God's Gift to His Son

I can scarcely take it in when I read these words, “And the glory which you gave me I have given them, that they may be one just as we are one: I in them, and you in me; that they may be made perfect in one…” (John 17:22-23, NKJV).

Think of it. We have our Lord's word, confessed before his own Father, that he has given himself to us as fully and completely as his Father gave himself to him. He has given us the same intimate love his Father gave him, and that is his glory manifested in us. We have been brought into the same kind of special love relationship he shares with the Father; even more, he opens up the circle of love between them and brings us into it. We are made partakers of a glory beyond comprehension. How incredible that Christ should bring us to the Father and plead, "That they may be one with us!" We share completely in the fullness of God's love for his Son by being in Christ.

In a true sense, it may be said that God so loved his Son that he gave him the world. Did you not know we are God's gift to his Son, a gift of love? “They were yours; you gave them all to me.” Yet Christ was so in oneness with the Father that he brings the gift back to him and says, “All mine are thine, and thine are mine...” (see John 17:10).

Is it not comforting to know we are the object of such a love between Father and Son? What an honor to have Christ place us in the palm of his great and loving hand, for him to present us to the Father and say, “Behold, Father! They are ours! They all belong to us! They are the object of our love! I will love them, Father! You will love them! We will make our abode in them and show them how much they are loved.”

As we grasp this, we will be able to say confidently, “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).