GOD’S GIFT TO HIS SON

I can scarcely take it in when I read these words, "And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one" (John 17:22). 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 and, even more, he opens up the circle of love between the two of 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, he gave him the world. We know he gave him those who are in the world, because the Lord said, "I have manifested thy name unto the men thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them to me..." (v. 6).

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, he brings the gift back to him and says, "All mine are thine, and thine are mine..." (v. 10). This kind of love can take nothing to itself—but gives its all.

Is it not comforting to know we are the object of such a love between Father and Son? What honor, to have Christ place us in the palm of his great and loving hand, and 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! And we will make our abode in them and show them how much they are loved."

How can our minds grasp it all? Here is our Lord saying to his Father, "I am going to make known to them your love to me, that the love you have for me may be in them."