GOD’S WORD FOR JUNE 16

OUR PERSONAL PROMISES:

JESUS, YOU……..ARE THE EXPRESS IMAGE OF THE FATHER …Heb 1:3

JESUS YOU……….ARE  THE CORNERSTONE…Is 28:16; Ps 118:22;  Mt 21:42; Mk 12:6; Lk 20:17; Acts 4:10; 1Peter 2:6-7; Ephes 2:20

JESUS, YOU……….ARE THE ROCK …1Sam 2:2; 2Sam 22:32&47;  Ps 19:14;  Ps 28:11;  Ps 42:9;  Ps 62:2, 6 &7; Ps 71:3;  Ps 78:55;  1Cor 10:4 

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THE WORD FOR TODAY

John 13:1

“….His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.”

We are reading Abide in Christ, a beloved classic from the 1800’s written by Andrew Murray.  We’re continuing with chapter 22 entitled,  “And in His Love.”

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It is perfect love.  (He is referring to the love in Jeremiah 31:3 “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”) It gives all and holds nothing back:

“The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hands.”  (John 3:35).

Just so Jesus loves His own; all He has is theirs.  When it was needed, He sacrificed His throne and crown for you:  He did not count His own life and blood too dear to give for you.  His righteousness, His Spirit, His glory,…even His throne, all are yours. This love  holds nothing back, but, in a manner that no human mind can fathom, makes you one with itself.  What wondrous love, to love us even as the Father loved Him, and to offer us this love as our everyday dwelling!

It is a gentle and most tender love.  As we think of the love of the Father to the Son, we see in the Son everything so infinitely worthy of that love.   When we think of Christ’s love to us, there is nothing but sin and unworthiness to meet the eye.  And the question comes:  “How can that love within the bosom of the divine life and its perfections be compared to the love that rests on sinners?  Can it indeed be the same love?”  Blessed be God, we know it is so.  The nature of love is always one, however different the objects.  Christ knows of no other law of love but that with which His Father loved Him.  Our wretchedness only serves to call out more distinctly the beauty of love, such as could not be seen even in heaven.  With the tenderest compassion He bows to our weakness; with patience inconceivable He bears with our slowness; with the gentlest loving-kindness He meets our fears and our follies.  It is the love of the Father to the Son:  beautified in its condescension, in its exquisite adaptation to our needs.

And it is an unchangeable love:

“….Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them to the end.”(John 13:1). 

“The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but My kindness shall not depart from you.” (Isaiah 54:10).

“I will not leave you, until I have done that which I have spoken to you of.”  (Genesis 28:15)

 And just as our wretchedness was what first drew it to us, so the sin with which it is so often grieved, and which may well cause us to fear and doubt, is but a new motive for it -– to hold to us all the more.   Why?  We can give no reason but this: “As the Father has loved Me, I also have loved you.”

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