NOTES ON SCRIPTURE 1895 NO. 29
NOTES ON SCRIPTURE 1895 NO. 29
The Lord said in the beginning of this chapter, “Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee”. He had declared the Father on the earth - God’s heart to man; but now He would declare Him as He is in heaven. The Lord can say of His disciples, “They... have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me”. Now He closes, saying, “I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them”. Every believer enjoying his acceptance with God has a sense of the love of God. God has commended His love towards us, but this is much more - the love wherewith the Father loved His Son down here, as we read, “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again” - the Father’s heart resting on the One who had drawn out His love. It is almost inconceivable that we should be objects of such love; but as we in any measure enter into it, we are so consciously favoured that,
[p. 73] with Christ in us, we can be morally superior to everything down here. The young men in 1 John 2 have overcome the wicked one, they are out of Egypt, and the word of God abides in them, but they are not proof against the world and the things of the world; if they love the world, the love of the Father is not in them: “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him”. It is not that they do not know the Father; little children know the Father, but the love of the Father in them would draw them into a circle of things altogether outside of and apart from this world and the things of the world; it would not then be an effort to retire from things here, for the taste and joy of the heart would be in the Father’s things.