“You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40). Jesus is telling us to experience Him. He was speaking to the religious leaders and those who thought themselves to be something holy by their works. The very messages they were using to justify themselves taught of Jesus, but they would not believe. “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (John 5:46-47). Reading about Jesus isn’t enough; we experience Jesus – and believe.
“In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you; for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God” (John 16:26-27). The Father Himself loves us, because we love (experience) Jesus, and believe. “I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me” (John 17:23). Jesus has a relationship with the Father that extends to us because He is in us; and we have our own relationship with the Father through Jesus. Jesus wants us to experience the same relationship He has with the Father. “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world, And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:24-25).
“He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him” (John 14:20-21). “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). Jesus wants us to experience the same relationship He has with us with one another. We experience Jesus through our belief and our obeying His commandment to love one another. To love one another we have experiences with one another, as Jesus came (and in the Spirit is here now) into this earth to have experiences with us. Experiencing God is experiencing one another – loving God is loving one another; it is hard to love God if you hate His children. Those who would not love Jesus did not know God. We have a relationship with Jesus and experience Jesus through the Holy Spirit and in our relationships with one another.
© 2010, Tim D. Coulter Sr.