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Please note: this study is narrated with AI-generated audio, which may occasionally misread a Scripture reference (for example, "Acts 1 point 9" rather than "Acts 1 verse 9"). For the exact wording, please refer to your Bible.
The Identity of Jesus · One God, One Will
In one breath Jesus tells us to keep His commandments, and says He Himself kept His Father's commandments. That raises a question every believer should press: whose commandments are they, the Son's or the Father's? Scripture answers plainly. They are one and the same, because Jesus is God manifest in flesh.
"If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love."John 15:10 KJV
What Jesus Actually Says
Notice the two halves of what Jesus says, set side by side in one sentence:
"If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love" (John 15:10). Just before it He had said, "If ye love me, keep my commandments" (John 14:15).
"Even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love" (John 15:10). Jesus points to His own life of perfect obedience to the Father as the pattern.
So we are told to keep His commandments, and He tells us that He kept the Father's commandments. This is not a contradiction, and it is not two rival authorities. It is the one true God, come in flesh, first living out the Father's will as a real man, and then giving that same will to us as our Lord. To see why, we have to see who is speaking, and then whose commandments they really are.
The Man Christ Jesus
When Jesus speaks of obeying the Father, He is speaking as the true man He became. The one true God took on flesh and lived a real human life, and that genuine man submitted perfectly to God at every point. This is the constant note of John's Gospel:
"I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me." (John 6:38)John 6:38; 8:29 KJV
"I do always those things that please him." (John 8:29)
These are the words of God living as a man. Scripture states it without hedging: "God was manifest in the flesh" (1 Timothy 3:16). "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself" (2 Corinthians 5:19). "In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (Colossians 2:9). The obedience is real because the humanity is real, "Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered" (Hebrews 5:8), and only a genuine man could learn obedience by suffering.
This is not one divine Person obeying another divine Person. There are not two Gods, nor two persons in one God taking turns commanding and obeying. There is one God, and He was manifest in flesh. The man Christ Jesus obeyed the Spirit of God that dwelt in Him without measure, "the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works" (John 14:10). The Father is the eternal Spirit; the Son is that same God revealed in a true human life. So the Son obeys the Father the way the perfect humanity yields wholly to the indwelling Deity, not the way one person defers to a separate person.
"For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5). The one God, and the man in whom He dwelt, are the same Lord Jesus Christ. When that man kept the Father's commandments, God in flesh was keeping His own will as a perfect human being, on our behalf and as our example.
Whose Commandments Are They?
Jesus does not have one set of commandments and the Father another. His teaching is the Father's teaching, because the Father is fully revealed in Him. He says so directly:
"My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me." (John 7:16)John 7:16; 14:24 KJV
"The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me." (John 14:24)
This does not mean Jesus borrowed a message that belonged to someone else. It means there is a perfect, unbroken unity between the Father and the Son, because the Father dwelt in the Son and was revealed through Him. What the Father wills, the Son speaks. What the Son commands is exactly what the Father commands. That is why Jesus can say, in the same Gospel:
"I and my Father are one." (John 10:30)John 10:30; 14:9 KJV
"He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." (John 14:9)
Watch what happens across John 12 and 14. First Jesus says the Father "gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak" (John 12:49), and "whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak" (John 12:50). Then, only a chapter later, that very same Jesus turns to His disciples and says, "If ye love me, keep my commandments" (John 14:15). The One who received the Father's word now issues it with full divine authority as His own. There is no gap between them. The commandment the Father gave and the commandment the Son gives are one commandment, because the Father and the Son are one God.
The Reason Behind It
The deepest reason the commandments are one is that God is one. This is the bedrock of all Scripture, the confession Jesus Himself called the first of all the commandments:
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD." (Deuteronomy 6:4)Deuteronomy 6:4; Mark 12:29 KJV
"The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord." (Mark 12:29)
One God has one will. He does not command one thing as "Father" and a different thing as "Son." When Jesus, who is that one God manifest in flesh, keeps the Father's commandments and then commands us, He is not handing down a second law alongside the Father's. He is revealing the one will of the one God, first by living it out perfectly as a man, then by placing it on His people as their Lord. The Father's commandments and Christ's commandments are the same commandments, because the Father and Christ are the same God.
A Pattern to See Clearly
There is a beautiful order to John 15:10. The same will of God moves in two directions:
| The One Will of God... | ...In Two Directions |
|---|---|
| Perfectly kept | The man Christ Jesus kept the Father's commandments and abode in His love (John 15:10; 8:29). |
| Now given to us | Christ commands His disciples to keep His commandments and abide in His love (John 14:15; 15:10). |
| The same standard | The apostles never taught a different law; they taught Christ's commands (Matthew 28:20). |
Notice the last line. After the resurrection, Jesus sends the apostles to make disciples, "Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you" (Matthew 28:20). The apostles never invented a new standard, and they never appealed past Jesus to some higher authority. They taught what He commanded, because His commands are the full and final revelation of God's will. Jesus is not a messenger reporting a distant God's rules; He is that God, in flesh, giving His own commandments. That is why the whole New Testament simply says, "keep his commandments," and means Christ's, "hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments" (1 John 2:3).
Where It Lands
Gather it into one line: Jesus kept the Father's commandments as a true man, and gives us those same commandments as our God, because the Father and the Son are one. There is no rivalry, no second authority, no division in the Godhead, only the one true God, revealed in Jesus Christ, whose will was perfectly obeyed in the flesh and is now our rule of life.
This is why it matters that Jesus is not the second of three divine persons but the one God manifest in flesh (1 Timothy 3:16; Colossians 2:9). If Jesus were a separate person obeying another, we would be left with two wills and two lawgivers. But because "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30), His commandments are the Father's, spoken from a genuine humanity that obeyed perfectly and then handed that same will to us. To keep Christ's commandments is to keep the Father's. To love the Son is to love the Father. To obey Jesus is to obey God, for He is God, and there is no other.
For You
If the Father's will and the Son's are one, then obeying Jesus is not a lesser thing than obeying God, it is obeying God. And He has told us how His commandments become livable, not by our own strength, but by His Spirit within us, exactly as He obeyed by the Father dwelling in Him. That begins in the new birth: repentance, baptism in the name of Jesus Christ, and receiving the gift of His Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38; John 3:5). When His Spirit lives in you, His commandments are "not grievous" (1 John 5:3); they become the natural expression of the God who now dwells in you.
So do not weigh the Son's words against the Father's, as if you could keep one and set the other aside. They are one voice, the voice of the one Lord Jesus Christ. Love Him, receive His Spirit, and keep His commandments, and you will "abide in his love," just as He abode in the Father's.
Carry It With You
John 15:10 KJV
"If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love."
For the Scriptural Notes
Scripture is quoted from the KJV. This study is built entirely from the biblical text on the commandments of Christ, the genuine humanity of Jesus, and the oneness of God revealed in the flesh.
Keep Growing
Transformation is not a one-time event; it is a walk you grow in for the rest of your life. "God Made You On Purpose" is a free, step-by-step discipleship course that takes you from why you were made, through repentance and baptism in Jesus' name, to being filled with the Holy Spirit and being changed by Him day by day.
The Next Step
Jesus didn't simply call people to learn. He called people to follow Him. Discover what the Bible teaches about repentance, baptism in Jesus' name, receiving the Holy Spirit, and walking in new life.
"Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."
Acts 2:38 NKJV
Turn from sin and surrender your whole heart to God.
For the remission of sins -- every New Testament baptism was in His name.
The promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are far off (Acts 2:39).
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