CLOSER TO JESUS: Abiding in the love of Christ

Just as the Father has perfectly loved the Son throughout all eternity, never wavering in His love, so Jesus loves His people! That’s the greatest motive for why we should want to grow closer to Christ: He loves us with infinite, inexhaustible love! As the hymn puts it, “O, the deep, deep, love of Jesus!” Or as Paul puts it (Gal. 2:20), “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”

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Abiding in Christ’s love is absolutely essential if you want a genuine, fresh, and fruitful Christian life. If your experience of His love fades, His commandments will seem burdensome, serving Him will become drudgery, and you’ll become vulnerable to all sorts of temptations. Remember how the Lord confronted the church at Ephesus? They were serving Him. They were persevering under persecution. They were upholding sound doctrine. But the Lord said, (Rev. 2:4), “But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.” He was probably referring to their love for Him. But the way you keep your love for Christ fresh is to remember His great love for you. Never get over the wonder that the eternal Son of God loved you and gave Himself for you! As Paul prayed for the Ephesians (Eph. 3:17-19):

… that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

But we need to think this through a bit more carefully. Often Christians doubt Christ’s love when they go through difficult trials. They mistakenly think, “If God really loved me, He wouldn’t allow these awful things to happen to me!” But Jesus says here that just as the Father loved Him, so He loves us. Did the Father’s perfect love for the Son mean that He spared Him from trials? No, He came to do the Father’s will, namely, the cross. So, does the Lord’s perfect love for you mean that He will spare you from all trials? No, because it’s usually through such trials that we come to know Him more deeply. It’s what Paul called “the fellowship of His sufferings” (Phil. 3:10). So as someone has said, “Never interpret God’s love by your circumstances; rather, interpret your circumstances by God’s love.”