LOVE BETWEEN DIVINE PERSONS
John 14:31; Genesis 22:8; John 15:9-12
I feel measured in reading these scriptures but what our brother has brought before us has confirmed me in what has been in my heart as to the nature of divine love.
We read this scripture in John 14 yesterday morning. Our brother has spoken about the love of the Father for the Son. Here it is “but that the world may know that I love the Father”. How precious to think of that love being perfectly reciprocated and answered to by both the Father and the Son. What a relationship! We might say very reverently that not only did the Son give the Father cause to love Him, but that the Father was always the object of the love of His Son. How great the Father is. I think we have an insight by the Spirit of how precious the Father is to the Son and the nature of that communion between Them. My impression is that it is a communion that subsists in love, a love which was the motive that our Lord Jesus had for fulfilling the Father’s will. He says, “but that the world may know that I love the Father”; the world will take account of that, “and as the Father has commanded me, thus I do”. Jesus’ love for His Father was the motive for His obedience as the Son. His perfect, obedient, dependent pathway expressed the love that was enjoyed in the communion between Them.
I thought that this passage in Genesis gives us in the type a picture of that. The brethren know it well. Think of Abraham receiving this instruction from God; “Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, Isaac”, Gen.22:2. How much do I really think about what it cost the Father to give His Son, in the type here “thine only son, whom thou lovest”, the One of whom we spoke yesterday; “Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons”, Gen.37:3. Think of the character of the Father’s love, a precious love that had never before rested complacently on a man. “Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah”, but then my impression was particularly of this verse, “And they went both of them together”. There was what was laid upon Isaac, speaking of what was laid upon the Lord Jesus which none other could carry and that none other could bear. How precious that the Father had One with whom He could company in Jesus’ movements to the cross to fill out the purpose of God, One upon whom He could, as it were, lay that wood. What did it cost the Father? “The Father loves the Son” and I think it would be right to say that Jesus’ love for the Father was proved but it was enough, His love was able for it. The strength of that communion was able for the test that would come, for that love for His Father was unconditional, a love that underlay the obedience and dependence of the Son.
I read in John 15 more as a challenge to myself; “As the Father has loved me, I also have loved you”. That is how He has loved us, that is how He has loved me. He has loved me with the same character of love that He was loved with by the Father, the same character, the same nature of that love. Jesus says to His own, “abide in my love”. “If ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love”. Have we kept His commandments? Have we kept in our hearts what Jesus has asked us to do? Our response must be in answer to His love and if it is, then it is also a response to the Father’s love. The Lord Jesus has loved us, and He has established us in His own love, and the nature of that love is the same as the nature of the love which the Father has for the Son.
So Jesus says “I have spoken these things to you that my joy may be in you, and your joy be full. This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you”. Putting it simply, brethren, the love that we are to have for one another is to be of the same character as the love that the Lord has for us, and that is the same character as the love that the Father had for the Son. How precious these things are! What a height we are brought to, what a height we are installed in. There is no thought of inadequacy here but rather that this is possible by the Spirit, and is to be proved in our relationships with one another.
These are simple thoughts and I trust they may be for our encouragement and they may be for the glory of God, for His name’s sake.
Alastair McKay