REFLECTIONS

CHRIST’S LOVE TO US

“Even as the Father hath loved Me, I also have loved you: abide ye in My love.-John xv. 9 R.V.

“In intercourse between friends and relations everything depends on their love to each other. Of what value is abundance of riches, if love is lacking between husband and wife, or parents and children? And in our religion, of what value is all knowledge and zeal in God’s work, without the knowledge and experience of Christ’s love? (See 1 Cor. Xiii. 1-3.) O Christians, the one thing needful in the inner chamber is to know by experience how much Christ loves you, and to learn how you may abide and continue in that love.

Think of what Christ says: “As the Father hath loved Me,”-what a Divine, everlasting, wonderful love! “Even so have I loved you.” It was the same love with which He had loved the Father and that He always bore in His heart, which He now gave into the hearts of His disciples. He yearns that this everlasting love should rest upon us, and work within us, that we may abide in it every day. What a blessed life! Christ desires every disciple to live in the power of the self-same love of God that He Himself experienced. My brother, do you realize that in your fellowship with Christ in secret or in public, you are surrounded by and kept in this heavenly love. The Christ with whom you desire fellowship longs unspeakably to fill you with His love.

Read from time to time what God’s Word says about the love of Christ. Meditate on the words, and let them sink into your heart. Sooner or later you will begin to realize: The greatest happiness of my life is that I am beloved of the Lord Jesus. I may live in fellowship with Him all the day long.

Let your heart continually say: His love to me is unspeakable, He will keep me abiding in His love.”

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OUR LOVE TO CHRIST

“Jesus Christ, Whom having not seen, ye love: in Whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”-1 Pet. i.8. R.V.

“What a wonderful description of the Christian life! People who had never see Christ, and yet truly loved Him and believed on Him, so that their hearts were filled with unspeakable joy. Such is the life of a Christian who really loves the Lord.

We have seen that the chief attribute of the Father and of the Son, is love to each other and love to man. This should be the chief characteristics of the true Christian. The love of God and the love of Christ is shed abroad in his heart, and becomes a well of living water, flowing forth as love to the Lord Jesus.

This love is not merely a blessed feeling. It is an active principle. It takes pleasure in doing the will of the beloved Lord. It is joy to keep His commandments. The love of Christ to us was shown by His death on the cross, our love must be exhibited in in unselfish, self-sacrificing lives. Oh that we understood this: In the Christian life love to Christ is everything!

Great love will beget great faith. Faith in His love to us, faith in the powerful revelations of His love in our hearts, faith that He through His love will work all His good pleasure in us.

The wings of faith and love will lift us up to heaven, and we shall be filled with joy unspeakable. The joy of the Christian is an indispensable witness to the world of the power of Christ to change hearts, and fill them with heavenly love and gladness.”

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LOVE TO THE BRETHREN

“A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”-John xiii. 34; xv. 12.

“The Lord Jesus told His disciples that as the Father had loved Him, even so He loved them. And now, following His example, we must love one another, with the same love. “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if ye have love to one another” (John xiii. 35). He had prayed: “That they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me” (John xvii. 21). If we exhibit the love that was in God towards Christ, and Christ to us, the world will be obliged to confess that our Christianity is genuine and from above.

This is what actually happened. The Greeks and Romans, Jews and heathen, hated each other. Among all the nations of the world there was hardly a thought of love to each other. The very idea of self-sacrificing was a strange one. When the heathen saw that Christians from different nations, under the powerful working of the Holy Spirit, became one, and loved one another, even to the point of self-sacrifice in time of plague or illness-they were amazed and said: “Behold how these people love one another!”

Amongst professing Christians there is a certain oneness of belief and feeling of brotherhood, but Christ’s heavenly love is often lacking, and we do not bear one another’s burdens, or love others heartily.

Pray that you may love your fellow-believers with the same love with which Christ loved you. If we abide in Christ’s love, and let that love fill our hearts, supernatural power will be given us to take all God’s children unto our hearts in love. As close as is the bond of love between the Father and the Son, between Christ and His followers, so close must the bond of love be between all God’s children.”

-Andrew Murray (1828-1917) Found in God’s Best Secrets  Daily Devotional Meditations  Printed by Zondervan Publishing House   Grand Rapids, MI  1979  January 13, 14, 15 Devotions.

REFLECTIONS

Christ's Love And Blessing

Matthew 28:16-20

“Three times we find the apostle saying, ‘Thou knowest that I love thee.’ Once we are told that he said, ‘Thou knowest all things.’ Once we have the touching remark made that he was ‘grieved to be asked the third time’. We need not doubt that our Lord, like a skillful physician, stirred up this grief intentionally. He intended to prick the apostle’s conscience and to teach him a solemn lesson. If it was grievous to the disciple to be questioned, how much more grievous must it have been to the Master to be denied! 

The answer that the humbled apostle gave is the one account that the true servant of Christ in every age can give of his religion. Such a one may be weak and fearful and ignorant and unstable and failing in many things, but at any rate he is real and sincere. Ask him whether he is converted, whether he is a believer, whether he has grace, whether he is justified, whether he is sanctified, whether he is elect, whether he is a child of God-ask him any of these questions and he may perhaps reply that he really does not know! But ask him whether he loves Christ and he will reply, ‘I do.’ He may add that he does not love him as much as he ought to do, but he will not say that he does not love him at all. The rule will be found true with very few exceptions. Wherever there is true grace, there will be a consciousness of love towards Christ.

What, after all, is the great secret of loving Christ? It is an inward sense of having received from Him pardon and forgiveness of sins. Those love much who feel much forgiven. He that has come to Christ with his sins and tasted the blessedness of free and full absolution, he is the man whose heart will be full of love towards his Saviour. The more we realize that Christ has suffered for us and paid our debt to God and that we are washed and justified through His blood, the more we shall love Him for having loved us and given Himself for us.”

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Luke 24:50-53

“Our Lord left the disciples in a remarkable manner (vv. 50-51). He left them in the very act of blessing. We cannot doubt for a moment that there was a meaning in the circumstance. It was intended to remind the disciples of all that Jesus had brought with Him when He came into the world. It was intended to assure them of what He would do after He left the world. He had come on earth to bless and not to curse, and blessing He departed. He came in love and not in anger, and in love He went away. He came not as a condemning Judge but as a compassionate Friend, and as a Friend He returned to His Father. He had been a Saviour full of blessings to His little flock while He had been with them. He would have them know this even after He was taken away.

Forever let souls lean on the gracious heart of Jesus, if we know anything of true religion. We shall never find a heart more tender, more loving, more patient, more compassionate and more kind. To talk of the Virgin Mary as being more compassionate than Christ is a proof of miserable ignorance. To flee to the saints for comfort when we may flee to Christ is an act of mingled stupidity and blasphemy and a robbery of Christ’s crown. Gracious was our Lord Jesus when He lived among His weak disciples, gracious in the very season of His agony on the cross, gracious when He rose again and gathered His sheep around Him, gracious in the manner of His departure from this world. It was a departure in the very act of blessing! Gracious we may be assured He is at the right hand of God. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8), a Saviour ever ready to bless, abounding in blessings.

There is something very touching in the fact that our Lord’s ascension took place close to Bethany. It was a small village bordering on the Mount of Olives. But it was the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus.”

-From J.C. Ryle’s (1816-1900) Expository Thoughts; Found in Daily Readings From All Four Gospels  Published by Evangelical Press  Auburn, MA  2001  December 25 and 27 Devotions.