¹ Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end … ²⁶ “… so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”

Love is the grand theme of Jesus’ Upper Room discourse. The story begins with love and ends with love. He loved His disciples (and all who believed through their testimony – John 17:20) to the end, so that they would experience the same love that He experiences from the Father. For Jesus to be in us is synonymous with having the love of God in us. “Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end,” whether betrayer, denier or doubter.

The Spirit who was at work in the apostle John’s writings as he recorded the words of Christ, confirmed this message in the writings of the apostle Paul.

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 8:38-39)

But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor 13:13)

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so 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. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. (Eph 3:14-21)

Christ came as the Word of God made flesh, that we might comprehend the Creator and Sovereign over all. That is the message we carry into the World.

Loving Father, thank You for revealing how much You love us. I commit to being that message to others, the living proof that there is a God who sacrificially loves us.