Abide in my Love - from Andrew Murray

Before the Saviour speaks the word that invites us to abide in his love, he first tells us what that love is. What he says of it must give weight to his invitation, and make the thought of not accepting it an impossibility. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you!”

            “As the Father has loved me…” How shall we be able to form right conceptions of this love? Lord, teach us. God is love. Love is his very being. Love is not an attribute, but the very essence of his nature, the center around which all his glorious attributes gather. It was because he is love that he is the Father and there is a Son. Love needs an object to which it can give itself, in which it can lose itself, with which it can make itself one. Because God is love, there must be a Father and a Son. The love of the Father to the Son is that Divine passion with which he delights in the Son, and speaks, “My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” The Divine love is a burning fire; in all its intensity and infinity it has but one object, but one joy, and that is the only-begotten Son. When we gather together all the attributes of God – his infinity, his perfection, his immensity, his majesty, his omnipotence – and consider them as but the rays of the glory of his love, we still fail in forming any conception of what that love must be. It is a love that passes knowledge.

            And yet this love of God to his Son must serve, O my soul, as the glass through which you are to learn how Jesus loves you. As one of his redeemed ones, you are his delight, and all his desire is to you, with the longing of a love which is stronger than death and which many waters cannot quench.  His heart yearns after you, seeking your fellowship and your love. Were it needed, he would die again to possess you.  As the Father loves the Son and cannot live without him, cannot be ‘God the blessed’ without him, so Jesus loves you. His life is bound up in yours; you are to him inexpressibly more indispensable and precious than you ever can know. You are one with him. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” What a love!