Keeping God’s Commandments

John Nelson Darby

‘This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments’ (1 John 5:2–3). 

There is an obstacle to this obedience, and that is the world (v. 4). The world has its forms, which are very far from obedience to God. When we are occupied only with Him and His will, the world’s enmity soon breaks out. It also acts, by its comforts and its delights, on the heart of man as walking after the flesh. In short, the world and the commandments of God are in opposition to each other; but the commandments of God are not grievous to those who are born of Him, for he who is born of God overcomes the world. 

He possesses a nature and a principle which surmount the difficulties that the world opposes to his walk. His nature is the divine nature, for he is born of God; his principle is that of faith. His nature is insensible to the attractions which this world offers to the flesh, and that because it has, altogether apart from this world, a spirit independent of it, and an object of its own which governs it. 

Faith directs its steps, but faith does not see the world, nor that which is present. Faith believes that Jesus, whom the world rejected, is the Son of God. 

The world therefore has lost its power over it. Its affections and its trust are fixed on Jesus, who was crucified, owning Him as the Son of God. Thus the believer, detached from the world, has the boldness of obedience, and does the will of God which abides for ever. [1]

[1] Synopsis of the Books of the Bible (1 John 5).

From: Truth and Testimony, 2023