O How He
Loves Us!
“So that the
world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me”
(Jn. 17:23).
“So that the
love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (Jn. 17:26).
“Just as the
Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love” (Jn. 15:9).
The overriding
theme of the Upper Room is the love of God; God’s love for us, God’s love
living in us, God’s love flowing from us to Him and to one another.
“We have come to
know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one
who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16).
The Upper Room
begins with love. “Jesus, knowing that His hour had come that He would depart
out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He
loved them to the end” (John 13:1).
The Upper Room
concludes in love, “So that the love with which You loved Me may be in them,
and I in them” (Jn. 17:26). We have an inclusio of love, and indeed, not only
do we have a literary inclusio, but we see that our life in the Trinity is to
be an inclusio of love, that our life with one another in the Trinity is to be
an inclusio of love. Our biosphere is to be the essence of God, the love of
God, the heart of God.
Our love for one
another is to be our distinctive witness, the mark of the Christian, the mark
of the Church – but it is not just any love, it is the very love of God, “That
you should love one another even as I have loved you” (John 13:34 – 35).
Jesus reiterates
this again when He says, “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just
as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down
his life for his friends” (John 15:12 – 13).
Have we
considered the possibility that the best training course on witnessing to the
world is a course on loving one another? How can the world possibly see Jesus
Christ without seeing His love living in His People? Arguments do not win
hearts, love wins hearts. You may intellectually convince me of an argument,
but unless my heart follows in love and commitment to Christ, I will not know
eternal life. Arguments may draw me to a certain degree, but only love
will keep me.
Love is the
animating force in our life in the Trinity. “If anyone loves Me, he will keep
My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to hm and make our abode
with him” (John 14:23).
O dear friends,
the Father loves us as He loves Jesus, Jesus loves us as the Father loves Him,
we are to love one another as Jesus loves us, our love for one another (along
with our unity in the Trinity, John 17:21 – 23) is our distinguishing mark, our
identifying characteristic, our primary witness to the world.
As Paul writes,
we can have all spiritual gifts and can engage in all kinds of service, but if
we do not have love we have nothing (1 Cor. Chapter 13). Consider that this
chapter lies between two chapters that explore our life in community, consider
that it is prelude to the great chapter on the Resurrection; Chapter 13 is the
animating and motivating life of the Holy Spirit, the love of God, within the Body
of Christ (chapters 12 and 14), the Body which participates in the
Resurrection, the Second Man, of Chapter 15.
No wonder Paul
writes, “Beyond all these things put on love, which is the uniting bond of
perfection” (Colossians 3:14).
To enter the Holy
of Holies is to enter the depths of the love of God in Christ, to be plunged
into the ineffable depths of the Divine shekinah, to be enveloped in the cloud
of glory in which we behold Him and in which we realize that since He laid down
His life for us, that “we ought to lay down our lives for one another” (1 John
3:16). When we “see” this, we truly “see” the love of God.
How are we to
know the fulness of God?
“That you, being
rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what
is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ
which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of
God” (Eph. 3:17 – 19).
To know the love
of Christ is to know the fulness of God, to know the fulness of God is to know
the love of Christ.
But we cannot
know the love of Christ without one another!
We “know we have
passed from death to life because we love one another”!
Once again, “If
God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any
time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in
us” (1 John 4:11 – 12).
And let us not
forget, “The one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love
God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20).
We need one another
so that we may love and be loved.
When we
approach our Father, whether as individuals, as marriages, as families, or as
congregations, it may be that our dear Father has a question, and that question
is, “Where are your brothers and sisters? Have you come alone?”
As I write this,
I am sure that some readers will be saying, “Yes, but…” Some readers will seek
exceptions to loving others, some readers will want to maintain barriers with
others, will want to find a doctrine, a practice, a teaching, to exempt them
from loving others sacrificially, from laying down their lives for certain
others.
Allow me please
to simply point to our Savior, who leads us into the Holy of Holies by washing
the feet of the Twelve, including Judas Iscariot. Our Savior, our Lord,
instructs us, “If I then, the Lord and Teacher, washed your feet, you also
ought to wash one another’s feet” (John 13:14).
Our calling is
to love and serve, we can trust Jesus to take care of what follows – even if
what follows is betrayal and crucifixion…for most certainly there is also
resurrection.
O if we only
knew how much our Father loves us!
Your Father
loves you just as He loves Jesus!
“Could we with
ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk
on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the
love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the
scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.”
By Frederick
Martin Lehman
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