‘Loved With Everlasting Love’

‘Loved With Everlasting Love’

I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.

John 17:23

It is a blessing and benefit to have someone love us. It is more marvelous when the one who loves, bestows it upon another with whom he or she has no natural connection. Christ alludes to this type of love in our text for today. In His High Priestly prayer He says, ‘that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.’ Verse 24 identifies clearly of whom Christ is speaking. They are those, ‘whom You gave Me,’ according to Christ. We want today to consider this love of which Christ speaks. The end of verse 24 tells us that this love is an ancient love. Christ declares that God His Father ‘loved Me before the foundation of the world.’ If God has so loved us, as He has loved Christ, then He has loved us from ancient eternity. If God loves Christ deeply, then He loves us deeply. If God loves Christ unswervingly, then He loves us unswervingly. If God loves Christ completely, then He loves us completely. We may pile description upon description of the characteristics of this Divine Love, yet words will fail us to sound the depths, measure the broadness, and find the limits of this Love. We who were, ‘by nature the children of wrath,’ have become the recipients of this Everlasting Love, all for the Sake of Christ Our Elder Brother by adoption.

Our Gracious and Loving God,
we rejoice that You have loved us with an everlasting love.
We praise You that Your love for us will never fail,
and that it will culminate in an eternal glory, which fadeth not away.

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning