A Devotion from Jonathan Edwards

Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed.

—Revelation 5:5

By your being united to Christ, you will have a more glorious union with and enjoyment of

God the Father than otherwise could be. For by this the saints’ relation to God becomes much

nearer; they are the children of God in a higher manner than otherwise could be. For, being

members of God’s own Son, they are partakers of his relationship to the Father: they are not

only children of God by regeneration, but by communion in the sonship of the eternal Son. The

church is the daughter of God not only as he has begotten her by his word and Spirit, but as she

is the spouse of his eternal Son.

So we, as members of the Son, are partakers in our share of the Father’s love of the Son and

pleasure in him: “You … have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:23). So we will

take part in the Son’s enjoyment of God and have his joy fulfilled in us. And by this means we

will come to a higher, more intimate, and full enjoyment of God than otherwise could have

been. For there is doubtless an infinite intimacy between the Father and the Son, which is

expressed as his being “in the bosom of the Father” (John 1:18). And saints being in him will

take part with him in it and of the blessedness of it.

And by our redemption we are brought to an immensely more exalted kind of union with

God and enjoyment of him, both the Father and the Son, than otherwise could have been. For

Christ being united to the human nature, we have the advantage of a more free and full

enjoyment of him than we could have had if he had remained only in the divine nature. So we,

being united to a divine person, as his members, can have a more intimate union and

communion with God the Father, who is only in the divine nature, than otherwise could be.

Christ, by taking our nature on him, descends from the infinite distance and height above us

and is brought near us, so we have the advantage of fully enjoying him. And, on the other hand,

we, by being in Christ ascend up to God through the infinite distance and have the advantage of

fully enjoying him also.

This was the design of Christ, that he and his Father and his people might all be united.

Christ has brought it to pass that those whom the Father has given him would be brought into

the household of God, that he and his Father and his people should be as one family—that the

church would be admitted into the society of the blessed Trinity.