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 (John 17:23). 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? And is it not that I may use it as
my constant guard and protection against everything that flesh, or world, or Satan can bring
against me? He loves us as He loves His Son.

Do not say it is too high a thought. I know nothing so humiliating_that so convicts us of being
nothing_as the fact 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
much else that is not in accordance with such love.

It is the delight and the desire of God that those who are His should enter into the greatness of His
love. 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 it is even more wonderful 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.

(From Lectures on the Epistle to the Ephesians.)