David L. Wolfe: “Too often we believe what we want to be true. … I do not have it in for relativism. In many respects I find it a fascinating, even attractive, alternative. It engenders epistemological humility, defeats an arrogant pomposity in belief, even promotes a sort of democratic ideal in matters of knowledge.”
Something truly profound happens in John 15:9–11.
Learning to Think, Learning to Believe
I am learning to grasp the study of epistemology (the theory of knowledge that divides justified belief from opinion), ontology (the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being), and teleology (knowing something’s purpose or end-goal). As I discover these fields of inquiry, I begin to see how truth is not merely a feeling about things, but that there are tools that make truth coherent, therefore believable. Or not. It is the discovery of what lies beneath the things we claim as true.
For example, why do we attach to identity?
What forms identity belief?
And are those factors valid or true?
Jesus, in John 15, does a remarkable philosophical feat that if we don’t dig beyond the words, we miss what a masterful teacher He truly was. I guess being God in flesh came with certain intellectual advantages.
Let’s explore together.
Ontology: The Being of Love
“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.”
At its core, ontology asks what is; what is the nature of existence itself? In this simple sentence, Jesus reveals a truth that philosophers and mystics have struggled to articulate for millennia: love is not merely an attribute of God, but the very essence of being itself.
Augustine, in De Trinitate, described the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the eternal flow of love, the Lover, the Beloved, and the Love between them.¹ Jesus’ statement reflects this very ontology: to “abide in My love” is not a command to feel affection but an invitation to dwell within the essence of divine being.
Thomas Aquinas later wrote, “To love is to will the good of another; since God’s will is creative, His love is the cause of the good which things possess.”² In other words, love is what makes being possible. Every act of creation, every moment of continued existence, flows from the will of divine love.
Disobedience, therefore, is not simply moral failure, it is ontological fracture. It is detachment from the very structure of reality.
Karl Barth would later describe this as being-in-encounter, where existence itself is defined by relationship rather than substance. Barth writes:
“Only because God posits Himself as the object is man posited as the knower of God. And so man can only have God as the self-posited object. It is and remains God’s free grace when he is object for us in His primary and secondary objectivity. He always gives Himself to be known so as to be known by us in this giving, which is always a bestowal, always a free action. How would it be His objectivity if this were not so ? How could He be our Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer, how could He be the living Lord, if it were not so, and if His being for us were ever to be separated from His activity, so that a direction of man to God’s being could exist that was grounded in something other than his beingdirected by God’s activity ? Faith stands or falls with the fact of man being directed by God’s action, by the action of His being as the living Lord. Man’s being directed is his direction to God and thus of necessity his direction to the living Lord ; not to any other sort of being, but to the actual being of God. The knowledge of God by faith is therefore concerned with Him and with Him alone. It cannot draw conclusions from the fact that its object creates its own precedence.”³
Jesus doesn’t say, “Think about My love,” or “Admire My love,” but abide in it, make it your ontological home.
Epistemology: Knowing through Abiding
“If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”
Epistemology asks: how do we know what we know? Jesus offers a radical answer, truth is not known through observation or debate but through obedient participation.
In the Hebrew imagination, to “know” (yadaʿ) means experiential intimacy, not abstract cognition. To know God is to be in relationship with Him. Thus, Jesus reframes epistemology: knowledge is relational, not rationalistic.
Aquinas said, “Love itself is a kind of knowledge, for by loving we come to experience the good itself.”⁴ Edith Stein expanded this:
“No one can make me understand what joy is unless I myself have experienced joy. But once I have experienced joy, then I also understand what “joy as such” is. Is it nevertheless not true, however, that we find various definitions of joy in psychology textbooks? And does not St. Thomas offer us a carefully elaborated theory of the emotions and passions with precise definitions, with divisions and subdivisions?”‘ Joy, for example, he defines as a passion of the appetitive faculty.’* It is by its object that “joy (which is related to some good) differs from grief (which is related to some evil).” Joy, furthermore, corresponds to a definite phase in the progress of the appetitive movement: “The enjoyment … enters first into a certain conjunction with the appetite, inasmuch as the enjoyment is considered as equal to or commensurate with the appetite; and from this conjunction results the passion of love (amor), which is nothing but the appetite’s being formed by its object. This is why love is called a union of the one who loves.”⁵
In this, both thinkers echo Jesus: truth is not proven, it is abided in.
Modern neuroscience now validates this insight. Secure attachment relationships, defined by love, trust, and obedience, rewire neural networks, increasing emotional stability and moral discernment.
Antonio Damasio, although arguing an evolutionary standpoint, despite not validating why consciousness exists at all to avoid naming an Ultimate Consciousness, writes:
“Although I do not see consciousness as the pinnacle of biological evolution, I see it as a turning point in the long history of life. Even when we resort to the simple and standard dictionarv definition of consciousness—as an organism’s awareness of its own self and surroundings—it is easy to envision how consciousness is likely to have opened the way in human evolution to a new order of creations not possible without it: conscience, religion, social and political organizations, the arts, the sciences, and technology. Perhaps even more compellingly, consciousness is the critical biological function that allows us to know sorrow or know joy, to know suffering or know pleasure, to sense embarrassment or pride, to grieve for lost love or lost life. Whether individually experienced or observed, pathos is a by-product of consciousness and so is desire. None of those personal states would ever be known to each of us without consciousness. Do not blame Eve for knowing; blame consciousness, and thank it, too.”⁶
In a sense, Jesus was not only speaking spiritually but neurobiologically: when you abide in love, your mind becomes capable of perceiving truth.
Dallas Willard put it simply:
“Knowledge of Christ, or lack thereof, is also positioned at that level. That is where it competes for the human soul. It offers reality-based orientation of thought, feeling, and action toward the main factors of human existence, especially toward good and evil. Worldview, simply put, consists of the most general and basic assumptions about what is real and what is good—including assumptions about who we are and what we should do.”⁷
To abide, then, is to enter into the epistemology of heaven.
Teleology: The Purpose of Joy
“These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.”
Teleology explores purpose, what something is ultimately for. In this single sentence, Jesus defines the end-goal of human existence: joy.
Not pleasure, not escape, but the divine joy that flows from union with God. Aquinas described this as beatitudo, the perfect good of the rational creature found only in the vision of God.⁸ C. S. Lewis wrote that:
“I have found it impossible, in thinking of what I call Transposition, not to ask myself whether it may help us to conceive the Incarnation. Of course if Transposition were merely a mode of symbolism it could give us no help at all in this matter: on the contrary, it would lead us wholly astray, back into a new kind of Docetism (or would it be only the old kind?) and away from the utterly historical and concrete reality which is the centre of all our hope, faith and love. But then, as I have pointed out. Transposition is not always symbolism. In varying degrees the lower reality can actually be drawn into the higher and become part of it. The sensation which accompanies joy becomes itself joy: we can hardly choose but say “incarnates joy”. If this is so, then I venture to suggest, though with great doubt and in the most provisional way, that the concept of Transposition may have some contribution to make to the theology—or at least to the philosophy—of the Incarnation. For we are told in one of the creeds that the Incarnation worked ‘not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God.’”⁹
Joy is the teleological fruit of abiding in love and truth. It is what happens when the human soul aligns with divine intention. N. T. Wright argues that:
“I know that God’s new world of justice and joy, of hope for the whole earth, was launched when Jesus came out of the tomb on Easter morning, and I know that he calls his followers to live in him and by the power of his Spirit and so to be new-creation people here and now, bringing signs and symbols of the kingdom to birth on earth as in heaven. The resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit mean that we are called to bring real and effective signs of God’s renewed creation to birth even in the midst of the present age.”¹⁰
Thus, joy is not the reward for obedience, it is the inevitable outcome of living in harmony with divine love.
Psychology even affirms this: enduring joy, what researchers call eudaimonic well-being, arises from moral coherence, purpose, and belonging.¹¹ Jesus anticipated that finding centuries before neuroscience ever named it.
When we abide in His love and live out His truth, our joy is not circumstantial, it is ontological. It becomes who we are.
The Synthesis: The Logic of Abiding
In John 15:9–11, Jesus unites ontology, epistemology, and teleology into one coherent metaphysical system:
Ontology: Love is reality – the relational being of the Triune God.
Epistemology: Love reveals truth – we know by participation, not detachment.
Teleology: Love fulfils joy – our ultimate purpose is divine communion.
To abide in Christ is to exist rightly, know rightly, and desire rightly. It is to enter the divine ecosystem of being and become a participant in God’s ongoing creation of joy.
The Way of Joy
When I consider my own life, I realise how often I have treated faith as information rather than transformation. But Jesus’ words dismantle that illusion. Joy, it turns out, is not found in mastering doctrines but in being mastered by love.
To abide in Christ is to live where joy and obedience meet; to let His words inhabit us until desire itself becomes holy.
As Augustine once said:
“Love God, and do what you will.”¹²
Because if you truly love Him, your will is already aligned with His.
And that is the way of joy.
Practical Application: Learning to Desire Holy
Abiding in Christ is not a mystical abstraction, it’s a daily choice of alignment.
If love is the ontology of being, then every moment of irritation, ambition, or despair becomes an opportunity to return to what is real.
Ask yourself today:
Does my being reflect divine love? (Ontology)
Does my knowing flow from intimacy or intellect alone? (Epistemology)
Does my purpose seek God’s joy or my own comfort? (Teleology)
Joy is not discovered; it is formed in the crucible of obedience.
Every act of abiding, forgiving, pausing, praying, obeying, is an act of aligning your existence with Love Himself.
To abide in Christ and His Word is not to master doctrine or emotion, but to inhabit the mind of God in the ordinary.
There, desire becomes holy.
Prayer: The Way of Joy
Lord Jesus,
You who abide perfectly in the Father’s love, teach me to live in Yours.
Where my being feels divided, gather me again into Your wholeness. Where my knowing is proud, make me humble in the school of Your Spirit. And where my desires wander, turn them toward what is holy, true, and good.
Let obedience not be a burden but a bridge from my restless self to Your abiding peace. Let joy not be a passing feeling but the pulse of eternity within me.
I want to live as one who abides; to be where You are, to love as You love, until my will, my thoughts, and my joy become one song: “Abide in Me, and I in you.”
In Your holy name Messiah King Jesus,
Amen.
TRACK TO ENJOY:
References
1. Augustine, De Trinitate, XIII.7–10.
2. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I.20.1.
3. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), 22.
4. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II.27.2.
5. Edith Stein, Finite and Eternal Being (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2002), 407.
6. Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (Harcourt, 1999), 5
7. Dallas Willard, Knowing Christ Today (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 43.
8. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II.3.8.
9. C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (New York: HarperOne, 1949), 27.
10. N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope (London: SPCK, 2007), 209.
11. Sarah Schnitker et al., “Religion, Spirituality, and Thriving: Transcendent Narrative, Virtue, and Telos,” Journal of Research on Adolescence 29, no. 2 (2019): 276–280.
12. Augustine, In Epistulam Ioannis ad Parthos Tractatus 7.8.
#Hayibo 