We are often quick (and entirely right) to affirm that God’s love for us does not depend on us. Most of us want to avoid any suggestion that God might love us because of anything we do for him or anything specific about us that makes us a bit more lovely. We know his love for us doesn’t depend on us and that this is good news because, if it did, we would almost certainly manage to lose it.
But it is worth reminding ourselves what God’s love does depend on. God’s love for his children depends entirely upon his love for Jesus. If the Father does not love the Son, then he doesn’t love any of us who think of ourselves as ‘his people’ either. But if the Father loves the Son with the perfect love they enjoyed in eternity past, anybody united to the Son is adopted into his sonship. If we are adopted into his sonship, we become true sons in Christ who are perfectly loved by the Father as those united to Christ.
This is why all in Christ are sons of God (including all the women in Christ too). We are adopted into the Son’s sonship. By our union with Christ, the Father loves us with all the love, to the same intensity and in exactly the same way as he loves Jesus; the eternal Son of God. What is true of Jesus becomes true of us, including his sonship.
It is for this reason we stand to gain an inheritance. In the ancient world, the only person who inherited anything was the firstborn son. We do not stand to gain an inheritance as mere children of God. Rather, we stand to gain the inheritance of the firstborn son because we are united to the only begotten Son. His sonship is our sonship, his love from the Father is our love from the Father, his inheritance is our inheritance. By our union with Christ, all that is his becomes ours.
By the same token, this means the Father is really and genuinely pleased with us if we’re in Christ. Because the Father loves the Son, he loves all who are in the Son. Because the Father loves Jesus, he loves us in Jesus. The Father said to Jesus: ‘this is my Son, in whom I am well pleased’. If you believe by faith in Jesus, that statement belongs to you. The Father says to you, ‘this is my Son, in whom I am well pleased’ because you are his son united to the Son.
Our relationship with God doesn’t rest on God’s love for us. Rather, it depends on the Father’s love for his Son to whom we’re united. How pleased God is with me isn’t the point; it’s how pleased God is with Jesus. If God is perfectly pleased with Jesus, it means my union with Christ means God is perfectly pleased with me. God is pleased with us because he is pleased with Jesus, and we are in Jesus.
Ps 147:11 says: ‘The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love’. God delights and takes pleasure in us. And as we fear him, and love him, he makes us more like Jesus so we act in ways that are all the more pleasing to him. But he loves us and takes pleasure in us fundamentally because he loves and takes pleasure in Jesus. As much as the Father loves the Son and as much pleasure as he takes in Jesus is exactly the same degree of love and pleasure he bestows on and takes in us if we are united to Christ. God’s love for us and pleasure in us rests entirely on the perfect love he has for Jesus and the degree of delight he takes in him.
Suffice to say, it is an awful lot!