Paschal Meditation: "The love with which you have loved me"

"Church of Christ" icon. Russian.

“…So that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

— John 17:26

Before the Lord Jesus returned to his Father, he prays for all those who would believe in him through the apostolic witness.  He prays for every generation of the church; he prays for us.  Jesus prays that we would be one in him, united in love, in order that the world would believe that the Father sent the Son in love.  

When Jesus prays “that they may be one,” he asks that his church might share in the unity he has with the Father.  “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you,” he prays, “may they also be in us” (Jn. 17.21).  Where is it that we may be one?  We may be one with the Son in the Father, for the Mediator prays that those whom the Father has given him, “may be with me where I am” (v. 24), and where is the place of the Son, but in the Father?  And how are we joined to the Son, but by his gift of the Holy Spirit?  We may be one in the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, for, as Augustine puts it, “they are our place.”*

Why does Jesus pray that those who believe in him may be one?  He prays to the Father that we would be one, “so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (v. 23).  He prays that we might be one so that our concrete love for each other might witness to God’s love for the world.  For “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him,” and “if we love one another, God’s love abides in us, and his love is perfected in us” (1 Jn. 4:9, 12).  Our love shows forth God’s love, because he first loved us (4:19).  Our love shows forth God’s love insofar as the love with which the Father has loved the Son is in us.  Our love shows forth God’s love insofar as “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5).

What is the love we make known?  It is the love of God, who is trinity.  Our love makes it known that the Father has loved us even as he has loved the Son (Jn. 17:23).  As Augustine perceptively comments, 

“That is to say, in the Son the Father loves us, because in him he has chosen us before the foundation of the world. […] The love, therefore, wherewith God loves, is incomprehensible and immutable. For it was not from the time that we were reconciled unto him by the blood of his Son that he began to love us; but he did so before the foundation of the world, that we also might be his sons along with his Only-begotten, before as yet we had any existence of our own.”**

God is love, always and already loving us in himself.  And the love with which the Father eternally loves the Son is in us, because by his Gift we are made part of the totus Christus, the whole Christ:

“But how else is the love wherewith the Father loved the Son in us also, but because we are his members and are loved in him, since he is loved in the totality of his person, as both Head and members?  Therefore he added, “and I in them;” as if saying, Since I am also in them.  For in one sense he is in us as in his temple; but in another, because we are also himself, seeing that, in accordance with his becoming man, that he might be our Head, we are his body.”***

Jesus prays that we may be one to show forth the love of God, who is love.  Therefore, let us love one another.

* Augustine, Io. ev. tr. 110.3.

** Ibid. 110.5–6, my emphasis.

*** Ibid. 111.6, my emphasis.