Our Lord's Prayer
“Father, that the love wherewith Tia, hast loved Me may be in them.”
If I want to find out the nature of perfect love I must look up to God’s love to Christ. The text says: “Father, that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them.” This is Christ’s conclusion of His whole prayer. It is the whole object of His work, and that object is this: That the love that I have tasted, that the love which rested on Me, and dwells in Me, may now pass on to
them. And so, if you want to know 36 what the life of perfect love is, you must rise up to heaven itself and see what the love of God to Christ is.
And if you ask: How can I know what this perfect love in the Godhead is? I can only answer, The Father gave His own life to the Son; the Son was begotten of the Father, out of his bosom; in the depths of the Godhead Christ came forth from the Father. If God had not been love; if God had been anything that we could call selfish, He would have been content to be Godalone. But He would not be alone. From eternity He set His Son before Him as His image and His glory. He gave birth totheSon. When a man gives out his own life to another, that is love; and the love of God is that He gave all His life to His only begotten
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Son, and He said that, to all eternity, He never would live without His Son.
Here I learn the first lesson, that love means this — a birth out of the heart of God. That is
THE ONLY TRUE LOVE upon earth. Love that will live and last through eternity. Even now it can only come out of the Godhead. It is the work of God to give that birth; and, dear friends, as really as Jesus Christ was born of God, and in the resurrection was perfected as the first begotten from the dead, you must be born of God in the power of the resurrection, or you have no share in the love of God or the heaven of God. Let us remember this. If we try to learn the lesson, I think God will teach us more and more that
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love means giving; and giving all. We sometimes give a little, but not all. To give all — that is love! What did the Father dotothe Son? He made Him heir of all things. The Father let Christ share in everything. God gave Him a seat in His Throne; He gave Him a place in the worship of the angels; by Him he created the world; He gave Him all His glory and all His love.
Do you want to know what love is? O, my heart cannot take it in, nor my tongue express it; my thoughts cannot reach to all its fullness. Love means — giving all! It is that with God, and it is that with us too. If you are to have love, it means you are to give up everything to God; everything. God cannot be limited. With God, love means giving
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His life to His Son and with that giving everything! That is the love of God to Christ.
How did God prove His love for Christ? He gave Him His own life, He gave Him all things throughout the universe; and then sent Him to die! You say, That is strange; is that the love of God? Yes. Oh, you say, that was an exceptional thing, which became necessary, but did not belong to the essence of God’s love. No, indeed; this sending His Son to die is the highest and most wondrous part of God’s love to Christ. And how does it prove the love of God? I will teil you. It was not possible in the nature of things that God should come to die upon earth for sinners; but God put
THE HONOR UPON HIS SON
when He said: “Goand become a man, and in love live the life of man and of humanity.” It was the infinite love of the Father to the Son which made Him say, I will put thishonorupon My Son. God in His love sent Christ to die. We have heard that in different ways, love always means death; the death of self; and God sent Christ and said: “Go and obey My Word, and then lay down Thy life to die to sin and the world and self; give up Thy life entirely for Me and My glory.”
My friend, as you think of the love of God, has it ever said to you that you must die? The highest point of God’s love is that He invites us to die utterly to self, to be like Himself and His Son, perfect in love. God’s love to Christ
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means death. May we have grace to say: I would enter into the death of Jesus, I would be nothing in myself, O my God! May Thy love consent to accept of me to be nothing.
And then God raised Him from the dead: that also was the love of God, which led Christ in the path of death to the resurrection life, the resurrection glory, the eternal glory of heaven. If you want to 1earn the nature of love, remember
THESE THREE THINGS — that love gave birth to the Son, that love gave all to the Son; and then love claimed allfromtheSon. Oh, if we are to know perfect love, do not let us think this is too high for simple people. Do not let us say we cannot be troubled with theological doctrines about the relation of the Father to the Son. If we are to spend eternity with God, in the fellowship with the Father and the Son, there is surely nothing of such absorbing interest for us as to know what the relation of the Father and the Son, what God’s love to Christ is. God gave His Son to me and with Him gave all; and now, love is — God claiming everything. Only as I die can I enter into the new, the resurrection life, into perfect love, into the glory of God.
There is a second thought in this passage. I must not only look at the love of the Father to Christ, but I must look at
THE LOVE OF CHRIST TO US.
How do I get that from this text? Very
simply. Jesus prays, “Father, that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them.” What does that imply? Christ wants to share the love God gave to Him with us; and He goes to the Father and says, “Father, here are those whomI haveredeemed. Father, I plead that they may have all the love that Thou hast given Me, and that it may restinthem.” Is not that Christ’s wonderful love? The Father took Christ up into a perfect likeness with Himself. As He had given all to the Son in the depth of Godhead, He allowed the Son to show on earth what love is by giving back all to the Father. And Christ wants us to grow up into a perfect likeness with Himself. As God gave all He had to Christ, so Christ gives all He has to us, even to the love of the Father. Itisthe
y
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love of Christ that prays to the Father for us, that the Father’s love may come into us. What does that teach us? It ‘reminds us of what Christ is doing in ‘Heaven. Christ as a Mighty King on the Throne of God prays day and night for us. He gives up his life in glory to pray for us. He cannot die a second time, but just as He died on the Cross on earth, He gives up His life in Heaven to prayer that the love of God may come down upon us. O friend, that is what love does. You tell me you want to know what love will do. LOVE WILL PRAY FOR OTHERS.
It will say, just like Christ, “I have this wonderful blessing of God’s love, and I will give it to those around me. It should be our prayer, “Oh, let the love of
God come down upon them also!” There is nothing that should make Christians
so ashamed as their non-appreciation of the influence of intercession for others. How many Christians who have thought everything was right with them; who spend their little time in prayer daily, their quarter-hour or half-hour and get benefit from it; and yet have never made it a rule to make time for prayer for others! Have you ever set your heart upon the thought, “Ican by much prayer bring down a blessing from heaven upon some oneelse”? Lovecalls on God. It comes to God as the fountain of love, and has got something to say. It gives its time and its ardent heart’s desire and says, “Father, Oh, for a blessing on those
around me.” Jesus the King spends all
His time in heaven praying. Do you believe it? It is true. And how much time do you spend in this loving exercise? How little of this love we have! Father, forgive us. If you want to know what love is, look at the love of Christ praying for us.
And then, just think further of what Jesus said in the rest of that prayer, of how He spoke of what He had done for those disciples: “Ihave given them Thy Word;” and in the words that precede our text He says, “I have declared Thy Name unto them.” Love not only prays;
LOVE WORKS.
Christ had been working for three years upon those disciples. How patiently He had borne with them. How marvelously
He had instructed them and led them step by step, humbling Himself to their weak capacities! Love not only prays, but it teaches, it watches and it labors. Remember if we study this perfect love in the light of Christ’s love,it means that we give up ourselves to pray for others and to work for others.
And then one thing more. Christ not only prays and works, but He dies. He says in this chapter, “I sanctify Myself; I give Myself asa sacrifice for them that they may be sanctified.”
LOVE DIES FOR THOSE IT LOVES.
You remember those solemn words in 1 John: “If Christ died for us, we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” There ought to be such love in us, that we so give our lives for the brethren that, when it became needful, dying for them would be the natural result of our love. Love not only prays; love labors. Love not only labors; love dies. God’s love is seen in that He gave Christ up to the death as an honor and a privilege. Christ’s love was seen in that He gave His life. Perfect love gives its life for others. It is true in God, in Christ, in ourselves.
The third thought to which this text leads us is
THE CONDITIONS
on which this perfect love can be ours. For whom does Christ pray in this prayer? “That the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be zz them, and I zz them.” Is that for the whole world? No. Forwhom,then? He gavecertain
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marks of those for whom He asked that - God’s love should be in them. These marks indicate the conditions that are required if we are to receive this blessing of the perfect love of God in our hearts. What are these marks? The first is this — “They are not of the world as I am not of the world.” Separation out of the midst of the world. O, Christian, if you want to know what perfect love is, you must come out of the world; you must be separate. You tell me, “I do not understand what that means.” Never mind. Say to God, “Lord, I want to come out of the world; I want to live like a man who is not of this world but of the other world.” The love of God cannot dwell in your heart if the spirit of the earth is there. It is impossible.
It is only when we go out from the world that the love of God can enter into and take possession.
Another mark. Christ says, “I have given them Thy Word and they have received it and they have believed that Thou hast sent me.” That is another mark — receiving the Word in obedience and faith. They forsook all to follow Christ; and they received His word and testimony, set their whole confidence upon it, and that is what St. John sets before us as the mark of perfect love. “Whoso keepeth His Word, in him verily is the love of God. perfected.” Let me say this for your comfort: the love and the faith of these disciples for whom Christ prayed was very defective, and
yet
CHRIST ACCEPTED IT as the obedience and the faith of loving hearts. And so we can be sure that if we come to Christ with our feeble beginnings He will receive our love, and will day by day lead us in the path of perfect love and perfect obedience — not the obedience of angels, but the perfect obedience of faith. That is the second condition of love. The first condition is separation from the world; the second, obedience to His Word; and the third condition is unity with believers around us. Christ praysforthat: “Father, that they may be one.” God’s children must acknowledge each other, wherever they meet, however they may differ in their church organizations or in other things. My brother must be as dear to me as Christ Jesus is. God’s children must draw close together, or the gift of perfect love cannot come. In the fellowship of love they must prove to the world that there is something in them that is different from the world, that the Spirit of God and Heaven, of Perfect Love, is in them. Dr. Saphir has somewhere said, that in the Primitive Church there were many differences, but that as long as they looked more on the things on which they agreed than those on which they differed, the unity of love was maintained unbroken.
If the Church of Christ had only done that, how different would be our state to-day! But we have been looking too much on the things on which we differ, though many of these things are comparatively of little importance. Do let us get hold of the thought that, just as we must be separate from the world, and joined to Christ in obedience to His Word, so we must also BE JOINED TO EACH OTHER.
My love to my brother is the sure, the only real test of my love to God and to Jesus. If we are to seek and to find the life of Perfect Love, if God’s love to Christ is to be in us, as He prays, and He in us, the condition must be fulfilled — we must give up ourselves to see that all our intercourse with God’s children is Jove — unselfish, tender, self-sacrificing, ministering love.
But lest any be discouraged by the fear that these conditions of the path to perfect love are beyond their reach, let me remind them of one thing.
In Holy Scripture we find a great deal about two stages in the Christian life; the old Testament and the New; a time of preparation and a time of fulfillment. The longer I study God’s word and the Christian life, the deeper my conviction grows that the difference between the Old and New Testaments is a radical one, and runs not only through the life of the Church, but through the life of every believer.
Now, it is for His disciples Christ is praying, as He asks, “Father, that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them andI in them.” It would seem this was something that had not come yet. They did indeed love Jesus, but
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their love was an elementary, a feeble love, the love of beginners. Christ had said, “If ye love Me, keep My commands.” No doubt they went away from that sacred hour with full purpose to keep His word, and yet how soon they forsook their Master! Christ saw that they did indeed love Him and longed to obey Him; He Himself said, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Christ saw their loving obedience, but they were still only in the preparatory stage, and their best efforts were but feeble. “To will, is present with me, but how to perform that which is good, I find not”: this was their experience. And yet they were in the sure path to perfect love. Christ was training them for something better: amid all their failure He saw their heart
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was right with Him. Thank God for the comfort that can give us.
There is another stage; it is this that Christ prays for. He seems to say, “Father, there is a new time coming, when Thou shalt pour down Thy Holy Spirit upon them; when the love of God shall fill them as it fills Me; when Thy love in which I live shall be in them as in Me, and Iinthem.” Christ was praying for the Day of Pentecost; the three conditions without which the Day of Pentecost could not come, were found in them. And the Day of Pentecost came, and God’s love filled them. Our heart may be saying honestly: ‘Perfect love, yes, perfect love. This is my .constant plea,” and yet we feel we have not at- 4ained to it. Let us hold on in the spirit to these three things — separation from the world, from its spirit, and from its pleasures; acceptance of God’s Word in faith and obedience; unity with all God’s children; and Christ, Who led His disciples on so wonderfully, will lead us on too.
We now come to the fourth thought that this text suggests. The
LOVE OF GOD PERFECTED IN US.
This is what Christ prays for: “Father, that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them and Iinthem.” This refers to the Day of Pentecost. In St. John xiv. 20 Christ says, “Az that day ye shall know that Iam in My Father and I in you.” He also said, “If yelove Me, keep My commandments, and the Father will love you.” There was a love to Christ which was already in them. There was also a love which
they were still to get through the Holy Spirit. This they obtained at Pentecost, and this we must have if we would know perfect love. And the question comes to us, What does it mean to have the love of the Father in us; the love wherewith the Father loved His Son? - What does God aim to accomplish in us? “That the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may bein them”! First of all I must understand that the love of God is going to be within me. How is the love of God, possessing and ruling and filling my inmost being,to bein me? Just as thinking and feeling and willing is in me, and it is most easy and natural for me to think and feel and will; even so, when the love of God really fills my heart, love will flow out spontaneously and continuously. Instead of it being a duty, as it is in the earlier disciple stage, - with its effort and failure, it becomes a delight, and there is a love that cannot help loving, because God’s love has been shed abroad and has taken complete possession. Up to this time there has been an inward life of self continually getting the mastery. The love of self and of sin has been very deep in me. What Christ’s prayer asks and promises is, that we are now to have an inward life of love; in the place of sin and self the love of God to Christ is now to fill the heart. Instead of having to try to love always, and so often failing, love comes in as an indwelling Divine power, constituting the
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very life of the soul, and loves spontaneously, continuously, and most joyfully. Love has filled the heart. Think of this. My heart, my heart, MY heart becomes the habitation of the holy love of God to Jesus in its Divine joy and blessedness, ‘its infinite power, its everlasting glory! “That the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them”! That love is to be zz ws,our second nature, our new self, our very selves.
And then, note further, this love is to come through the Holy Spirit. Yes; the work of the Holy Spirit is this: that in and through Him the Father begets the Son. He is the love which is their living bond of union. You know it isa doctrine of the Church that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son; and therefore, when Christ met the Father in the glory after His resurrection, the Holy Spirit began to flow; and the Father gave the Spirit to the Son and the Spirit flowed down from the Father through the Son to the disciples. And it is to this Holy Spirit we are now to look to bring the love of God as a heavenly reality, as a Divine life, into our hearts. We have the Holy Spirit. So the disciples had the Holy Spirit also before the Day of Pentecost, but only as a secret power working in them. They did not know Him asa Person. They had Him given to live within them, but they did not know Him. They could not indeed yet know Him, as bringing the very love of Christ to them from the throne of God in the glory. And just so there are the two stages
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IN OUR EXPERIENCE.
We may struggle and wrestle, and try and fight for love, but we don’t succeed. But the words of our text give us the precious promise which gives us hope. As the Son prays to the Father, “That the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them,” so we receive the blessed assurance that our hearts can be filled with the love of God in a way and to an extent that we have never known before, in the power of theHoly Ghost.
Once more. If you want to know how this love of God is to be perfected, it is not only that you have to give the whole heart, and wait for the Holy Spirit of God; but, above all things, you have to look to Jesus, through whom the Spirit comes and whom the Spirit will reveal?
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See how Christ connects the two things. “That Thy love may be zz them and /z* them.” The indwelling love of God an the indwelling Son of God are INSEPARABLE.
You cannot understand it, but the Son of God is the love of God. He was born of God’s love; He was sent by God’s love; He was raised from the dead by God’s love; and He dwells in the glory of God’s love. And therefore while we look for the Holy Spirit, let us set our hearts wide open, and know that we can have within a holy temple that can be filled with love, because Christ, who holds within Himself all God’s love, comes to dwell there. Let us expect this with a trust and a confidence and a clinging to Christ, “In Whom the love of God is manifested.” And as the prayer of Jesus brought Pentecost to the early disciples, so the prayer of Jesus brings Pentecost to the individual soul now. It is the intercession of Christ which can bring Pentecost, and perfect the love of God in our hearts.
Let me ask you
TWO SIMPLE QUESTIONS. Do you believe that this prayer can be
fulfilled in you? Do you believe that it
is God’s will that the Holy Spirit should reveal His love to Jesus as a living reality and a continuous experience within your heart? I believe it! I believe it is God’s will for you and for me. Perfect love is the love that is in God; that is in Christ; that is in the Holy Spirit for us, that He may bring it into our
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hearts. The fruit of the Spirit is love. Oh, look at the mystery of the love of the Father to Christ His Son, the love that fills eternity. Look at the love of the Son to us; heavenly love made manifest on earth. The love that the Spirit brings is this very same Divine and heavenly love; and this perfect, Divine love, the Holy Spirit will pour out in our hearts. Let us fix our faith upon this. There is a perfect love for me, and the Holy Spirit is the messenger to come and bring it through Jesus and from Jesus to me. Nothing short of this can satisfy the longing soul; and I want it in my heart; I may count upon it. Why? Because Jesus prayed the Father that it should come. Have you set your heart upon that, and do you believe God means that it can come? The love wherewith the Father loved the Son is a Divine supernatural reality, as a heavenly power to dwell in and have possession of you. Come, my brother, listen for a moment to the voice of Christ: ‘Father, Thou lovest Me, and I love them; according to the riches of Thy glory grant that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may enter the hearts of My disciples, and dwell there always, so that I can dwell there.” Let us say, “Father, I believe it can be done!” ) And then my second question: If you believe it can be done, are you going to yield yourself to it? Love claims all. Love is very exacting. God asked Christ to give His life up to Him, and He could not do anything else; and Christ asks of His disciples that they should forsake ai for Him; Christ asks that we should by ready to give up our life for the brethren,
Perfect love wants a perfect heart, perfectly given up to love alone. It asks that we should yield ourselves and say, “Lord, hereI am; and I part with everything in the world that love may have possession of every word I speak and every thought I have and every act I do; that every moment of my life may be a sacrifice to Thy love, so that nothing but love can come out of me!” Are you afraid to speak thus? Do you feel as if you did not dare to pray thus, because you know not how itcancome? It must come asa Divine supernatural gift, as the power of God. It is not a thing which can be attained, or reached, or grasped. But are you willing to surrender yourself to be like Christ, nothing but a servant of Divine love? It is a very solemn thing that our love for God on the Day of Judgment is going to be tried by our love for man and our treatment of our fellowman. We have to be judged by the test of love. Do remember that. You are not going to get into heaven by faith without works, but by faith and works of love. You get pardon by faith without one good work, but in the Day of Judgment good deeds are to be taken into account. Remember every day as you come to God that
GOD JUDGES of your love to Him by your conduct to your fellow-men. What do we read in John? “Let us not love in word, but in —
deed and in truth, and we shall assure our hearts before God.” “He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God Whom he hath not seen?” Your love for God is an imagination, a sentiment, a delusion, if your heart is not full of love for your fellow-man.
O, friend, this perfect love comes as a very solemn claim, with its demand on every moment of my life that the world around may see that it is real. Are you willing to give up your life, to it? I am not going to ask at this moment if you have attained to it; but, are you willing to submit to God, that the love with which God loved Christ, the love that sent Him to die for men, may have you wholly for itself? God wants us to say, “My God, I give myself up to live only, and always, and wholly for the love of God.” You feel it is impossible, you feel utterly helpless; you cannot undertake to live this life of perfect love. Fear not, THE MORE HELPLESS THE BETTER.
We need to sink right down into despair. It was after Christ was dead! — dead! — dead and in the grave, that God raised Him up to the glory; and you must sink down into death and utter helplessness and say, “My God, I want love, and my love is passing away from me; O, be Thou my support!” You
must sink down into the grave of your pes
own impotence, the grave of self, and
let God Himself lift you up! If you are. ane
only willing to acknowledge God’s claim a,j to say, “My Father, here lam. This love, wherewith Thou didst love Thy Son, it is too high for me — beyond my reach. But if Thou wilt hear His prayer, here I am; let that love enter and take possession. I yield myself to its blessed power — let it live in me!”
Will you claim this? Will you accept this? I know it is not an easy thing.
You think, perhaps, you are not now prepared for it; but come, come now. Do you really believe there is such a thing as the words of this prayer being fulfilled in your spirit? Is it possible?
Can you say your “Yea and Amen, O, my God”? And then
ARE YOU WILLING
to surrender absolutely your whole life, day by day to wait upon God for the power and love of God to maintain within you the life of perfect love, of God’s love to Christ living in you?” And then the last question. Are you ready now in faith to believe in the mighty power of the Holy Spirit to bring the full answer to the prayer, “That the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them’? Are you ready to believe that God will grant what is written in His Word, “Love perfected in us; we perfected in love”? God holds out the promise. The mighty, all-prevailing intercession of Christ pleads for it. The Holy Spirit can and will work it. The Three One God is my surety for it. Lord! I do believe, grant — it for Thy Name’s sake. Amen.