The Love of God for Christians

                For many years I have treasured John 17:23, where Jesus declares that God the Father loves Christians with the same infinite and perfect love with which, within the one God, the Father has loved the Son from all eternity.  Now today the lord riveted my attention to John 15:9, where Jesus similarly declares that “[a]s the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.”  To think that the one God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-- loves his people with the overflowing, steadfast love He has experienced within himself from all eternity!