«　WEEK 3　DAY 6　»

　　John 14:21 He who has My commandments and keeps them, he is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will manifest Myself to him.

　　23 Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make an abode with him.

　　We need to be a lover of the Lord Jesus all day long. This is why the most significant aspect of the miniature of the church life in John 12 is the love that poured the ointment upon the Lord. We all must love Him. His presence is always related to our love toward Him. The more we love Him, the more we enjoy His presence. What is His presence? It is simply the enjoyment of Himself… The more we love Him, the more we shall have His presence. The more we are in His presence, the more we shall enjoy all that He is to us. We need only to love Him… I have been loving Him for fifty years, and today I feel that He is more lovable than ever. No one is as lovely as He is. Song of Songs says that He is altogether lovely (5:16, KJV). The Lord’s recovery is a recovery of loving the Lord Jesus. If we do not love Him, we are finished with His recovery. (Life-study of John, pp. 382-383)

　　Verses 21 and 23 of John 14 show the Son manifesting Himself to His lover and the Father coming with Him to make an abode with the Son’s lover. After the abiding of the Spirit in us, the Son will manifest Himself to His lovers. It is possible to be a believer of Jesus Christ but not be a lover of Him. When we believe in Him, the three of the Divine Trinity come to abide in us. But after we believe in Him and know that He is abiding in us, we need to love Him…We may be the believers of Christ, but how many among us are the lovers of Jesus? The Father as the object is in Jesus as the embodiment, this embodiment is in the Spirit as His realization, and this realization is the very Spirit who is now abiding in all of us. But we need to ask whether or not we enjoy the manifestation of the Lord Jesus to us daily and even hourly.

　　In the morning we may have had a time with the Lord to enjoy His manifestation, but later we might become unhappy with our spouse and lose the Lord’s manifestation to us. This, however, does not mean that we have lost the abiding of the Spirit within us. Some Christians feel that when they love the manifestation of Jesus, they have lost their salvation, but this is not true, because the Spirit always abides in the believers… Our salvation… is not an “elevator salvation” but a “stairway,” from which we can never be removed. Although we are on this stairway, we want to enjoy the blessing of the top part of the stairway. We want to be on the “top floor,” not in the “basement.” This is why we need to love the Lord Jesus and say, “Lord Jesus, I love You.” As we love Him, we are brought up to the top floor. Then we see everything in the heavens. If we do not love Him, we are at the bottom of the stairway where we can see very little. But this does not mean that we have lost our salvation. We are still on the stairway of His salvation.

　　When we love Him, not only does His Spirit abide in us but also He Himself will manifest Himself to us. This means that we have the presence of the One whom we love in our fellowship with Him. If we love Jesus, Jesus loves us, and the Father loves us also. When the Son manifests Himself to us, the Father comes with Him to make an abode with us, to stay with us. We need to be brought more and more into the manifestation of the Son to us, with the Father and the Son making an abode with us. We need to go up the stairway of the Lord’s salvation by loving Him. Then He will manifest Himself to us, and the Father and the Son will make Their abode with us for our enjoyment. (CWWL, 1988, vol. 1, “Living in and with the Divine Trinity,” pp. 304-305)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of John, msg. 32; CWWL, 1988, vol. 1, “Living in and with the Divine Trinity,” ch. 4