THE FATHER'S LOVE
THE FATHER’S LOVE
There are affections between the Father and the Son into which it is impossible for us to enter. The Father loved the Son before the world’s foundation, but we cannot enter into that love. The character of the love, as well as its degree, is altogether beyond us.
But here the Lord speaks of the Father’s love to Him in a way which we can, in measure, enter into. If the Father loves Him because He laid down His life that He might take it again, I think we may say with all reverence that we love Him for the same reason. We have thoughts and affections in common with the Father as to that blessed One. That those affections are very feeble and straitened in us we are fully conscious, but as far as they go we have them in common with the Father. “I know those that are mine, and am known of those that are mine, as the Father knows me and I know the Father”, John 10:14, 15. There is the same character of knowledge and affection between the Shepherd and the sheep as there is between the Father and the Son!
He laid down his life that we might know the love of God. We perceive divine love in His death. He has made all the Father’s glory to appear. “I have glorified thee on the earth”. That does not mean that He has added anything to the Father, but that He has brought into view all that the Father is. The Father’s love and glory have come out in the most blessed way, and thus He has been glorified by the Son. He has laid down His life that all this light of love and glory might shine forth for our hearts, and the Father loves Him because of it. Can we not say that we love Him too?
Then, also, it is “because I lay down my life that I may take it again”, John 10:17. His death is viewed as the necessary antecedent to His taking His life in resurrection. He has taken His life again in a new condition. He is now the last Adam, able to quicken us so that we participate in His life and have His Spirit. He is “the beginning, firstborn from among the dead”, and has the first place in all things. He is the Firstborn among many brethren. In that character He is the Object of the Father’s love, and surely of ours also. He appears before our hearts as the supremely worthy One. We gladly give Him praise and adoration.
Thus we come under the Father’s love. “The Father himself has affection for you, because ye have had affection for me, and have believed that I came out from God”. In both scriptures a reason is given for the Father’s love. God’s love is sovereign; it flows out of its own fulness without regard to any reason outside itself. But these blessed reasons are given for the Father’s love towards Christ and the saints.
If we have in any measure common thoughts with the Father about Christ, we come under the Father’s affection; we are in the circle of His complacency. “Bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry”, Luke 15:23. How blessed to be brought into that circle!