The Order of Love Most People Miss 

The Order of Love Most People Miss 

Jesus looked at His disciples and said something that still has the power to transform everything: “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love” (John 15:9).

He wasn’t giving them a new religious duty. He was revealing the secret of how love actually works. Jesus could love them fully because He lived every day in the unbroken, unconditional love of His Father. That love was the source. It was the atmosphere He breathed. And from that place of being deeply loved, He poured out love on them. Many religious people jump straight to the command: “Love one another.” But Jesus showed us the order that makes it possible.                                                                                                        First, continue in My love. Receive it. Rest in it. Let it define you.                                              Only then can you love others the way He loves you.                                     “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you” (John 15:12).  The “as I have loved you” is not a higher standard of effort. It is an invitation to the same source. If we never see love the way Jesus saw it—flowing from the Father to the Son, and from the Son to us—we will keep trying to manufacture something we were never meant to create on our own.                                                                                                            We will talk about love, demand love, and even attempt to imitate love, but we will not walk, speak, or see people the way God desires. The life-changing truth is this: Jesus came to show us what it looks like to live completely secure in the Father’s love and then to love others from that place.                                                                                                                             Stay in His love. Everything else flows from there.      Ed Elliot