[Songs in the Night - August 8]
Every one that loveth Him that begat loveth Him also that is begotten of Him. I John 5:1
HE WHO loveth the Father must love the Son also,
who is the Father's express image and who has manifested
to us in his own flesh the glorious character of
the Father.
As the Son loved the Father, prayed to
the Father, and felt that he must be about the Father's
business, and finally died in the accomplishment of the
Father's will—the work unto which the Father had sent
him—so with us imbued with the Spirit of our dear Redeemer,
our Head.
We as his members must have such
a reverence for the Father and for his will as is here
specified.
The nation of Israel could not love the Lord
with all its heart, with its soul, with its might; this
exhortation must be understood to be of an individual
kind.
Similarly the church, spiritual Israel, is not
called upon to love the Lord with heart, soul, being,
strength, but the individuals who are the Lord's and
who are seeking to please him, to serve him, to lay
down their lives in obedience to his will and in the forwarding
of the divine purposes, are called upon so to
do. Z'07-264 R4052:2 (Hymn 240)