John 15:9 - Exposition

Two ways of explaining this verse: Even as—inasmuch as—the Father hath loved me , and as I have loved you , abide in my love ; i.e. , as Grotius has put it, the first clause suggesting accordance with the mystery of the Trinity, and the second the mystery of redemption: "So do ye continue, or so do ye abide, in the amplitude of this double love which is mine, dwell in it as in a holy atmosphere, breathe it and live by it." But there is another and more satisfactory way of translating the passage : Even as the Father loved me, I also loved you ; a fact of stupendous interest and transcendent claim. Heaven had opened over the incarnate Word, and other ears as well as his own had heard the Father say, "Thou art my beloved Son," etc. The Lord was conscious of being the Object of this infinite love before the foundation of the world ( John 17:24 ), and of reciprocating and responding to it; and this love of the Father to him on his assumption of his mediatorial functions was the well-spring of his obedience unto death and after it (see John 10:17 , note). Now, if the κἀγὼ is to be translated as above, Christ declares that even as the Father has loved him, he has' loved his disciples. Again and again he has emphasized this love to them ( John 13:34 ), but here he asserts a loftier claim, viz. that his love to them corresponds with the eternal Father's love to himself. The one great fact is the ground on which he commands them to abide in his love . This is obviously a more explicit and more intelligible form of the commandment to abide in him. With Olshausen and Westcott, "The love that is mine "is not the love to Christ, nor the love of Christ exclusively, but a blending of the active and passive idea in "the love that is mine"—in the "love" lavished upon me from eternity, and to which I have eternally responded, which I have made known to you and expended on you and received back again from you. Abide in that love that is mine.