Jesus once said to his Father, You have loved them even as you have loved me John 17:23). How can God love us as he loves Jesus, his Son?  Is it because, like Jesus, we are full of love for God?  In another place John writes, This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us (1 John 4:10).  We don’t love God as we should, but still God loves us as he loves Jesus.  Why?  Simply because God IS love.  But we can say more.

First, We are in Christ.  Our lives are hidden with Christ in God.  And so, in union with Jesus, we are included in the divine circle of love. The Father loves the Son and loves us in the Son as he loves his Son.

Second, Christ is in us. The Father loves us and sends Jesus into our hearts to live within us by his Spirit.  Now, deep within us, the Father loves Jesus.  And now deep within us,  Jesus loves the Father so that we love the Father as Jesus loves the Father in and through us.  That means we really do participate in the divine circle of love.  

So, as Philip Yancy  has written: “There is nothing we can do to make God love us more and there is nothing we can do to make God love us less.”  In union with Jesus, the Father loves you as he loves his dearly loved Son. And yet, too many live before God less loved than they are. We need to see, really see, that we could not be more loved.