“But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, so I do. Arise, let us go from here.” John 14:31
What did it mean for Jesus Christ to love His Father? First of all, in answering the question, we must recognize our limits as sinners, though saved, to grasp the depths and magnitude of the love of God the Father for His Son, and then the love of the Son for the Father which He possessed from before the foundation of the world. That said, God has given to every believer the Spirit of God “…that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.” (1 Cor. 2:12) The Spirit of God is the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ, who takes the revealed truth of Christ and the Father, to unveil the Life of God, especially when it comes to the love of God. There is no limitation by God in the revelation of this love, except that which He sets because of our limited capacity to receive it. Just as His glory cannot be fully received by men on this earth, in these bodies, so the unveiling of His love is such that man cannot receive it in fullest measure, as it will one day be in heaven. What then are we to do? We are to join the Lord Jesus and His disciples during a meal. It was the third time after the resurrection when He revealed Himself to them. We find them gathered on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. It is then that the Lord turns to Simon Peter to ask him three questions, basically all the same: “Do you love Me more than these?” What did Christ mean by these specific words?
First, when Jesus spoke to Peter He used a word in the Greek language for love which is very special, and specific. It is distinguished from all other words by its nature, that being that it is the love of God for man, that which God exercises in all of its holy and complete meaning. It is pure, good, wholesome, and in every way Divine, measured in wisdom and knowledge, and applied in precise and exact measure to the hearts and lives of men. When John the Apostle wrote that “…we love God because He first loved us,” he put before us a contrast of magnitude and perfection. For though man would be able to love God by the Holy Spirit, he never be able to love as God loves to the extent of such eternal, unchanging, resolved and ceaseless affection upon men. But how do we understand this love? Why did Jesus ask Peter these three questions?
If we go back to the Old Testament to the moment when God gave to Mose the ten commandments, God declared: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have NO other gods before Me.” (Ex. 20:2,3) The love of God is a pure preferential love, an attitude and act of preferring the one loved above all else, and this forever. For Peter, he must choose and prefer Christ, as his Lord, King, and the highest, holy object of his love, and those seated around him whom he loved. Because of Peter’s denial of Christ three times during His trial, Peter could not honestly respond to Jesus using the Christ’s first word for love. He could only express the affection of a friend to Christ. Peter needed something else.
In asking Peter three times if he loved Him, the Lord Jesus would bring Peter to see the necessity of being empowered by the Holy spirit in order to love. Though the lesson of love, which would reveal itself in preferring Christ above all others, and this to follow Him alone, was so essential to grasp, Jesus graciously provided a means by which Peter would know and express this love by commanding: “Feed My sheep.”
Dear Father, Give us Thy LOVE. In Jesus’ name, Amen.