I. First, then, we have here the love in which it is our sweet duty
to abide. 'As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you. Abide ye
in My love.'

What shall we say about these mysterious and profound first words of
this verse? They carry us into the very depths of divinity, and
suggest for us that wonderful analogy between the relation of the
Father to the Son, and that of the Son to His disciples, which
appears over and over again in the solemnities of these last hours
and words of Jesus. Christ here claims to be, in a unique and
solitary fashion, the Object of the Father's love, and He claims to
be able to love like God. 'As the Father hath loved Me, so have I
loved you'; as deeply, as purely, as fully, as eternally, and with
all the unnameable perfectnesses which must belong to the divine
affection, does Christ declare that He loves us.

I know not whether the majesty and uniqueness of His nature stand out
more clearly in the one or in the other of these two assertions. As
beloved of God, and as loving like God, He equally claims for Himself
a place which none other can fill, and declares that the love which
falls on us from His pierced and bleeding heart is really the love of
God.

In this mysterious, awful, tender, perfect affection He exhorts us to
abide. That comes yet closer to our hearts than the other phrase of
which it is the modification, and in some sense the explanation. The
command to abide in Him suggests much that is blessed, but to have
all that mysterious abiding in Him resolved into abiding in His love
is infinitely tenderer, and draws us still closer to Himself.
Obviously, what is meant is not our continuance in the attitude of