As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.
How has the Father loved Jesus? After all, it was the Father who arranged for Jesus to be born a human. It was the Father who sent his son as an emissary to an ungrateful nation. It was the Father who told Jesus he needed to die on the cross. Is that love?
Well… yes. It is the deepest kind of love.
We believe that God and Jesus are one. In some sense, God Himself came down and became part of His creation. That I do not fully understand how this is possible is not important. What is important is that God sees His creation for what it is: Broken and needing redemption.
Some cities have laws that regulate who owns garbage and when. For example, when the garbage goes into the bin, the garbage company technically owns it. Whatever you put in there no longer belongs to you. In a sense that is what happened to humanity. We collectively jumped into the garbage bin of sin and ownership was transferred to “Satan’s Garbage Collection Service.” (Motto – “When we burn trash it burns forever!”) To reclaim His creation from the garbage, God had to pay a terrible price. He had to die on the cross.
How did the Father love Jesus? He resurrected him from the dead. How does Jesus love us? He does the same thing his Father did for him: He resurrects us from the dead. What a wonderful love! What a wonderful place to remain.
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His love is what we all need.
Thanks Rich!
Reminds me of the Beatles tune, “Love is all you need.”
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need
We talk a lot about love in our culture – not just romantic/sexual, but generally. In Scripture God defines love with himself- God is love. Christianity not surprisingly has an excellent philosophical answer for absolute eternality of interpersonal principles such as justice, peace (shalom), beauty, faithfulness, and… love. This passage leads us to that philosophical answer, Love is an eternal principle only because God is eternal – the Father loved the Son without beginning. The interpersonal relationships of the Father, Son, and Spirit are the basis for all that we hold most dear.
So when we look at Jesus statement about the Fathers love for him, it is an eternal reality he is speaking about that is a fundamental part of reality and kind of love Jesus gives to us.