“The Father Himself loves you… pray!” Rogate 2026

10. May 2026
Rogate
John 16:23–30

In the Holy Name + of Jesus. AMEN.

“The Father Himself loves you” (John 16:27)

There it is. The Father Himself loves you. Now. Already. Before the first syllable of your prayer. Not that He might love you, if your prayer is earnest enough. Nor that He will love you, once Christ has done enough interceding. The Father Himself. Already. Now. Loves you. Our prayer must stand on that. Everything else follows — or falls apart.

Our prayers give us away. The timidity of them. The hedge at the end — “if it be Your will” — which, spoken as we speak it, means: I am not sure You are willing. The half-formed suspicion that God is at some distance, that He is holy and somewhat reluctant, that our earnestness or purity or persistence must first shift something in Him before He will hear. We approach the throne as a stranger hoping to have moved a sovereign. The praying is essentially you working to close a distance that, as far as you can tell, is very large.

That is the wrong theology.

Not wrong in some fine-print academic sense. Wrong in practice — the one that produces the prayers we actually pray. Tentative. Apologetic. Heavily qualified. It is the theology of a God who must be convinced — a God who requires something from you before He is disposed toward you. Christ intercedes, yes, but even that intercession means Christ is doing work on a Father who would not otherwise hear you. Your prayer adds what weight it can to that effort. You are the poor man at the gate, pressing his petition, hoping the great man inside will eventually be moved.

That God is not in this Gospel.

“I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you” (John 16:26). He does not step back from intercession because there is nothing left for Him to intercede — He steps back because intercession is not what the situation requires. Because: “the Father Himself loves you” (John 16:27). Not persuaded. Not in principle. Not once the conditions are met. The Father Himself. Already. Loves you.

This is a statement about a prior reality — one that exists before your prayer begins, that your prayer does not generate, that your failures cannot undo. The Father’s love for you is not downstream of Christ’s intercession. The intercession is downstream of the love. What sent the Son into the world was the Father’s love, not the other way around. It did not wait for the Son to talk Him into it.

On what does that love rest? Jesus says: “because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God” (John 16:27). The disciples love the Son. That love — imperfect, confused, about to scatter in Gethsemane — counts as something before the Father. Not because it earns anything. But because it is love for the Son. And the Father loves the Son.

Your love for the Son is not stable enough to hold this weight. You know it. The disciples proved it within hours of this conversation. The ground has to be deeper than anything you bring. The ground is whose love you are in.

The Father loves the Son with a love that runs before all worlds. “I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father” (John 16:28). The arc of the Son: from the Father’s heart into flesh, through Calvary, back through death into the Father’s glory. Those who belong to the Son — those who are in Him — extra nos, outside yourselves, in the Son — the Father’s love for the Son holds them close. Not because of what you bring. Because of whose you are.

The Son went to Calvary for you. That is done. Finished. The Father’s love sent Him there; the Father’s love received Him back; and in that completed work, you stand. “The Father Himself loves you” (John 16:27) is not a wish — it is what the far side of Calvary looks like for you. Not a reluctant Father who had to be bought off. The Father who gave the Son in the first place — who loves what the Son loves, who counts you as the Son’s own.

“Until now you have asked nothing in My name” (John 16:24). Until now. The cross had not yet happened when Jesus spoke those words. The Name had not yet been fully given. The Spirit had not yet come. Now the Name is given. And you have it. It was placed on you with water — the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Your name is inside His Name. Not yours to invoke from a distance. Placed on you. You carry it into every asking.

Prayer in the name of Jesus is not a formula appended to a petition. It is a location. To pray in His name is to come to the Father as one who is in the Son — wrapped in the Son, carrying the Son’s own standing before the Father. You are not the poor man at the gate any longer. You are not approaching from outside, hoping to have moved Him. You are praying from inside the love the Father has for the Son. That is where the font placed you. That is where you stand.

Ask, then. “Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full” (John 16:24). Dr. Luther says: if a great emperor summons a poor beggar into his presence and promises to give him whatever he needs — and the beggar asks only for a dish of gruel — that beggar has insulted his host. The Father has opened His throne to you in the name of His Son. Ask for what He is offering. Himself. His presence. Joy so complete that nothing further could be added to it.

Ask.

The disciples hear all of this and say at last: “See, now You are speaking plainly” (John 16:29). The Spirit has come. No more figures of speech. He speaks plainly: the Father loves you, in the Son, for the Son’s sake, with the Son’s own standing before Him.

That love is not a general disposition toward humanity from a comfortable distance. It is located. Here. His body, His blood — in, with, and under the bread and wine. For you. Not for the deserving. For you — the one who prays badly, who hedges, who has half-suspected the distance is very large. The Father Himself loves you. Here is where that love is given out. Ask and receive.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School - Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin