John 14:24 Meaning and Explanation

He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings. The converse of the preceding verse. If obedience follows love, then disobedience reveals the absence of love. The person who hears Jesus's teaching and does not keep it reveals that their love for him is superficial or absent. This is not a statement of judgment delivered in anger but a simple truth about the nature of love. We reveal what we truly value by how we act. The words we dismiss or ignore show what we do not truly love.

The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me. Jesus's teaching is not original with him in the sense of being idiosyncratic or self-invented. It comes from the Father. To reject Jesus's words is to reject the Father's word. This is why the stakes are so high. This is why Jesus will later weep over Jerusalem, because the city has rejected his teaching and therefore has rejected the Father's own voice. The Father has spoken through the prophets, and now he has spoken through his Son. To close our ears to the Son is to cut ourselves off from the source of life and truth.