John 17:25 Righteous Father, even if the world does not know you, I know you, and these men[bn] know that you sent me. 26 I made known your name[bo] to them, and I will continue to make it known,[bp] so that the love you have loved me with may be in them, and I may be in them.

Commentary: Christ Jesus lived and worked with the disciples and has lovingly presented through word and action the character of His Righteous Father. Now, Jesus is praying for them to lovingly shine Jesus’s character with all that they meet as they move forward.

Prayer: The love of Christ Jesus is all that we need, the agape love, the love that never ends. Keep on filling me with that love oh Lord Jesus so I can give it to those around me. Amen

Commentary: Let us expand upon Verse 26:

John 14:20-21 On that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you. / Whoever has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me. The one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and reveal Myself to him.

Reflection: It is very clear that the commandments that God, who made us, has given us are the main part of our staying in this saving relationship with Him. It is a marriage contract between us and Him, a contract of love between the two sides and He knows that it works and it helps us recreate His image in us that is reflected in His commands.

John 15:9-10 As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Remain in My love. / If you keep My commandments, you will remain in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and remain in His love.

Reflection: If Jesus Christ found it useful to keep the commandments that helped Him stay in a tight relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit why would I not do it?

John 16:27 For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came from God.

Commentary: Love and belief and trust in God (according to what God reveals to us) goes together as far the Father is concerned.

1 John 4:16 And we have come to know and believe the love that God has for us. God is love; whoever abides in love abides in God, and God in him.

Reflection: Stability in our relationship with God is dependent on Him being the definition of love. If it depended on how much we love Him…well I am not sure how stable that relationship would be.

John 13:34-35 A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also must love one another. / By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.”

Commentary: Agape love never stops loving. Yes, we need two or more persons out there to be in a loving, agape relationship.

Romans 5:5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.

Reflection: When I invite the Holy Spirit in the morning into my mind and heart, and I do the same for my wife and children, and those that I care for, I renew my loving relationship with God. I focus on Him throughout the day and not so much on how well I have loved Him, because so often I fall from that perfect love that I ought to have towards my Creator. But I keep on praying that my love for my God keeps on growing and the same love keeps on growing for others around me, starting with my wife and our children.

Ephesians 3:17-19 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Then you, being rooted and grounded in love, / will have power, together with all the saints, to comprehend the length and width and height and depth / of the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Colossians 3:14 And over all these virtues put on love, which is the bond of perfect unity.

Commentary: The love of God unites us, love that is not of God, brings frustrations, divisions, and disunity.

1 John 3:1 Behold what manner of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him.

1 John 4:19 We love because He first loved us.

Commentary: When our first parents went astray, it was God who was searching after them to see how they can work out this severed relationship. What a great God we have in Christ Jesus!

1 John 2:5 But if anyone keeps His word, the love of God has been truly perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him:

Commentary: We grow in likeness of the Father by obedience to Him. That is what I have discovered in my life. Yes, I can do good things, but that might not necessarily help me be in a better relationship with the Father because it is selfishly motivated.

1 John 5:20 And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true—in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

Reflection: I wish we had these two sentences more often before us and that we would we live this kind of way.

2 Corinthians 5:14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that One died for all, therefore all died.

Commentary: When we meet Jesus Christ in the Bible regularly, we get filled with His love. That love is necessary to motivate us, to compel us to love others around us and to soften our hearts so that we can admit when we have done something wrong.

Jeremiah 31:33 “But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD. I will put My law in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they will be My people.

Commentary: As long as we stay in a saving relationship with Christ Jesus and we follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit well, we can be assured that we are the people of God’s covenant.

Prayer: I am blessed dear Father, to be part of this covenant that You invited us into. May I do my part for what You want to accomplish this day and this week. Amen

Peter Caran

Pastor of Cobourg and Harmony Churches