— Day 23 — —

Abide As Christ Abides in
the Father

As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; continue in My
love ... you will abide in My love, just as I ... abide
in my Father’s love.

John 15:9–10

Christ taught His disciples that to abide in Him was to abide in His love. The hour of His suffering is near, and He cannot speak much more to them. No doubt they have many questions to ask Him about His love and their abiding in Him. He anticipates and meets their wishes, and gives them His own life as the best expression of His command. As example and rule for abiding in His love, they only have to look to His abiding in the Father’s love. In the light of His union with the Father, their union with Him will become clear. His life in the Father is the law of their life in Him.

The thought is so high that we can hardly take it in, and yet it is so clearly revealed that we dare not neglect it. Do we not read in John 6:57, ‘‘As I live because of the Father, even so he who feeds on Me will live because of me’’? And the Savior prays so distinctly (John 17:22–23), ‘‘that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me.’’ The blessed union of Christ with the Father and His life in Him is the only rule of our thoughts and expectations in regard to living and abiding in Him.

Think first of the origin of that life of Christ in the Father. They were one—one in life and one in love. In this, His abiding in the Father had its root. Though dwelling here on earth, He knew that He was one with the Father, that the Father’s life was in Him, and His love on Him. Without this knowledge, abiding in the Father and His love would have been utterly impossible for Christ. In the same way it is only in this knowledge that you can abide in Christ and His love. Know that you are one with Him—one in the unity of nature. By His birth He became man and took on your nature so that He might be one with you. By your new birth you become one with Him and are made partaker of His divine nature. The link that binds you to Him is as real and close as the one that bound Him to the Father—the link of a divine life. Your claim on Him is as sure as was His on the Father. Your union with Him is just as close.

And as it is the union of a divine life, it is one of an infinite love. In His life of humiliation on earth He tasted the blessing and strength of knowing himself to be the object of an infinite love, and He dwelt in it all through His days; from His own example He invites you to learn that in this the secret of your rest and joy can be found. You are one with Him: Yield yourself now to be loved by Him; let your eyes and heart open up to the love that shines and presses in on you on every side. Abide in His love.

Think also of the form of that abiding in the Father and His love that is to be the law of your life: ‘‘I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love’’ (John 15:10). His was a life of subjection and dependence and yet was most blessed. To our proud, self-seeking nature the thought of dependence and subjection suggests the idea of humiliation and servitude; but in the life of love lived by the Son of God, and to which He invites us, they are the secret to enjoying great blessing. The Son is not afraid of losing anything by giving up all to the Father, for He knows that the Father loves Him and can have no interest apart from that of the beloved Son. He knows that as complete as the dependence on His part so is the sharing on the part of the Father of all He possesses. Therefore, when He said, ‘‘The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do’’; He adds at once, ‘‘for whatever He (the Father) does, the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does’’ (John 5:19–20).

The believer who studies this life of Christ as the pattern and the promise of what his life may be learns to understand how ‘‘Without Me you can do nothing’’ (John 15:5) is the forerunner of ‘‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me’’ (Philippians 4:13). We learn to glory in weaknesses, to delight in hardships and difficulties for Christ’s sake, for ‘‘when I am weak, then I am strong’’ (2 Corinthians 12:10). The apostle Paul rises above the ordinary tone in which so many Christians speak of their weakness. They are seemingly content to merely tolerate their state, while Paul sees much more; he has learned from Christ that in the life of divine love the emptying of self and the sacrifice of our will is the surest way to have all we could wish or want. Dependence, subjection, and self-sacrifice are for the Christian, as for Christ, the blessed path of life. Just as Christ lived through and in the Father, even so the believer lives through and in Christ.

Think of the glory of this life of Christ in the Father’s love. Because He gave himself wholly to the Father’s will and glory, the Father crowned Him with glory and honor. He acknowledged Him as His only representative; He made Him partaker of His power and authority; He exalted Him to share His throne as God. And even so will it be with him who abides in Christ’s love. If Christ finds us willing to trust ourselves and our interests to His love, if in that trust we give up all care for our own will and honor, if we make it our glory to exercise and confess absolute dependence on Him in all things, if we are content to have no life but in Him, He will do for us what the Father did for Him. He will bestow His glory on us: As the name of our Lord Jesus Christ is glorified in us, we are glorified in Him (see 2 Thessalonians 1:12).

He acknowledges us as His true and worthy representatives; He entrusts us with His power; He admits us to His counsels as He allows our intercession to influence His rule of His church and the world; He makes us the vehicles of His authority and His influence over humankind. His Spirit knows no other dwelling than this, and seeks no other instruments for His divine work. What a blessed life of love awaits the soul that abides in Christ’s love, even as He abides in the Father’s!

Take and study Jesus’ relationship to the Father as a pledge of what your own abiding can become. As blessed, as mighty, as glorious as was His life in the Father, so yours can be in Him! Let this truth, accepted under the teaching of the Spirit by faith, remove every element of fear that regards abiding in Christ a burden. In the light of His life in the Father, let it be from now on a blessed rest in union with Him, an overflowing fountain of joy and strength. To abide in His love—His mighty, saving, keeping, satisfying love, even as He did in the Father’s love—can never be a work we have to perform; it must be with us as it was with Him, the result of the spontaneous outflow of a life from within.

All we need to do is to take time to study the divine image of this life of love set before us in Christ. We need to be quiet before God, gazing upon Christ’s life in the Father until the light from heaven falls on it, and we hear the voice of our Beloved whispering gently to us the teaching He gave to the disciples. Soul, be still and listen; let every thought be hushed until the word has entered your heart: ‘‘Child, I love you, just as the Father loved Me. Abide in My love, even as I abide in the Father’s love. Your life on earth in Me is to be the perfect counterpart of mine in the Father.’’

And if the thought comes: Surely this is too high for me; can it really be true? You must remember that the greatness of the privilege is justified by the greatness of the object He has in view. Christ was the revelation of the Father on earth. He could only be this because there was the most perfect unity, the most complete communication of all that the Father had to the Son. He could be His revelation because the Father loved Him, and He lived in that love. Believers are the revelation of Christ on earth. They can only be this when there is perfect unity; by this unity the world can know that He loves them. They are His representatives, His revelation to the world that Christ loves them with the infinite love that gives itself and all it has.

Lord, show us your love. Help us know with all the saints the love that passes knowledge. Lord, show us in your own blessed life what it is to abide in your love. And the sight will so win us that it will be impossible for us to seek, even for one single hour, any other life than the life of abiding in your magnificent love.