The analogy, on which He has already touched, is still continued. '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.' Note that Christ here claims for Himself absolute and unbroken conformity with the Father's will, and consequent uninterrupted and complete communion with the Father's love. It is the utterance of a nature conscious of no sin, of a humanity that never knew one instant's film of separation, howsoever thin, howsoever brief, between Him and the Father. No more tremendous words were ever spoken than these quiet ones in which Jesus Christ declares that never, all His life long, had there been the smallest deflection or want of conformity between the Father's will and _His_ desires and doings, and that never had there been one grain of dust, as it were, between the two polished plates which adhered so closely in inseparable union of harmony and love. And then notice, still further, how Christ here, with His consciousness of perfect obedience and communion, intercepts _our_ obedience and diverts it to Himself. He does not say, 'Obey God as I have done, and He will love you'; but He says, 'Obey _Me_ as I obey God, and _I_ will love you.' Who is this that thus comes between the child's heart and the Father's? Does He come _between_ when He stands thus? or does He rather lead us up to the Father, and to a share in His own filial obedience? He further assures us that, by keeping His commandments, we shall continue in that sweet home and safe stronghold of His love. Of course the keeping of the commandments is something more than mere outward conformity by action. It is the inward harmony of will, and the bowing of the whole nature. It is, in fact, the same thing (though considered under a different aspect, and from a somewhat different point of view), as He has already been speaking about as the 'fruit' of the vine, by the bearing of which the Father is glorified. And this obedience, the obedience of the hands because the heart obeys, and does so because it loves, the bowing of the will in glad submission to the loved and holy will of the heavens--this obedience is the condition of our continuing in Christ's love.