Abiding in the love of God

 

Most people have the idea that love will never do anything unpleasant to those loved. This results in doubting the love of God when life hands us lemons. When the sour stuff hits, many wonder if God loves them at all. We might blame ourselves for doing something that caused Him to cease caring or we sometimes misinterpret this verse:

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. (1 John 4:16)

It sounds like His love depends on our love for Him, a backward idea but in our self-centeredness, assuming this is relatively easy. Today’s reading counters it with:

To keep ourselves in God’s love does not mean, as so many think, to keep ourselves loving Him. It means to settle ourselves down, as it were, into His love as an absolute and unalterable fact, to take up our abode in it, and to stay in it forever. It means never to doubt His love or fear losing it, but to believe in it and trust it, despite all seemings to the contrary, utterly and steadfastly and forever.

Still, verses like “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” (John 15:10) add to the idea that this abiding depends on our performance. Others passages hint the same notion, yet I need to read them carefully:

No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. (1 John 4:12–13)

Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us. (1 John 3:24)

No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. (1 John 3:9)

We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. (1 John 3:14)

Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. (1 John 2:6)

If my understanding is as the reading says, abiding in His love is not about my actions but about  living in the reality that He loved me while I was a sinner, sent Jesus to die for me before I was even born, and that love does not depend on my performance. God is love. He loves no matter what I do. He wants me to live as these verse say because that is best for me. Yes, obedience honors Him, but it is also the power of God to release me from sin and from the power of Satan.

I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one. (1 John 2:14)

This means that as I live knowing I am loved, I become more and more aware of God abiding in me and I experience more and more victory over sin and the lies of Satan. When Jesus tells me to abide in Him, it is not about what I am doing but that I am always aware of and remembering what He has done and is doing…

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:4–5)

This is the secret of that promised abundant life… I live in the power of what Christ did and does, not in my own strengths (I have none) or abilities (all are His gifts anyway) and the freedom of this is amazing.

PRAY: Jesus, I’m seeing more and more the truth of Your promise: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” (John 15:7) Abiding in You includes abiding or staying in Your Word for it is the source of continually remembering, knowing, and relying on what You do, not what I do. You change my life when my focus is there and not on my own performance. This does not negate obedience; it makes obedience possible. Wow! Thank You!