THE WONDERFUL LOVE
Even as the Father Hath Loved Me, I Also Have Loved you--John 15:9
Here Christ leaves the language of parable, and
speaks plainly out of the Father. Much as the parable could teach, it could not
teach the lesson of love. All that the vine does for the branch, it does under
the compulsion of a law of nature: there is no personal living love to the
branch. We are in danger of looking to Christ as a Saviour and a supplier of
every need, appointed by God, accepted and trusted by us, without any sense of
the intensity of personal affection in which Christ embraces us, and our life
alone can find its true happiness. Christ seeks to point us to this.
And how does He do so? He leads us once again to
Himself, to show us how identical His own life is with ours. Even as the Father
loved Him, He loves us. His life as vine dependent on the Father was a life in
the Father's love; that love was His strength and His joy; in the power of that
divine love resting on Him He lived and died. If we are to live like Him, as
branches to be truly like our Vine, we must share in this too. Our life must
have its breath and being in a heavenly love as much as His. What the
Father's love was to Him, His love will be to us. If that love made Him the
true Vine, His love can make us true branches. "Even as the Father hath loved
me, so have I loved you."
Even as the Father hath loved Me--And how
did the Father love Him? The infinite desire and delight of God to communicate
to the Son all He had Himself, to take the Son into the most complete equality
with Himself, to live in the Son and have the Son live in Him--this was the
love of God to Christ. It is a mystery of glory of which we can form no
conception, we can only bow and worship as we try to think of it. And with such
a love, with this very same love, Christ longs in an infinite desire and
delight to communicate to us all He is and has, to make us partakers of His own
nature and blessedness, to live in us and have us live in Himself.
And now, if Christ loves us with such an intense,
such an infinite divine love, what is it that hinders it triumphing over every
obstacle and getting full possession of us? The answer is simple. Even as the
love of the Father to Christ, so His love to us is a divine mystery, too high
for us to comprehend or attain to by any effort of our own. It is only the Holy
Spirit who can shed abroad and reveal in its all-conquering power without
intermission this wonderful love of God in Christ. It is the vine itself that
must give the branch its growth and fruit by sending up its sap. It is Christ
Himself must by His Holy Spirit dwell in the heart; then shall we know and have
in us the love that passeth knowledge.
As the Father loved Me, so have I loved
you--Shall we not draw near to the personal living Christ, and trust Him,
and yield all to Him, that He may love this love into us? Just as he knew and
rejoiced every hour--the Father loveth Me--we too may live in the unceasing
consciousness--as the Father loved Him, so He loves me.
As the Father loved Me, so have I loved
you. Dear Lord, I am only beginning to apprehend how exactly the life of
the Vine is to be that of the branch too. Thou art the Vine, because the Father
loved Thee, and poured His love through Thee. And so Thou lovest me, and my
life as branch is to be like Thine, a receiving and a giving out of heavenly
love.