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As The Father Loves
Today’s reading is known as ‘the highly priestly prayer’ of Jesus with the Father during the Passover meal He shared with His disciples. It is powerful and intimate, revealing and encouraging, and worth praying through again if you just zipped through it today to get to this little commentary. That’s okay. You can go back and to that now – and then come back!
Alright, now we’re back, how about that last verse? It’s mind-boggling! Here’s verse 26 (TPT):
I have revealed to them who You are and I will continue to make You even more real to them, so that they may experience the same endless love that You have for Me, for Your love will now live in them, even as I live in them!
Again, all kinds of truth in this verse, but for our evangelism focus during this short reading plan, how about this short clause (from NRSV): ‘the love with which You have loved Me may be in them.’
One legitimate inference of this prayer is that we can love Jesus like God the Father loves Jesus. Too shocking? Let’s break it down:
- ‘the love which You have for Me’ – this is God the Father loving Jesus;
- ‘may be in them’ – He’s talking about His disciples. I’m His disciple. If you are, then feel free to read yourself into this. For me, it runs like this – ‘may be in Steve’.
- to clarify – what exactly is to be in us, those of us who are His disciples? The Father’s love for the Son, what TPT renders ‘endless love’.
- so, logically, if the Father’s love for the Son is in us, then we love the Son with that ‘same endless love’.
That’s definitely miraculous.
Now, if God the Father is able to answer God the Son’s prayer that the love God the Father has for God the Son can be in us so that we can love God the Son with the same love with which God the Father loves God the Son, then is seems reasonable to extrapolate and infer that with the same love God the Father loved the world (‘that He gave His one and only Son…’), we can love the world.
And that is miraculous.
And evangelistic.
Scripture
About this Plan
Infinitum is a way of life centered on following Jesus by loving God and loving others through an emphasis on the habits and disciplines of surrender, generosity, and mission. We aim to see the Bible and also the world through these Jesus-colored lenses. This short reading plan considers evangelism through the habit of ‘loving God, loving people’.
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