Keep and Abide

The fourth step of the order is remaining. Those who have been born from above, who hold on to the Person they have met, and who have entered through the door that He is, are meant to stay. Yeshua spoke of this on the night He was handed over, after the supper, in the words about the vine and the branches that fill the fifteenth chapter of John. One verse in that chapter sets out how remaining works, and it does so by the tenses of its verbs.

John 15:10 If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My agape ἀγάπη ag-ah'-pay(love); just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His agape(love).

The YLV renders the verb meno μένω men'-o as “abide.” It means to remain, to stay, to continue where one is. The same verb stood in Peter’s word of God “which lives and abides forever.” Now the same verb is used of the disciples, and of Yeshua Himself.

Who Is Being Spoken To

A few verses earlier in the same chapter, Yeshua had said this to the same men.

John 15:3 You are already clean because of the logos λόγος log'-os(word) which I have spoken to you.

They were not made clean by the commandments they were about to keep. They were already clean, and the cause is named: the word that He had spoken to them. This is the same order that Peter set out, a birth through the living word of God. The command to abide is given to people who already belong to Him. It is not a test that they must pass in order to be accepted. It is the life of those who have already been received.

Two Halves, Four Verbs

The verse falls into two halves, and each half has two verbs. The first half speaks of the disciples. The second half speaks of Yeshua. The weight of the verse lies in the second half.

“Just as I have kept My Father’s commandments.” The verb is tetereka (τετήρηκα), from tereo τηρέω tay-reh'-o, “to keep, to watch over carefully.” Its form is perfect. The syllable at the front, te, is the doubling that marks a Greek perfect. A perfect speaks of an action carried through to completion whose result still stands. Yeshua does not say that He is trying to keep His Father’s commandments, or that He will keep them. He says that He has kept them, and the keeping is finished and holds.

“And abide in His agape(love).” This verb is meno in the present tense. The keeping is complete, and the remaining goes on. In one sentence Yeshua sets side by side what is finished and what continues now.

As Chapter 12 showed, the Son who emptied Himself took the form of a bond-servant and became obedient to the point of death, and He said that the word He spoke was not His own but the Father’s who sent Him. Here He speaks of that obedience as already accomplished. Before He asks anything of His disciples, He has walked the whole way Himself. He carried out the way of remaining first, and from within that remaining He hands it on to them.

In the first half, “If you keep My commandments,” the verb is teresete, an aorist subjunctive standing inside an “if” clause. The subjunctive here gives a condition, not a past event. Then comes the result: “you will abide in My agape(love).” The verb is meneite, a future indicative.

The Order in the Tenses

On His side the verb is perfect; on our side the result is future. Our keeping and our remaining do not come first; they rest on what He has already done. His keeping is finished before ours begins. Our remaining stands on ground that He has already laid.

This is the same order we have seen at every step. The birth from above is passive; the one born does nothing to cause it. The seed is the word of God, which abides before anyone abides in it. The door is a Person who opened the way Himself. And now, at the last step, the keeping that matters first is His, in the perfect tense, and our remaining follows as its fruit.

Grace and Commandments Together

It would be easy to take this verse in one of two wrong directions. One reader hears “if you keep My commandments” and decides that remaining in Yeshua’s love is a reward earned by obedience. Another reader hears that His keeping is finished and decides that commandments no longer matter for those who believe. The verse allows neither.

The ground of everything is grace. Paul wrote it plainly.

Ephesians 2:8-10 For by charis χάρις khar'-ece(grace) you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the doron δῶρον do'-ron(gift) of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Messiah Yeshua for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

Nothing a person keeps can buy his place before God; that price was paid by the Redeemer with His blood.

But Paul does not stop at verse 9. Those saved by grace are His workmanship, created for good works prepared beforehand for them to walk in. The justified walk. That is exactly the shape of John 15:10. The keeping on which everything rests is His, finished and standing. The keeping that follows is ours, the walk of those who have been made His, and in that walk they remain in His love.

So keeping and remaining belong together. They are not two separate subjects, one about law and the other about love. Yeshua put them in a single sentence. The one who has been born from above and has entered through the door keeps the commandments of the One he has entered through, and in keeping them he abides. And this whole life rests on a keeping that was complete before his began.

A Rare Pairing

Many verses in the New Testament speak of keeping commandments, and many speak of abiding. Yet the three words, the word for commandment, the verb for keeping, and the verb for remaining, come together in one verse surprisingly seldom. John 15:10 is one of only two such verses in the whole New Testament, and the second is found in a letter written by the same apostle. That second verse says something that even John 15:10 does not say outright.