Opening Prayer
Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord!
Be all Thy graces now outpoured
On each believer’s mind and heart:
Thy fervent love to them impart. Amen.
(M. Luther, ELH 2)
Text: John 14:23–31
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 Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me. These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. You have heard Me say to you, ‘I am going away and coming back to you.’ If you loved Me, you would rejoice because I said, ‘I am going to the Father,’ for My Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it comes, that when it does come to pass, you may believe. I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me. But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, so I do. Arise, let us go from here.”
Devotion
God first loved us and gave His Son into death for us. Love is from God. It is not from us, but from God. But by faith we have it in our heart and love Him in return. God is love, and when we believe in Him, what do we believe in other than love itself? Because God’s love is given to us in Christ, and the Spirit gives us power to believe, then we can love God and keep His Word. Because Christ came to earth and has now ascended and poured out His Spirit, we who had lost love can have it again and can love from our heart. Yes, each of us who is baptized into Christ has received His love in our heart. But we can either keep it or reject it. The Spirit gives us grace to believe, but we can also oppose Him. We Christians have the choice if we want to have love in our heart or not. And now Jesus says: “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word.” The fruit of love is obedience from within the heart. Whoever does not keep His Word must not think he loves God. But if anyone loves Him and keeps His Word, “the Father will love him,” that is, love him with love’s good pleasure and delight. For God in His love is good to all, but delights in the faithful. He has good will for all, but in the good He also has His pleasure. The Father loves you, when you love Jesus. Since He has joy and gladness in you, you please Him, He looks on you with joy. And not only that, but the Father and the Son “will come to you and make Their home with you.” When God has poured out His love in your heart by the Holy Spirit, then He is in you, and nothing can separate you from Him. Two people who love one another already live in each other’s heart, and the two hearts are inseparably united. Even if the two are a whole world apart from each other, they are still together, yes, live in one another. But in a fuller and deeper sense the Triune God is with His own on earth and in them. “For God is love” (1Jo 4:8, 16). He who gave Himself the name Father for our hearts by sending His Son, He who gave His life into death to save us, our precious Lord Jesus, and He who laid us in the Savior’s bosom, the faithful Holy Spirit: all Three Persons, the Holy Triune God, makes the believers’ hearts His temple and fills them with His life. Not that God is enclosed in our heart; heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain Him (2Ch 2:6); nor that only a part of God lives in me and another part in others. In a mysterious way by the miracle of the Spirit, by the immeasurable power of His love He has taken residence in me and in all His children, and each of us has love in its entirety, as though we were the only one God loves. Isn’t the love that we lowly creatures and poor sinners have received from God a great and wonderful thing? A father loves each of his children as much as if each one were his only child. None of them has just a portion of his heart, but each has it all.
Closing Prayer
Praised be the Lord who loves us with all His love and has given it to us so that He lives in us, and we in Him! Glorious gift of Pentecost that fills our soul with life, with joy and peace and hope, and is powerful to comfort us in all our weariness and sorrow! Come, precious Holy Spirit, open our hearts with Your light, and teach us to know the Father and the Son. Take us, and place us in God’s heart, so that we receive love and live in it forever. “Come, Holy Spirit, power divine, And fill this hungry heart of mine; Thou seest how in tears I stand, And ask a blessing of Thy hand. In every need my comfort be; Refresh my soul, and strengthen me.” Amen.
Hymn
O Holy Spirit, very God,
For aye proceeding as true God
From God the Father, God the Son,
Your holy feast is now begun,
That all the world may see Your face
And be enlightened by Your grace.
Almighty Light, come from above
And kindle me with holy love!
In Jesus’ faith I come to You;
My heart with love do now imbue;
O heal me with Your mercy mild;
By fervent grace make me Your child.
Kingo: Klar op, mit Hjerte, Sjæl, og Sind L 428:2.4 tr. DeGarmeaux;
tune: Vater unser (ELH 383); alternate hymn: Come, Holy Ghost, Creator blest ELH 10:1-2