Believers enjoy everlasting life, and this eternal quality of life finds expression in the never ending love of the Father.

1 John 3:1 "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!"

He has a special love for His children, and His children will never know the stopping of that love. This love bestowed upon them, "Passes knowledge" (Ephesians 3:19 ). Those living in the centre and confidence of the Father's love, are able to love others steadfastly. Father's love in His children makes them very usable. They are those to whom Jesus has declared the Father, and is declaring Him. It is important to underline again the intercession of Jesus: "the love with which You (the Father) loved me (Jesus) may be in them, and I in them." (John 17:26 ).

The Father's love for Jesus must be in His usable people. The prayer of Jesus would lift us up to that position of the Father's love for the Son. The Father expressed love for the Son in the use of a beautiful title, "Beloved". Jesus is portrayed as "Beloved" by the Spirit in Isaiah 42:1-4 and:

Matthew 12:18 "Behold, My Servant whom I have chosen, My Beloved in whom My soul is well pleased."

He is the one in whom the Father's love is centered. Perfect love makes the Father and the Son one. In the parable of the householder, Jesus bore testimony to the special love of the Father for Him, saying many slaves were sent one after the other to the rebellious husbandmen, but only one Son, who is called "the Beloved One" (Mark 12:6 ). The Father, at the baptism of the Son by John, owns to their relationship with the words,

Matthew 3:17 "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

The statement is personalized in Luke's gospel, "You are My beloved Son" (Luke 3:22 ). The Father delights in the Son, who ever delights to do the Father's will. The Father in love, acclaims the deity of God the Son, and commands worship of the Son. In the counsels of the Godhead we have the Father addressing the Son,

Hebrews 1:8 "But to the Son He says: 'Your throne, 0 God, is forever and ever' ".

Hebrews 1:6 "...Let all the angels of God worship Him."

The Father loves the Son and commands that all men should honour the Son.

John 5:23 "That all should honour the Son just as they honour the Father. He who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent Him."

The love of the Father for the Son is beyond knowledge. We will never plumb its depth. But His love in us is to be expressed to the Lord Jesus Christ. This will include delighting in Him, worshipping Him, honouring Him, communing and fellowshipping with Him, even as the Father does. The Father's love for the Son makes sinners accepted.

It is true to say that Father never loved anything or anyone as He loved Christ, except His people. Paul says of the redeemed that they are made "accepted in the Beloved" (Ephesians 1:6 ). When it comes to the choice between hell-deserving sinners going to hell, or Jesus going to the cross in place of the sinner, He gave up His beloved Son to the atoning death of the cross. He chose that the Son of His love should die for His people, and rise again for their justification. It is only at the cost of the blood of the Beloved that God redeemed us, and it is only in the Beloved that we are accepted. It is not difficult to grasp that the Father loved Jesus better than anyone and everything, but it is a life-shaking, life-changing truth, that He made an amazing exception when it came to perishing sinners.

To have this love of the Father in us, as an answer to the prayer of Jesus, means that in addition to loving our own and the saints, we are nevertheless, to be filled with an exceptional love for lost sinners. We are to be ready to surrender comfort, time, and the pleasure of the company of those we specially love, in the interest of winning the lost.

The love with which the Father loves Jesus, in us, accepts sinners. This love marks out God's usable people who are willing to spend and be spent, not only for members of the body of Christ, but for the winning of the lost. The Father's love for Jesus is reflected through God's usable people, back to Jesus. Jesus prayed, "the love with which You loved me may be in them". This means, the love of the Father will be reflected through His redeemed people back to Jesus. The Father like the sun, fills the universe of the redeemed's being, so to Jesus the redeemed are like the moon. And Oh, how Jesus appreciates the moonlight: the soft, gentle reflection of the Father's love through His people.

The Father made needy sinners the exception to His love for the Son, and put the redeemed in the full blaze of His love. His love goes by way of exception, the moon, to the Lord Jesus, who rejoices in their reflecting love. What a wonderful, thrilling picture. It is a portrait of God's usable people who have the love of God shed abroad in their hearts, and therefore qualify to be a blessing to Christ and His body, and the lost, because out of their lives shines the love of God.