Jesus Loves You! This I Know

Remember the little children's chorus, Jesus Loves Me? These are the traditional lyrics of all four stanzas in their entirety:

Jesus loves me! This I know, 

For the Bible tells me so;

Little ones to Him belong,

They are weak but He is strong.

Yes, Jesus loves me!

Yes, Jesus loves me!

Yes, Jesus loves me!

The Bible tells me so.

Jesus loves me! He who died,

Heaven's gate to open wide;

He will wash away my sin,

Let His little child come in.

Yes, Jesus loves me!

Yes, Jesus loves me!

Yes, Jesus loves me!

The Bible tells me so.

Jesus loves me! loves me still,

When I'm very weak and ill;

From His shining throne on high,

Comes to watch me where I lie.

Yes, Jesus loves me!

Yes, Jesus loves me!

Yes, Jesus loves me!

The Bible tells me so.

Jesus loves me! He will stay,

Close beside me all the way;

He's prepared a home for me,

And some day His face I'll see.

Yes, Jesus loves me!

Yes, Jesus loves me!

Yes, Jesus loves me!

The Bible tells me so.

Traditional, Words By: Anna B. Warner

Music By: Wm. B. Bradbury, Copyright Unknown

John 15:9 is one verse where the Bible makes very clear the truth that Jesus loves you. Jesus is speaking with His disciples, when He says, “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.” How does Jesus love you? In the same way the Father loves Him. “As the Father loved Me,” Jesus said, “I also have loved you.”

Jesus, as He lived upon this earth, was completely dependent on God the Father. He trusted totally in God’s love and grace for Him. The love of God for Him was His strength and His joy. In the power of divine love resting on Him, He lived and died. That is why, in the Scriptures, you so often see Jesus going to God in prayer. If we are to be like Jesus, we must share in that divine love. What the Father’s love was to Jesus, His love will be to us.

Jesus began, “As the Father loved Me” (v. 9a). How has the Father loved Jesus? The Father reveals Himself in Christ, so that whoever sees Jesus, sees God. The Father lives in the Son, and the Son lives in the Father. The Father loves the Son by living in and through Him!

Jesus continued, “I also have loved you” (v. 9b). With this very same love, Christ Jesus longs to reveal to you all that He is and all that He has. Through His love for you, He wants to make you partakers of His own nature and blessedness. He wants to live in you, and have you live in Him. All that you are must rest in Christ’s love. His love must be your strength and your joy. Your life must rest in the power of Christ’s love, just as His life rests in the power of the Father’s love. As Christ, by His Spirit, dwells in you, you can experience God’s love in your life.

Taken together, verse 9 reads, “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you” (v. 9ab). We must draw near to the personal living Christ. We must trust Him and yield all to Him, so that He may pour this love of God into us. He knew and rejoiced that the Father loved Him. We too may live knowing that, as the Father loved Him, so He loves us. In fact, Jesus loves us so much that He stretched out His arms on the cross and died for us.

John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” 1 John 3:16 says, “By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us.” 1 John 4:9 says, “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.”

Having told us how His life is wrapped up in the Father’s love and how our lives are to be wrapped up in His love, He concludes verse 9, “Abide in My love.” The place where we abide is where we live. We are to abide, or live, in Christ’s love. We are to give ourselves up to the love of Christ. As Jesus was so often found in prayer seeking the Father to live His life through Him, so we must spend much of our time in prayer seeking Christ Jesus to live His life through us. That is how we abide in His love; by trusting Him and seeking daily to follow Him.

The message is simple. Trust Christ for your salvation. Thank Him for dying on the cross for you. Then, seek through prayer every day for Jesus to live His life through you. Amen.