God has chosen to be for us and with us, overcoming our alienation and estrangement.  By choosing to be with and for us, God is choosing to be true to himself as the one who is love. We cannot make God love us, love is simply who God is.  He cannot stop loving.  If he stopped loving, he would cease to be himself. So God doesn’t first assess humans and then have a vote of confidence in us.  No! Simply because God loves us, he chooses to be with and for us.  

God has been for us from eternity, and his coming to be with us as Jesus fulfils his eternal choice.  The Father chose his Son to become human from eternity.  And, through Jesus, he acted for humanity in history. Jesus, the Father’s Servant/Son, took on himself the awful plight of humanity as a human.  He makes this move because this is what he decided to be from eternity.  

This loving decision for humanity creates space for a human response.  God’s decision to be for and with humanity does not exclude human response, but makes space for free and joyful responses. For the God who decided to be with us also chose to be within us by his Spirit, calling us out of our alienation. 

God’s intention in all this is that we might share in the life of God.  Not becoming God, but sharing in the Son’s relationship with his Father by the Spirit.  The triune God’s life is communal, and we share in his life as a gift. All this is made possible because of God’s decision fulfilled through Jesus and the Spirit.