love for God to walking in His ways and keeping His commands. In Luke 6:46, Jesus asks, “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” (NIV). James says, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (James 1:22, NIV). John writes, “let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:18, NIV).

Love for Jesus isn’t merely spoken. It is shown.

And so, as our key passage continues to unfold, Jesus teaches the disciples--and us--to: 

Depend on the Advocate When Obedience Costs

But Jesus doesn’t stop with the command.

He knows what the next question will be: What happens when obedience gets hard? What happens when following Him costs us comfort, reputation, ease, or social approval? What happens when His commands put us at odds with the world around us?

Does He simply say, “Try harder”?

No.

He says, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever, the Spirit of truth” (John 14:16–17, NIV).

That word matters: Advocate.

John's Gospel was first written in Koine Greek, and he used the word parakletos here. It means "advocate," but other English translations have (correctly) used words like Comforter, Helper, Counselor, or Intercessor.

The idea here is that there's someone in your corner.

This isn’t vague inspiration. This isn’t Jesus telling His disciples to dig deep and find hidden strength inside themselves. This is divine help.

Jesus doesn’t command obedience and then leave His disciples to manufacture it on their own. He gives what He commands. He supplies help for what He requires.

That means Christian obedience is never meant to be detached from dependence on the Holy Spirit.

And notice what Jesus says next: “The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him” (John 14:17, NIV).

The world can't understand the deepest source of Christian strength. It can’t see the Spirit. It can’t know the Spirit. It can’t make sense of obedience shaped by Someone it doesn’t recognize.

That’s why the world looks at costly obedience and asks questions like these:

Why would you forgive that?
Why would you keep your integrity there?
Why would you tell the truth when a lie would make life easier?
Why would you obey Jesus when it costs you something?

And the answer isn't, “Because I’m naturally strong.”

The answer is, “Because the Spirit of God is helping me.”

That’s the witness of the rest of Scripture, too. Ezekiel 36 promises the Spirit who moves God’s people to walk in His ways. Romans 8 says we put sin to death by the Spirit. Galatians 5 calls us to walk by the Spirit.

So when obedience costs, Jesus doesn’t say, “Handle it yourself.”

He says, You won’t face this alone.

And, as the passage continues, Jesus teaches us to:

Hold Fast to Christ Because He Won’t Leave You Alone

And even that isn’t the end of the comfort.

The disciples don’t just need help. They need assurance. They need to know that obedience to Jesus won’t end in abandonment.

So Jesus says, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:18, NIV).

That is one of the tenderest lines in the Upper Room.

Jesus knows the cross is near. He knows fear is coming. He knows their world is about to be shaken. And He doesn’t say, “Do the best you can and hope you make it.”

He says, “I will not leave you as orphans.”

Then He adds, “Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:19, NIV). 

He speaks resurrection hope before the resurrection even happens. His life will become the foundation of their life.

Then He goes even deeper: “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you” (John 14:20, NIV).

That isn't surface-level religion. That's union. That's communion. That's Jesus saying, You aren't following Me from a distance. You are bound up in My life.

So when we come back to verse 21, we hear it differently. Obedience isn’t just duty. It becomes the pathway of lived fellowship.

That matters, because if all we hear is “Obey Jesus,” the message can sound harsh. And if all we hear is “The Spirit helps,” it can still feel abstract.

But Jesus goes further. He says, in effect, When obedience costs you something, you’re not abandoned. You aren’t on your own. I’m with you.

That’s the emotional center of this text.

The cost of obedience is real. But abandonment isn’t.

So what? Living it out today.

This isn't abstract theology. It lands right in the middle of ordinary discipleship.

Sometimes costly obedience means forgiving when you’d rather stay resentful. Sometimes it means telling the truth when silence would protect you. Sometimes it means holding to holiness when compromise would be easier. Sometimes it means staying gentle when the world rewards outrage. Sometimes it means refusing to soften what Jesus says, and refusing to weaponize the truth at the same time.

That is the kind of discipleship Jesus calls His church to.

Not emotional with no obedience.

Not gritty with no grace.

But loving obedience. Spirit-enabled obedience. Steady obedience in the presence of Christ.

Or, to say it simply:

Love obeys.
The Spirit helps.
Jesus stays.

The Question in Front of Us

So here is the question this passage presses on every one of us:

What command of Jesus have you been admiring instead of obeying?

Where has He already spoken clearly, but you’ve delayed because obedience would cost you something you wanted to keep?

And where do you need the help of the Holy Spirit, not just in theory, but in the actual places where your obedience is being tested?

Then one more question:

What step do you need to take this week as someone who is not abandoned?

Because that is the good news of John 14:15–21. Jesus does not call His people to costly obedience and then disappear. He gives His Spirit. He promises His presence. And He calls us to follow Him, not in our own strength, but in His.

Don’t just admire Jesus.

Love Him enough to obey Him.

And when obedience costs, remember this: you are not alone.

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Adapted from a sermon preached by Dr. Bart L. Denny at Pathway – A Wesleyan Church, Saranac, Michigan, on March 15, 2026, as Part 4 of the series The Upper Room Way. You can watch the sermon here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4jwLlvw2s0