145. God’s Love in them
John 17:26 And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.
The promise is twofold: God’s love will be in us and Jesus will be in us. Both of these promises have been given before, but now they are combined. The cause of this wonderful result is that the name of the Father is declared unto us; and Jesus will continue to declare it, and so He has for centuries. Jesus declared the name of God unto us and put the name of God on us when we were baptized (“baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”). God’s name has been placed upon us and will be in us when spoken over us, and we should not “bear (or take) the name of the Lord in vain.” This means that baptized children should bear or carry the name of the Lord with dignity and carefully guard how we act and go about our lives, because our lives witness to the name of God within us. Naturally, we sin against this commandment, as well as all the others. How we need mercy and forgiveness!
The love with which the Father has loved His Son will be in His baptized and believing children. This is an awesome privilege and responsibility. The love of God energizes, motivates and activates us to live a beautiful life, for love is powerfully moving and it is breathtakingly beautiful. This love of God in us works in two ways: 1) the love in us works to love us in our hearts and minds, giving forgiveness and comfort, and we are assured and calmed; 2) the love in us works to go out from inside us to love others unconditionally and treat other people as though they had never sinned, fully accepting and enfolding them into the love of God. The Love Christ controls us to live a good life and do good works. Our own human love is woefully inadequate and severely flawed; we cannot love perfectly, but God can and does.
Jesus Himself will also be in us, as promised many times; the Holy Spirit fills us, and when HS is in us Jesus is also, for the two persons are one God. Jesus in us not only lives His life in us and out of us, but He also influences and moves us to actually do the loving in our words and actions. We are not able to discern how much and when it is Jesus speaking and acting and how much and when it is I myself that is speaking and acting. My behavior is properly mixed together so that it looks like me, but it is actually Christ in me. We just receive Christ by faith daily and then live our life: the promise works.