I made Your name known to them and will make it known, so the love You have loved Me with may be in them and I may be in them. John 17:26. HCSB
"The love you have loved me with…" What is that love? How is it characterized? What does it look and feel Like? What is its origin? This is a very particular love referred to in this passage. It is the divine love of eternal Father with eternal Son, the only begotten, the intense infusion of love at the begetting, a furious love that cherished his Son; the eternal dimension of love that we see only a shadow of on earth.
How unthinkable to consider this love. Present from eternity. The single driving force in all there is. The very essence of God. The very heart of who he is. God is love. But not just any love. The love “you have loved me with” from the beginning. The very origin of all love. Of all things, nothing is more at the heart of the universe. Nothing is more pervasive. Nothing is more powerful, more profound, more to be desired. This very love, Jesus cries, “you have loved me with.”
God is immense, he is expansive. His enormity is reflected in a universe nearly 100 billion light years across, filled with a trillion galaxies. There are simply no limits. And if we understand Scripture right, that expanse is a measuring rod of his divine love. “Your love extends to the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies.” God’s very essence is love, and his essence is expansive, magnificent, endless. And let the fiery heavens, where supernovae flare up and burn at 100 billion degrees, measure also the fury of his burning love! A love of such immensity, such intensity, is simply unthinkable.
Jesus knew this love. He lived in the cloud of it. His whole being was persuaded of it. Everything he said or did reflected that love, like a cascading conduit surging forth with its intensity. He felt it in the words spoken to broken lives, broken bodies, weary souls, when he spoke healing and hope. He felt it when he called back life to the widow’s son. He felt it when he freed the demoniac of his enslavement to legion. He felt it when he healed disease, discomfort felt for a lifetime. He felt it when he looked on the masses from the cross and forgave.
“May it be in them” he prays. This very love, so expansive, so furious, so pure, so focused, so eternal! “May it be in them!”
Spirit, fill me; may that eternal, immense, furious, intense love be in me; may it transfix me, transform me, consume me, possess me, and may it be the single thing that forever defines me from this day forward.
© 2020 James Gorham