Loving him, what is it ?

Wednesday February 2, 2022

Loving him, what is it ?

If you love me, keep my commandments. John 14.15

This verse can also be translated as : "If you love me, you keep my commandments". And that's true. Jesus didn't have to say : "Do, don't do." It was enough for him to say : Love God or Love one another, what he called a similar commandment, to have said everything. When we love him, we soon love what he loves, finding our joy in fulfilling his commandments.

To give him our heart that he asks for1 is to abandon to him our affections, our will. Affections, will, such is, in fact, what the Semites attached to the heart.

When he has been given the will to love him, it becomes easy to give him the rest. This is why God does not need to say : Give me your time, your strength, your abilities, your possessions, your body. All he has to do is say : Give me your heart (Proverbs 23:26).

To love him is to love his word because it is to desire to know him better and better ; it is to love what he wishes because it is to want to please him more and more. It is to feel the desire to be no longer “only him”.

This we have experienced, are experiencing or will experience in human love for an imperfect being. How much more worthy is he, who loved us to the point of becoming man to redeem us with the gift of his own blood !

May we say : We love him because he first loved us. (1 John 4.19)

Richard Douliere

__________________

Proposed reading : Gospel according to John, chapter 15, verses 9 to 11.

15.9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Stay in my love.

15.10 If ye keep my commandments, if ye abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.

15.11 These things I tell you, that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be perfect.

Source (Live Today)