In Jesus, we experience the love that the Father has for us

October 24, 2018

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Beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. (Jude 20–21)

How remarkable that we are charged to keep ourselves in the love of God.

Of all God’s perfections, why highlight his love? When encouraging fellow Christians to persevere in the faith, why not pinpoint his justice or his patience, or even his mercy?

We dare not ignore Jude’s charge or minimize the Father’s love. As Charles Spurgeon put it, “When the love of God is shed abroad in the heart, the idols will soon depart and the love of sin will take its flight.” Holiness is about new affection, not mere avoidance. We are to keep ourselves in God’s love in order that we might expel the idols of our hearts with the light of his affection.

But what exactly do we mean when we say “the love of God”?

The Beam of God’s Love
We learn from 1 John that if we do not love, we do not know God, because God is love (1 John 4:8), and the full revelation of his love has come in Jesus Christ. “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16).

Jesus Christ, and all that he accomplished, is the climactic expression of God’s love. And what exactly has Jesus accomplished? Reconciliation: the restoration of relationship. God has overcome the disunion in which we once lived — by reconciling us to himself through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son. Jesus leads us to the very fountain of eternal love.

John Owen beautifully paints the picture:
Though there be no light for us but in the beams, yet we may by beams see the sun, which is the fountain of it. Though all refreshment actually lie in the streams, yet by them we are led up to the fountain. Jesus, in respect to the love of the Father, is the beam, the stream; wherein though actually all our light and refreshment lies, yet by him we are led to the fountain, the sun of eternal love itself. (Communion with the Triune God)

Those of us whose lips are parched from sucking on the sands of idolatry, whose souls are shriveled from being hidden under the shadows of lesser loves, whose hearts long to drink full from his cup and be flooded with an inextinguishable light, we need only turn to Jesus.