There is nothing in all the thoughts of God more wondrous than that God can love such as we are with the same love wherewith He loves His Son. And He does so love us; I know it for myself and dishonor His Word if I do not know it. If He says it, is it not that I may believe it and take it home to my heart and enjoy it now in this world? that I may use it as my constant buckler against everything that flesh or world or Satan can insinuate against me? He loves us as He loved Him.
Do not say it is too high a thought. I know nothing so humiliating-that so convicts us of being nothing-as this that, so loved, we should so little feel it; that, so loved, we should so feebly return it; that, so loved, we should yield to the cares, the vanities, the thoughts, the pursuits, and anything, in short, that is not in accordance with such love.
It is the delight and, if we may so say, the desire of God that those who are His should enter into the greatness of His love, for no glory nor sense of it nor confidence in it nor waiting for it ought to be enough even for such hearts as ours. It is a wonderful thing to think that we are to share the glory of Christ, but more so that we have the same love. The same God who gives us the glory of Christ will have our souls enter even now by the Holy Spirit into the community of the same love. [12]