As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. (John 15:9-12)

Jesus’ words directly address our deepest desire: to love and be loved. We all seek to find love that will wholly embrace us – gracious love that will accept us as we are.

This is our greatest need and deepest desire. “Without real love nothing else seems to make sense or to matter. We have a fundamental need to be loved, lovable, and loving. No fulfillment is possible without love.”[1] We can possess health, riches, success, talent, beauty, fame – and still be empty. The reason is simple: Without love, none of these things bring true fulfillment or lasting joy.[2] Divine love is the only sure and lasting source of joy.

This was the foundation of Jesus’ experience. His deepest desire and greatest joy existed in complete harmony. He wanted most what offered him the most joy. The greatest challenge of our lives is to reflect him in this: to deeply desire what offers the greatest joy, namely, God’s love. When we find our greatest joy in our deepest desire – in a word, when we “abide” in it – then our lives are focused and centered. Seeking our greatest joy in anything else ultimately leads to emptiness. Only God’s love is a sufficient fountain to satisfy our deepest longings.

Put simply: the satisfaction of our deepest desire leads to the fulfillment of our greatest joy, if and only if, our desire and joy are congruent, and both are met in God’s love.

Divine love is what we desire most – even when we express our longing in misguided ways. Our created purpose is to know, receive, and share God’s love. We are so deeply wired for this that when we don’t find it in God, we will search for it in an endless array of possible objects, experiences, and relationships.

The good news of the gospel is this: we have been caught up in the circle of divine love. God invites us to dwell in his love – to find our identity in it, make our home in it, and share it with others. This circle of love is discovered by connecting verse 9 with verse 12: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you… you love one another as I have loved you.” Jesus loves us as the Father loves him. Jesus wants us to love others as he loves us.

Here are the links in the chain: (1) the Father loves Jesus, (2) Jesus loves us, and (3) we love others. The connection between these three expressions of love is unbreakable. We cannot understand any one of these love relationships apart from the others: we cannot understand how to love others until we understand Jesus’ love for us; we cannot understand Jesus’ love for us without understanding the Father’s love for Jesus. If we diagrammed this, it would look like this: (1) The Father’s love of Jesus helps us to understand (2) Jesus’ love for us, which helps us to understand (3) our love for others.

The Father’s Love for Jesus

We cannot understand the nature of Jesus’ love for us without an awareness of Jesus’ relationship with the Father. Jesus loves us in the same way he is loved by the Father: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you” (John 15:9). What kind of love is this?

Jesus’ revelation of the love of God – exemplified most fully in the eternal love relationship between Father and Son – is at the heart of John’s Gospel. From its beginning we discover that the Father and Son share in a communion of love from all eternity. Before anything else existed, the Father and Son shared in the unity of love (John 1:1-2). It is this eternal relationship of love that is revealed in the Jesus: “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (John 1:18).

Eis ton kolpon, translated as “close to the Father’s heart” in the NRSV, is more literally translated, “toward the bosom of the Father.” The picture we are given is that of the Son eternally resting in the embrace of the Father. The picture suggests intimacy, delight, and tender love. This is the eternal stance of the Son toward the Father’s love. Jesus is the “beloved Son, in whom the Father is well-pleased” (Matthew 3:17; 17:5; Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22). The shared love of the Father and Son is mutual, reciprocal, and eternal.

Jesus reveals God’s love to us through his words and actions. Everything he said and did during his earthly ministry demonstrated that his deepest desire and greatest joy was found in the love of the Father. The incarnation did not undo this deep relationship – throughout his entire ministry Jesus remained “toward the bosom” of the Father – but rather revealed the depths of divine love to us. “The constant directedness of the only-begotten Son toward the bosom of the Father as toward his origin… as toward the very source of his own life (eis ton kolpon = ‘toward the bosom’), shows him in the eternal act of receiving the divine life from the Father.”[3]

God is one divine being eternally existing as three distinct persons – Father, Son, and Spirit. The very essence of God is persons in communion. God is not simply some indistinct “nature” with three persons. The very nature of God is personal – three persons in eternal loving communion. St. John summarizes this profound truth in three simple words: “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). John is not simply emphasizing that God loves; John proclaims that God is love. Love is not merely a function or expression of God; love is the very essence of God. The constant experience of God is love. Ultimate reality – the divine reality – is love.

The eternal experience of God is a shared life of personal love between Father, Son, and Spirit. It is this love that Jesus shares with us! He describes it as “his joy” that he desires to be “in us” in order that we may know fullness of joy: “that your joy may be complete” (John 15:11).

Jesus’ Love for Us

Jesus loves us as he is loved by the Father: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.” Do not allow this profound statement to go by without deep reflection! Just as the Father has loved the Son from all eternity, so Jesus loves us. Like the Father’s love toward him, he loves us wholly, fully, completely, perfectly, eternally. He delights in us and desires to indwell us. Through the work of the Spirit, he, like the Father, declares us beloved sons and daughters, in whom he is well-pleased.[4]

By loving us as he is loved by the Father, Jesus draws us into the circle of divine love. We are invited to share in the fullness of the joy of Father, Son, and Spirit. We are given the opportunity to share the divine life, love, joy, fellowship, and peace. It is this divine life – John calls it “eternal life” – that Jesus freely and graciously gives us. It is this which he both reveals and shares. He does not merely proclaim his divinity, but discloses a life of communion. “The specific object of the revelation given by the man Jesus is the mystery of his person, the fact that he, the Son of God, is living in a unique relationship to the Father and that he invites us to share in his life as Son.”[5]

What are we to do with this revelation? Jesus calls us to “abide in his love” just as he “abides in the Father’s love” (John 15:9-10).

The Greek verb translated “abide” (menein) “conveys the idea of dwelling (or staying: see 1:38) and the idea of permanence and fidelity (remaining). To a certain extent, it complements the verb ‘to believe.’”[6] It calls attention to our need to deeply root ourselves in something or someone else – in this case, to find the source of our life and joy in God. It brings to mind pictures of home, rest, and identity. Demetrius Dumm writes, “it suggests a deeply personal and constant union. It would thus be contrasted with a contact that may be intense but which soon fades and has no lasting effect. To abide in Jesus is to be attached to him in such a way that life would seem impossible without him.”[7] Abiding is the way we actualize the presence of Jesus. The truth of God’s love for us does us little good if we do not attempt to appropriate it.

Home is not a place, but a relationship. As they say, a house – no matter how large or immaculate – is not a home. Four walls are not sufficient to satisfy our deepest longings. It is the relationships that take place within a space that give it a quality worthy of the word, “home”. Home is the place where we abide with the people we love.

As Jesus finds his “home” in God the Father, so we are to find our “home” in Jesus. Jesus’ deepest longing (“my joy”), his source of identity (“Beloved Son”), his place of rest (“toward the bosom”) is rooted in the Father’s love. Jesus, in the bosom of the Father, seeks to draw us to his bosom, that we may be enfolded in the love of Father and Son.[8]

Following John’s Example

What does this look like in practice? How can we picture it? Has anyone modeled it for us? It just so happens that the very author of John’s Gospel has done so. He speaks from experience and invites us to share it.

John has so fundamentally embodied Jesus’ message that it impacts his identity and his sense of home. Throughout the entire Gospel, John never directly refers to himself simply as John. Instead, he consistently refers to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 13:23, 19:26, 20:2, 21:7, 20). Brennan Manning notes, “If John were to be asked, ‘What is your primary identity in life?’ he would not reply, ‘I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist, an author of one of the four Gospels,’ but rather, ‘I am the one Jesus loves.’”[9]

In a word, John viewed himself as God’s “beloved.” Philip Yancey invites us to personally reflect upon the significance of this: “What would it mean… if I too came to the place where I saw my primary identity in life as ‘the one Jesus loves’? How differently would I view myself at the end of a day?”[10] One could add, “How would it impact how I treat others?”

My greatest wish is that you would leave this article confidently saying, “I am someone Jesus loves.” This is who you are at the most fundamental level! Ultimately, you are not your roles – parent, sibling, student, worker, citizen, parishioner, etc. – these are significant, but ultimately temporary. Who you are, from eternity and to eternity, is the beloved of God, the “one whom Jesus loves”!

John grounds his identity in Jesus’ love and finds his home in Jesus’ presence. He represents his profound abiding in the picture he paints in the final scenes of John. In the opening pages of John’s Gospel we discover that Jesus is “toward the bosom” of the Father (John 1:18). Jesus rests in the intimate embrace of God. During the “last supper” we find “the disciple whom Jesus loves” resting in the bosom of Jesus (John 13:23, 25). In the final scene in John’s gospel, the “disciple whom Jesus loves” reminds us of this again (John 21:20). The supper’s connection to the Eucharist invites us to recall this each time we partake of the Lord’s Supper. The picture is full and rich: John rests in the bosom of Jesus who rests in the bosom of the Father! We do the same by abiding in Jesus’ love through the Spirit. “Where Jesus lives, ‘in the bosom of the Father’ (John 1:18), is where we will all consciously live, if we ‘abide in [his] love’ (John 15:10).”[11]

What is your deepest longing? To love and be loved. What is your source of identity? You are the one Jesus loves. Where do you call home? You belong in the tender embrace of Father, Son, and Spirit. God is your home. God’s love is your joy. To give and receive God’s love is your created purpose. It does not get simpler – or more profound – than this!

Love One Another as I Have Loved You

Rooted in Jesus’ love, we are commanded to share God’s love with others. The call goes beyond the “Golden Rule” – do unto others as you would have others do unto you. We are not simply to love others as we want to be loved, but to love others as we have been loved by Jesus: “Love one another as I have loved you.” Jesus is the standard for our expressions of love. No higher standard exists.

And yet, in one sense, Jesus’ command simply and utterly fills out the Golden Rule. What would we have others do unto us? Love us with divine love! As we stated at the beginning, we all desire divine love – to love and be loved. That is what we would have “others do unto us.” When we love as Jesus loves, we fulfill the great commandment and satisfy our deepest desire. This leads to fullness of joy.

What would a church look like that embodied this passage – a church where its members found their fundamental identity in being Jesus’ beloved ones, and out of their overflow of joy and delight in this, committed to sharing Jesus’ love with all others? Perhaps its mission statement would look something like this: “To bring everyone into a joy-filled relationship with Jesus Christ that will transform their lives and make even the impossible possible.”

This cannot happen unless we purpose together to harmonize our deepest desire with the ultimate source of joy. Unless Jesus’ joy is made full in us as we discover our identity and find our home in God’s love, we cannot lead others to do the same. May this be true for us!

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© Richard J. Vincent, 2006