Wonders of His Love

Our Scripture reading this morning is found in the first letter of John—1 John and in chapter 4 and reading from verse 7 to the end of the chapter. In a moment or two we’ll turn to the Gospel of John, but this is the first letter of John:

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 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. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 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. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he[’s] a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”

Amen.

Well, I invite you to turn to John chapter 17, where the verses for our consideration are 22 and 23. Jesus prays, “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”

Our Father, we are humbled to think that Jesus prayed for us—for those who, having heard the message of the gospel, turned in repentance and in faith, entrusting ourselves to the one who entrusted himself to the cross in order that we might know what it is to be truly loved by God and then to discover what it means to love one another. Bless your Word to us, we pray. And we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, you know, it’s an interesting thing when we study the Bible together, because there are so many horizons that meet—or hopefully meet. There’s the horizon that we cross from where we’ve been in the last few hours to walking into here and then, even in the last few moments, to turning to the Bible. We may have prepared very purposefully for it. We may not have prepared at all. And so, all of a sudden, we cross another horizon, to the Scriptures. I’ve had the privilege of working on this material, and yet, I’ve had to cross the horizon from my own sense of not knowing what it means to trying to discover what it means in order that I might cross another horizon—namely, from what I have learned to try and teach it to you.

We are also coming to John 17:22 in the context of Advent, of Christmas. And the horizon is closer to us than it was this time last week. And as we come to John 17, then we discover that the Jesus we find in John 17 who is praying is actually within hours of his death. And so you say, “Well, that’s a strange thing to do—to consider a prayer that is prayed from the lips of Jesus within hours of his death when you’ve just admitted that we are within the horizon of Advent itself.” I understand that. That’s what I mean about crossing these horizons. And I hope it will become apparent.

Because, you see, the man who is here praying in John 17 is the one who was once the child asleep on Mary’s lap. One of the dangers of dealing with the church calendar, as it were—in thinking in compartmentalized terms about what’s going on and when it’s going on—is the danger of actually considering, for example, the advent of Jesus separate from the death of Jesus. And when we think about it, the reason Jesus was ever born was in order that he might die.

The great claim of Christianity is that God took on humanity without any loss of divinity.

And so, when we listen to Jesus praying here for his disciples, it’s from the lips of the same person who clung to Mary’s breast, as we just sung about it. He who is lifting his eyes to heaven—which is the way the prayer begins at the beginning of the chapter[1]—he who is lifting his eyes to heaven in prayer was once wrapped tight in a manger (wrapped up in the way that babies are) and then was on the receiving end of shepherds who came tumbling in upon the scene, having been the recipients of a celestial encounter, an angelic message.

The Lord Jesus, who is praying this prayer, is the same one as created the universe. The creator of the universe is now within hours of his death, and he’s praying for his disciples. If you doubt that, you just need to go back to the beginning of the chapter: “When Jesus had spoken these words, he … said, ‘[Listen],’”[2] and he prays with great clarity concerning the glory that he had and the glory that is about to be his. We sang about it:

You’re the Word of God the Father
From before the world began;
Every star and every planet
Has been fashioned by your hand.[3]

Now, that is the great claim of Christianity. And John, when he begins his Gospel, begins not with the manger scene, not with the flocks outside in the Bethlehem fields, but he begins before the creation of the world. And that, of course, you discover when you read the beginning of his Gospel. Before the world existed, “in the beginning was the Word”—that is, the very self-expression of God. He was “with God,” and he “was God,” and he “became flesh.”[4]

And in becoming flesh, God made himself finally and savingly known. The writer to the Hebrews makes the same point when he says, “In the past, God has spoken in many and various ways, but in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son.”[5] And the great claim of Christianity is that God took on humanity without any loss of divinity. The incarnation—which is the word that we give to it in theological terms—the incarnation is actually an unfathomable mystery. How can God be both God and man simultaneously? But if God is not God and man simultaneously, how do you make sense of the rest of the New Testament? It is the reality of who Jesus is that makes sense of everything else in the New Testament. Who else can say to the bouncing waters of the Sea of Galilee, “Stop that!” and stop it? Who else can enter into the gravesite of Lazarus, who has been in the tomb for four days, and say, “Lazarus, come out!” and he comes out? If Jesus, as common notions suggest, is merely some great superhero attempting to embrace divinity as best he can, then nothing in the Bible actually makes any sense at all. The hands that clung to Mary, that cleansed the leper, that washed the feet of his disciples are about to be surrendered to the cruel nails of the Roman jurisdiction. Jesus is praying within hours of that reality.

And, fascinatingly, he is praying, first of all, for the people who don’t really get him—that he’s already said to them, “I’ve got more to say to you than you can even understand right now.”[6] He’s praying for those who don’t get him, and he’s praying for those who are about to abandon him. What kind of love is this? We’re routinely prepared to pray for people who are doing their best or our friends. But not Jesus. Far more than that!

Now, with all of that to get us to the twenty-second verse, let’s just look at it again. What is he praying? He’s praying, “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one.” Now, this is not the easiest verse, I don’t think. And I was encouraged to discover that nobody that I read found it easy either. Don Carson says, “Exactly what is meant” here “is much disputed,”[7] and Bishop Ryle said the questions surrounding this “will probably never be settled.”[8] So there’s plenty of room for further investigation. As you begin your reading through the Bible, you can perhaps stop here for a little while and fill in any of the blanks.

But this is the way we’re going to look at it: First of all, let us consider the glory that God has given to Jesus, then the glory that Jesus says he has given to his disciples, and then consider the purpose in doing so.

The Glory of God in Christ

First of all, then: the glory of God in the person of Christ.

Now, those of us who have been around for the entire series in 17 know from the opening verses of the chapter that Jesus enjoyed a glory in the presence of the Father: “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son”—this is verse 1—“that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life,” and so on. So before the incarnation, in the presence of the Father and in the Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus Christ enjoyed glory—a glory that, he says at the beginning of the prayer, he’s going to take up again: “Father, I enjoyed the glory. I’m going here now on this mission, and I will come again, and I will enjoy that glory.”[9]

I don’t think that is the glory of the twenty-second verse, because that is a glory that is a shared glory—coequal, coeternal, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But this glory is, says Jesus, a given glory. And that glory is different from the preexistent glory, in as far as it would seem that the Father has granted to Jesus a glory in the execution of the mission upon which he has been sent—that he has been sent in order that he might be the very Savior of the world, that the one about whom the angels sang and the shepherds sought is this one.

Now, I have tried to help myself in this study by reminding myself consistently that Jesus was born to die. That Jesus was born to die. You don’t welcome a child into your home and say, “Well, here she is now,” or “Here he is now. It won’t be very long until they die.” There would be something very strange, macabre about that, very sad about that. But in the birth of Jesus, it sets in motion—it actually continues in motion—a trajectory from all of eternity with an express purpose. When Paul writes of this, he says, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”[10]—that he “came into the world to save sinners”; that the purpose of his coming was in order that men and women who by nature are rebellious, who by nature do our own thing, choose our own path, that we might be redeemed from that way of life.

And I found myself helped by considering… And it was helpful, actually, because even today, those of you who are doing your readings in John will have found yourself exactly in this section, because we read, I think, John chapter 12. And in John chapter 12 and in verse 20 or so: “Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks.” So it’s the feast of celebration. And as these Greek people went to Philip—he was from Bethsaida in Galilee—and they said to him, “We would like to see Jesus.”[11] And so Philip goes, and he tells Andrew, and Andrew and Philip go, and they tell Jesus. They say, “There’s a group of people here who would like to meet you.” This is what Jesus says: “And Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.’”[12] But shouldn’t that be “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be crucified”? Isn’t it that to which Jesus is referring? Yes, of course, it is. But he doesn’t say, “The time has now come for the Son of Man to be crucified” but “for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

When you go back to chapter 17, if you turned with me to there, and you go back to verse 4, notice what Jesus had said there: “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.” Now, again, the work is not finished when he prays that. This is where he prays proleptically—our favorite word from John 17. He is describing something that is yet to be as a completed action, so sure and certain is it. And so he says, “Now is the time for the Son to be glorified.” Speaking in his prayer, he says, “I have glorified you, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.”

So what, then, is this glory that has been given by God? I take it that it is this: that the glory that God has given to Jesus is a glory that is seen supremely in the path of obedience. It is seen supremely in the expression of lowly service. It is seen in a King who comes riding on a donkey. It is seen in the arrival of divinity in such an expression of apparent poverty, simplicity, and helplessness. “You have glorified me”—a glory that culminates in the cross.

Now, you’re sensible people. You’ll have to think this out. But think of it. The hymn writer puts it,

Well might the sun in darkness hide
And shut its glories in
When Christ, the mighty Maker, died
For man the creature’s sin.[13]

That’s as much as I can give you on that.

The glory that God has given to Jesus is a glory that is seen supremely in the path of obedience. It is seen supremely in the expression of lowly service.

The Glory of God in Christ’s Followers

Let’s go, then, to the glory of God in the followers of Christ. If there is any accuracy in my suggestion—namely, that the glory that God has given to the Son is expressed along that pathway, that Jesus’ perfect obedience to the will of God was his glory—well then, it would seem to make perfect sense that we, in Jesus, who are made for God, who are made to live for his pleasure, not for our own pleasure, will discover that same glory as followers of Christ.

You see, again, if we go back to the very beginning of things, Adam did not believe this notion. Adam and Eve together believed that somehow or another, God was depriving them of that which would make their lives really, really significant. And God had essentially given them a multiple-choice exam with one question and two possible answers. Question from God: “Do you trust me? Either yes or no.” Adam and Eve answer no, thinking that down that pathway there will be delight, only to discover that down that pathway is actual disaster and is death.

When we think in terms of the glory that is given to us as followers of Jesus, we have to compute it, if you like, in relationship to the pattern of Christ himself. In preparing for the talks that I have to give at the beginning of next month in Sydney in 1 Peter, this has come across forcibly to me. And it is simply this: that the path to glory is a path of suffering. The path to the crown is a cross. The cross is before the crown. If we try and avoid the cross, there is no crown—when Jesus says, “If someone loves me, he will keep my commandments. If someone is interested in being my follower, he will take up his cross. She will take up her cross every day, and she will follow me. She will be prepared, he will be prepared to die to this, in order to live to that.”[14]

This is how we have it in 1 Peter: He says to his readers, “If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.”[15] “Father, you have given me glory—a glory that has culminated in my sacrificial death. Father, I have given them glory.” What glory? The same kind of glory! When we suffer, we are blessed, and the Spirit of glory rests upon us.

It’s very easy to get this upside down, and we mustn’t get it upside down. We should never think of being obedient to Jesus as being a penalty, if you like. It’s not a penalty; it’s a glory. If you think about it in terms of examination, since we mentioned that: The harder the test we give to a student, the greater the glory for success. The harder the challenge you give to an architect—limited resources, limited space, limited time—the greater the glory attaches to the success. The more demanding the position is entrusted to the surgeon at the clinic, the harder it is, the greater the glory attaches to it. And so, when we say to ourselves, “Well, this is going to be a hard road to follow Jesus; this is going to be a narrow path to follow Jesus,” that’s not a penalty. That’s the pathway to glory.

Unity, the Purpose of Glory

So, “the glory that you have given me, the glory that I have given them”—and to what purpose? What is the end of this? Well, it takes us back to where we were last time, by way of repetition and by way of emphasis. “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one, even as we are one.”

So, back again at this matter of unity. This is not a unity that is, as we said last time, brought about by human ingenuity. I met somebody during the week, and they asked if I would like to come and speak at an event at the United Nations headquarters in New York. And I said, “Yes. Well, maybe.” And I had to stop myself saying a lot of things about the United Nations in New York, because it wouldn’t be exactly complimentary, at least where I’m coming from politically. It seems to me that vast amounts of money are spent to the end that, it would seem, our world is about as disunited at this point as it has been in a very long time. But the quest is an understandable quest, isn’t it? It would be a wonderful thing: “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. I’d like to buy the world a Coke and keep everybody company.”[16] It would be fantastic, wouldn’t it?

You see, the longing of the human heart is actually for human unity. It’s not for isolation. But we can’t create it. We can’t create it. I was trying to figure out how old my grandfather would have been this week. I don’t know why. Maybe I couldn’t sleep or something; I don’t know. Because he was in the ’14–’18 war. And so I figured, golly, he’d be an old person. And then I started thinking about the ’14–’18 war, the war that was going to end all wars—and then 1940–45 and, in our entire lifetime, a world that is as disunited as anything could ever be.

And here Jesus says, “You gave me glory. I’ve given them glory so that in my body”—that’s the body of Christ—“so that in my body, the world might get an opportunity to see what happens when people are united not on the strength of a shared social media, not on the strength of a shared intellect, not on the basis of a delight in the same kind of things, but people from diverse backgrounds united not, incidentally, in a common cause but caught up in a reality—the same reality,” says Jesus, “that exists between you, Father, and me, the Son.” It’s immense!

The relationships of the people of God are supposed to be a persuasive reflection of the unity between the Father and the Son.

It is, in short order, in three words—number one—supernatural. Supernatural: “that they may be one even as we are one”—he’s speaking to the Father—“I in them and you in me”; that this unity, he says, that they may be “perfectly one”; that their unity might come to completion; that it might be a maturing unity; that as they grow up and as they live longer, they won’t tolerate amongst themselves petty disagreements. And if we were to be in any doubt about the standard, it is stated plainly: “that they may be one even as we are one.”

So, the relationships of the people of God are supposed to be a persuasive reflection of the unity between the Father and the Son—mutually supportive, utterly loyal, eternally accepting love. That’s why we have to understand it’s supernatural. Because by nature, we’re selfish individuals. Even in Christ we are. And the reality that is supposed to be expressed is not expressed in a vacuum—in real time, in real events, in real circumstances. That’s what makes it tough, isn’t it? You remember the old chestnut?

To dwell above with saints we love,
Oh, that will sure be glory!
To dwell below with saints we know—
That’s a different story!

And it is a different story. It’s supernatural.

Secondly, it is observable. Although the work of unifying the people of God is, in one sense, supernaturally invisible, it has to have expression somewhere. And that’s why I read from 1 John 4. Because it seems to me that what John is saying there—he recorded the prayer in his Gospel—but what he’s actually saying there in 1 John 4:12 is this: “No one has ever seen God.” Fact! “If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” See what Jesus is praying? “That they may [be] perfectly one.” Now, says John, here is how the invisible God becomes visible: The invisible God becomes visible when people who are by nature diverse—all kinds of ideas, notions, backgrounds, intellect, cash flow, all of the rest, race, background, put it all together—when you bump up against these people and you find that they have discovered something in Jesus that unifies them and matters more to them than their school tie or whatever else it may be, then the world starts to say, “Maybe there is something in this. Maybe there is something in this.” How does the invisible God become visible in our community? This is how it becomes visible and observable.

And the challenge, you see, is that the story that is proclaimed from a pulpit either is going to be confirmed and enhanced by the buzz in the pews or is going to be contradicted and weakened by the buzz in the pews. I’m responsible for the proclamation, but I’m also part of the buzz. Shame on me if the buzz you get from me doesn’t tie in with the proclamation that you hear from me.

It’s supernatural, it’s observable, and it’s influential. It’s influential, in the sense—or evangelical might be a better word—in the sense that people might know. That people might know!

Again, the poor poetry makes the point:

You’re writing a gospel, a chapter each day,
By the deeds that you do and the words that you say.
And people read what you write, distorted or true.
So what is the gospel according to you?[17]

Now, I might as well just put that right up on my mirror as I get ready for the day and walk out into the day in the awareness of that fact. This is why Jesus prays “that they may be one”: that the world might know—might know that God sent Jesus, that the God-man is present; and, lastly, not only that the world might “know that you sent me,” but also that “[you] loved them even as you loved me.” Now, that, to me, is the most staggering part of this whole thing. You know, you can say, “Well, okay, the union of the Father and the Son in eternity makes sense, and that’s a perfect standard and an enabling factor so that we might go out and live in that way.” But the fact that people might know that God has loved his church even as God has loved his Son…

In Jesus, we have been caught up into the love of the Father and the Son.

Again, that’s why we read from 1 John: “Beloved, if God so loved us…” How has he loved us? He’s loved us to the extent that he loves Jesus. It’s a spectacularly extravagant notion. I’m not sure that we can fully plumb the depths of it—that in Jesus, we have been caught up into the love of the Father and the Son; that whatever else we could say about ourselves in the whole world, we’re able to say to ourselves, on the basis of what the Bible teaches us, is that “God the Father loves me. He loves me.”

Now, as I sat at my desk, of course… And I was saying out loud to myself, “This is an amazing security! This is amazing grace, that the Father would love me!” And I said to myself, “He loves me. He loves me. He loves me.” And then I said, “Oh, that’s a song. I know. I know that song.” And who do you think wrote that song? Exactly! Paul Simon. But it’s not “He loves me.” It’s “She loves me”:

When I was a little boy
And the devil called my name,
I’d say, “Who do,
Who do you think you’re fooling?”

I’m an ordinary boy.

And then he goes on. He says,

My mama loves me, she loves me;
She get down on her knees and she hugs me.
She love me, she love me.

The last verse is fabulous, when he says,

If I was the president
The minute the Congress called my name,
I’d say, “Who do,
Who do you think you’re fooling?”

I’ve got the presidential seal.
I’m up on the presidential podium.
But here’s the real deal:
My mama loves me, she loves me.
She gets down on her knees and she hugs me.
And she loves me like a rock.
She rocks me like the rock of ages.
She loves me, she loves me, she loves me.[18]

I said, “Oh, I wish it was in the other gender. It would be perfect as a quote!” And then I said, “Yeah, but it’s a great quote anyway.” Why? Well, ’cause I like it, and also because it’s true to the Bible. Isaiah 66:13: “As one whom his mother comforts, … I will comfort [him].”

What is the story of this great Christmas event? It is this: “He loves me. He loves me. He stepped down onto the cross, and he hugged me. He loves me. He loved me like the rock of ages. He loved me.” That’s the story. That’s the message. That’s the privilege we have to share.

Do you know the love of God like that? Do you know that the reason that you’re still alive without ever having trusted him is because of his love? Because he’s so patient to give you another day, another week, another Sunday, to hear again the immensity of his love. Could I not convince you of that? Oh, you may say, “My father doesn’t love me as he should,” or “my brothers,” whatever. I get all that. We all live in a broken world. But God loves. And his love is a perfect love. And if you doubt it, look at the cross. There’s the glory. There’s true joy. There’s real peace.

Before this year should end, perhaps there will be one or two who are compelled by the love of God. May it be so.

Father, thank you. Thank you for your Word. Thank you for your Son. Thank you for the immensity of this notion. It’s beyond our ability to get our heads around that you, the creator of the universe, stepped down into time in the person of Christ; that he teaches and loves and lives and bares himself to the cruelty of opposition and dies in order that we might live.

My Lord, what love is this
That pays so dearly,
That I, the guilty one,
[Might] go free?[19]

Make sure, Father, that you convince us that true delight is in your will and in nothing else, ultimately. For we pray from our hearts humbly, personally, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

[1] See John 17:1.

[2] John 17:1 (ESV).

[3] Stuart Townend and Keith Getty, “You’re the Word of God the Father (Across the Lands)” (2002).

[4] John 1:1, 14 (ESV).

[5] Hebrews 1:1–2 (paraphrased).

[6] John 16:12 (paraphrased).

[7] D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Leicester, England: Apollos, 1991), 568.

[8] J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: St. John (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1878), 3:186.

[9] John 17:4–5 (paraphrased).

[10] 1 Timothy 1:15 (ESV).

[11] John 12:21 (paraphrased).

[12] John 12:23 (ESV).

[13] Isaac Watts, “Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed?” (1707).

[14] Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23 (paraphrased).

[15] 1 Peter 4:14 (ESV).

[16] Bill Backer, Bily Davis, Roger Cook, and Roger Greenaway, “I.d Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)” (1971). Lyrics lightly altered.

[17] Commonly attributed to Paul Gilbert. Paraphrased.

[18] Paul Simon, “Loves Me Like a Rock” (1973). Lyrics lightly altered.

[19] Graham Kendrick, “Amazing Love (My Lord, What Love Is This?)” (1989).