12 Ways to Let Jesus Love You – John 15-17

How does Jesus love you? Find lots of answers in John 15-17.

It’s one thing to believe a fact. It’s another thing to experience it.

• We think we know someone…until we live with them.
• We think we know how to parent…until we have a child.
• We think we know the love of Jesus…until we experience it for ourselves.

But what if we haven’t yet experienced His love?

“Jesus loves me this I know
For the Bible tells me so”

Maybe we know in theory that Jesus loves us. But do we understand HOW to receive His love?

We can’t fully take it in. His love is so big.

But here’s what we can do. We can adjust our attitudes and reframe our thoughts about the ways Jesus is loving us. By being more open to it, we can better experience it.

Don’t overlook these important three readings in our Lenten plan, John 15-17.

These chapters are collections of Jesus’s words as He talked to His disciples, and later to God, on the night He would be arrested. They’re important. They’re full of answers about how Jesus loves.

12 Ways to Let Jesus Love You

JOHN 15

Jesus continues to comfort His disciples with these words after Judas left the table. We can take heart in them as well.

1. Take a bath

Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.
John 15:3

You don’t have to live covered in guilt, in shame, in regrets. If you live in the vine, Jesus wants you to realize you’ve been cleaned up. Take a bath in the grace that Jesus offers you. Drench yourself in His mercy and forgiveness. It’s yours. Receive it.

2. Use your gifts

By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.
John 15:8

You have interests. You have skills. You have gifts that God gave you to give to the world. Drop the hesitation and exercise your talents. Just as Eric Liddel said, “God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure,” so you, too, can feel the love of Jesus pouring out of you when you use YOUR gifts.

3. Love others

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
John 15:12

Another way to feel Jesus’s love is by letting it flow straight you to others. God is love. He is the source and the root of all love. When you love another person, you are doing so by the power of the root source of all love, God. Use that.

4. Be loved by others

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13

A fourth way Jesus loves you is through other people loving you. It’s a crucial way to know the love of Jesus. If He told another person to lay down his life for you, don’t block the blessing. Accept their love, and thus His love.

JOHN 16

But Jesus’s words didn’t stop there. He continued speaking to the apostles, saying these things.

5. Don’t surrender to confusion

I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away.
John 16:1

You will be confused at times in life. You will have doubts. That’s not sinful. But don’t give up your faith in Jesus because of it. Jesus says you don’t have to. Let His gift of words strengthen you.

6. Let the Spirit guide you

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
John 16:13

Not only did Jesus give you His words, He also gives you His Spirit to stick with you. When you are touched—whether through the wisdom of a friend or the teachings of a pastor or the words of a child—know the Spirit of Jesus is behind it.

7. Ask God directly

Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.
John 16:23-24

Another way Jesus loves you is by giving you direct access to the Father. Don’t miss out on a fuller experience of the love of Jesus because you fail to ask directly for what you need.

8. God loves you, too

For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.
John 16:27

Can it get any plainer? Jesus said that loving Him makes God happy, too. God loves you as much as Jesus does.

JOHN 17

The words transition here. Jesus switches away from talking to His followers and now talks directly to His Father. We can glean much here, not only about how Jesus loves God, but also how Jesus loves us.

9. Update your spiritual birth certificate

All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.
John 17:10

When a child is adopted, they get a new birth certificate. They get a new name. Being loved by Jesus gives you a new name. You no longer live under a curse of condemnation from your humanity. Royal blood now runs through your spirit.

10. Experience joy

But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.
John 17:13

Because you live in this world, you will naturally feel grief and experience heartaches. But underneath it all—even when you’ve lost touch with it for a season—joy remains your foundation. It’s part of your birthright.

11. Take the heart protection

I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.
John 17:15

Another evidence of Jesus’s love is your safety. You are protected. Not from physical or emotional hurts, but you are safe from ultimate destruction. Despite the hard things that come, God holds your heart in His hands.

12. Live as one

I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
John 17:23

Love isn’t blind. You know love when you see it. So does the world. When believers love as God loves, people notice. An evidence of being loved is your capacity to love. When you live in harmony with others, you are living proof of God’s love

The Fruit of Being Loved

These three rich chapters of John 15-17 show us the fruit of being loved by Jesus. We experience this fruit as:

• Joy
• Unity
• Fulfillment
• Adoption
• Protection
• and more

We may still have times when we don’t feel loved by Jesus. But by reminding ourselves of the variety of ways that He does indeed love us, feeling it or not, we can rest assured that we ARE loved.

May Jesus’s love nourish your heart.

I love each of you with the same love that the Father loves me. You must continually let my love nourish your hearts.
John 15:9

Which of these twelve ways do you experience most fully? What would you add about how you know the love of Jesus? Please share in the comments.