What Kind Of Love?
It appears that the phrase “I love you” has become popular and can be tossed around like a penny.
Who wants to be loved with a love that is rated at the value of a penny?
It’s kind of like growing up in the South, where women call everyone sweetie or honey. You get married and live in confusion if your wife is a Southern bell and happens to call you honey or sweetie. You don’t know if you rate above the rest, are equal, or maybe fall short because it is just the way she talks to everyone. How can you know the measure of love you are partaking of?
Then there is the friend kind of love, the mate kind of love, the family kind of love, and so on. There are so many variations on the idea of love today that it can be a challenge for someone to know just how loved they truly are. It’s hard to feel secure when you can’t nail down just how sincere or solidly you are loved.
Jesus prayed about our being loved by the Father. However, He quantified it very specifically when He prayed it.
John 17:25 O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. 26 And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”
Have you been given to Jesus by the Father? If you are born again, that is exactly what happened. The Father drew you to Jesus, and Jesus gave you new life. So that means every born-again believer in Jesus was given to Jesus by the Father, and that means this prayer applies to them.
So, let’s pay close attention to what Jesus prayed. Jesus says, “I will declare to them Your name. “ To truly grasp this, we must understand this phrase: Your name.
Jesus said he had declared it to them and would declare it. This should give us a clue: If He had already declared it and it was merely a name or a title, then they would know it, and continuing to declare would be redundant. By this phrase, Your name is much deeper than just a title. It is dealing with essence. It deals with unveiling the person based on who they truly are. Jesus has shown the Father and will continue doing so. He will reveal the Father in ways we have not known for a purpose.
The aim of doing this on the part of Jesus is that the love with which the Father loved and still loves Jesus might be in us, and we might be in Christ.
This spiritual reality of being in Christ is huge. The Father loves the Son with an intense, passionate, unyielding, unwavering, devoted eternal love. It is a love with immeasurable depth and richness. When one is born again, Christ enters into them, and they are placed in Christ. In that place of being hidden with God in Christ, there is an overwhelming love that seeks to overshadow and fill the life of the believer.
Every believer has access to this amazing love. The Father heard Jesus’s prayer and answered it. But there’s a difference in access and possession. I can know there is something available to me, even given to me, but neglect to take possession of it due to wrong thinking about it. Knowing the kind of love does not automatically assure me I will experience all it is intended to offer me. I must, by faith, take possession of it and allow it to produce in me the confidence and security it is meant to produce. We have been born into an everlasting, extraordinary love of God that is continually ours to rejoice in and take advantage of. What kind of love? It is the best kind of love and the most unique love there is.
