Oh, be ravished with this!

(Charles Spurgeon)

"That the world may know that You sent Me and loved them even as You have loved Me!" John 17:23

Can you believe it . . .
  that you should be the object of God's delight,
  that you should be the object of the Father's love as truly as Christ is!

See the amazing sacrifice which the Father made in giving Jesus to us.

Think what it cost Him to tear His Well-Beloved from His bosom and send Him down below to be despised and rejected.

Think what it cost Him to nail Jesus up to yonder cross, and then forsake Him and hide His face from Him, because He had laid all our sins upon Him.

Oh, the love He must have had to us, thus to have made His best Beloved to become a curse for us, as it is written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree!"

I want you to get this truth right into your souls, dear friends.
Do not hold it as a dry doctrine, but let it penetrate your heart.

Oh, when the river of God's great love to us came rolling in like a mighty torrent, what a sea of love was there! Now we are borne onward forever by the mighty sweep of infinite love into an everlasting blessedness which tongues and lips can never fully set forth!

Oh, be ravished with this! Be in ecstasy at love so amazing, so divine! The Father loves you even as He loves His Son! After the same manner and sort, He loves all His redeemed people.

Can you believe it!

Oh, if the love of Jesus once enters into a man's soul . . .
   it will forever transform him,
   it will sway him with the noblest passions,
   it will make him a zealot for Christ,
   it will cast out his pride and selfishness,
   it will change him into the image of Christ, and
   fit him to dwell in Heaven where love is eternally perfected.