Receiving the Gift of Love: The True Freedom of Christian Obedience

The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing, for whatever he does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. (John 5:19-20)

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. … You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. (John 15:9-11, 14-15)

Jesus has come into the world to reveal the face of the Father, to make known to us his “form”: his glory, his beauty, his presence, and his love. And Jesus can do this precisely because, as John has said, he is “the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father” (1:18). All that Jesus is and does in this world is but an expression of his eternal repose in the bosom of his Father; it is the radiation of the eternal intimacy of the Trinity’s innermost life of love.

We are at first surprised at the way in which Jesus expresses this intimate relationship—for he does so in a series of paradoxes. From our earthly, sinful perspective, he seems to be talking about two realities that are in opposition. Yet he does so in the confidence that they are really two aspects of the same reality, if not identical. Put simply, this is the paradox of which Jesus speaks: his complete dependency upon the Father is precisely the source of his sovereign freedom.

Let us take the words we have just quoted. In these words Jesus grants us an insight into the deepest origin and root from which his own obedience springs, and in this way expresses the very core of his loving relationship with the Father. The obedience of Jesus throughout his earthly life is nothing but an expression in time of the mystery that he lives with the Father in eternity. And what is this eternal mystery? It is nothing but the everlasting communion of the Father and the Son, the single life of love that they share in an unspeakably profound intimacy. And this intimacy is possible because the Son welcomes, completely and unreservedly, the gift of love that comes to him from the Father and surrenders himself entirely to the Father in return, in gratitude, joy, and love.

These words of Jesus, therefore, operate on two levels: on the level of time and on the level of eternity. They operate on the level of obedience and on the level of his pure acceptance of the Father’s gift which is the root and origin of obedience while itself transcending it. In a word, in the heart of eternity, as Jesus welcomes the gift of the Father, he is not receiving a “task” or a “mission,” but rather simply welcoming the very truth of his own personal identity as beloved Son, and the joy of everlasting intimacy with the Father. He receives the gift of himself as an outpouring of the Father’s own immense generosity and gives himself wholly to the Father in return. The most primal act of “obedience,” therefore, is simply to welcome the gift of one’s existence cradled within the immense love of the Father. This is really the “obedience-before-obedience”: the act of grateful acceptance of the gift of love and communion which gives all concrete obedience its interior form and meaning.

Further, within this act of receiving himself, the Son also simultaneously welcomes the whole mystery of the Father, making his innermost being a home to welcome his Beloved. And the Father, who unveils himself before the Son in the total gift of himself—“the Father shows the Son everything”—ravishes the being of the Son with his ineffable Beauty, pouring forth its radiance into the receptivity of the Son’s Heart. Delighted by this Beauty of his Father and drawn to it, the Son abandons himself entirely to the Father in return, so as to pass over into the depths of his loving and welcoming embrace. The Father and the Son are continually welcoming one another in complete openness and burning love, and their welcoming is simultaneously the total gift of self to the other. Because of the totality of this mutual self-giving, the Father and the Son are intimately united, and not only united, but they dwell within one another, inhabiting one another in perfect security and mutual belonging.

We can say, then, that the relationship of the Father and the Son is one of mutual attraction through the impulse of love that draws each of them toward one another. They desire one another, and this desire is a profound and eternal response to the Glory, the Beauty, that they behold shining in the countenance of the One whom they love. In a word, they are profoundly responsive to the Beauty that they behold in one another, and their receptivity to this Beauty is what brings forth their complete mutual self-donation to each other. Beauty encounters Beauty, and in Beauty these two Beautiful Ones are united in a single Beauty of the intimacy that they share—that is, in the Beauty of the Holy Spirit who is the beautiful Kiss or Embrace of their everlasting union.

What does this imply for the existence of the Son when he becomes a man among us and shares our life? It means that his whole existence is cradled within the enfolding Love of the Father and is responsive at every moment to the Beauty of the One from whom he receives his whole being at every moment. The “food” of Christ is to “do the will of the One who sent him” (4:34), but this very “doing,” before being an external activity, is simply the Son’s unceasing acceptance of the love of his heavenly Father. It is his act of allowing his Heart to be a home, a place of repose for his loving Father, and also his act of abandoning himself into the home of the Father’s Heart, abiding in him in the joy, playfulness, and rest of all true love and intimacy. The deepest reality of Jesus’ existence is his unceasing repose within his Father’s all-enfolding embrace, in which he dwells in the authentic truth of his being as the beloved Son. Indeed, this deepest reality is the mutual intimacy that is shared by the Father and the Son, in which, belonging totally to one another, they share a single life of love, a single vision, a single desire, and a single activity. From this place of his abiding intimacy with the Father, all of Jesus’ thoughts, words, and actions spring, and to here they return. Indeed, they never depart from this place, but simple radiant ceaselessly from the ineffably fruitful Center.

For us too, who have been created and called to be “children in the Son,” our own life of obedience to the Father is but an expression of the immensity of his love for us, and of our trusting acceptance of his embrace which cradles our whole life and every moment of our existence within itself. For us too, the Father only, all-enfolding desire is simply to be in intimacy with us, to hold us in the inmost depths of his paternal embrace and to find a welcoming-space in our own hearts. Whatever else there is in our life finds its meaning only here, flowing from and returning to this place of intimate love and personal unity.

Every “task” that we welcome from the Father is itself contained within this prior gift of his love and his desire for our good, an echo of his gentle touch in the depths of our being. Further, it is precisely our certainty in his enduring love, the awareness of his sheltering presence, that liberates us to heed his invitation and to live in confident and persevering surrender to his call. If we were to reduce our relationship with God to mere obedience, then we would ultimately reduce ourselves to slaves—we who are his beloved children and friends. We would be missing out on the authentic meaning of the Father’s desire and the true nature of his call. We would be viewing him as a “Master” when he wants to be Father and Lover. However, if we see obedience within the prior and enduring context of loving and trust-filled relationship between Father and child, between Bridegroom and bride, then its true beauty begins to shine. Indeed, here alone obedience becomes truly radiant, truly free, truly joyful, because here it is totally loving and pervaded with the joy, the trust, and the freedom of love.

This love-filled obedience is beautiful in two senses. First, because the beloved child knows without a doubt that anything the Father asks cannot but be an expression of his love and of his immense desire for the good of his son or daughter. Second, because the child yearns to embrace the will of the Father, not out of fear or a sense of necessity, nor to make up for a sense of inadequacy and insecurity, nor to “prove oneself,” but simply because the child loves the Father and wants to cooperate with his desires and plans in the fullest way. Certainly here the obedience of a child far transcends anything that can be required of a slave, because it is founded on love and the total gift of self that love alone can awaken. And precisely for this reason this kind of obedience is immensely more free than any external obligation or compulsion, with the freedom of authentic and devoted intimacy.

We saw that obedience flows from the already established relationship of intimacy between us and God, a relationship that comes as a pure gift of divine grace, enfolding and cradling our life at every moment. To be obedient, in the last analysis, is simply to allow one’s life to be touched by this gift and irradiated by its light. It is to open oneself to hear and to welcome—with the docility of a little child, with the receptivity of a lover, with the malleability of a heart softened by love and burning desire—the awesome word and touch of the Beloved.

Because of this, obedience is also a pathway into deeper intimacy: it is the simple movement by which we place our entire life into the hands of our loving Father, allowing him to care for us as he most deeply desires to do. To entrust myself totally into the hands of Another may be a frightening act, because I am afraid of how my surrender will be received. Will I be accepted, loved, sheltered, protected? Further, to entrust myself totally to Another is also to open myself to receive, unconditionally and completely, whatever comes to me from the Beloved. But what if I am asked something painful, difficult, or even destructive? We see how deep the roots of sin and fear go, stretching their tendrils into our hearts! We are tempted to think that we are safer in our own hands than in the hands of our loving Father, who unceasingly cradles the entire world within the embrace of his tender Love, and who gazes upon us with an unspeakable love, desire, and delight!

To open myself to the Father in obedience is not a matter of accepting some burdensome task, some external yoke placed on my shoulders from without. No, it is rather a matter of opening my heart to the Light that alone can illumine, to the gentle arms of Love that hold me so tenderly throughout my life, sheltering and sustaining me. To open myself to obedience is to let myself be loved by God. And when I welcome this love, it fills my whole being and existence with his immense joy and consolation, with the gladness of the Trinity’s own life which the world cannot contain, but which comes to rest within my heart. I hold my Beloved deep within the recesses of my most intimate being, allowing his heartbeat to well up within me and to spill over into my entire existence, this living water surging gently at every moment of my life. Yes, through the depths of the intimacy that he has established with me through our mutual surrender, he lives his own life of love within me. He perpetuates in me his loving activity…an activity which is identical with his Eternal Rest. He spreads within and through me, like a fragrance of love or a harmony of beauty, his provident love and care for all of his precious children…a care which is but an expression of his Divine Playfulness, delighting immensely in me and in each person, whom he has created for himself.