The Father's eternal love

"The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment - what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me." - John 12:48-50

Here we see our Lord giving us a comforting reminder. We often tend to see the amazing love of Christ in coming to die for our sins and neglect to see the equal love of the other two members of the Trinity.
Not so much a neglect of the Holy Spirit, but a tragic distortion of the Father's relation to us clouds our view of His majesty.

In this passage, we see that the very words of Christ, the words that communicate and impart eternal life to those who hear and believe, are words that come directly from the Father Himself. The Father, to whom we have attributed a morbid displeasure with us at all times, has actually from all eternity, issued a divine word, to save His people from their sin, through the work of God the Son and the application of God the Spirit.

So next time we think Christ came purely to appease an angry Father who remains angry with us, only just satisfied by Christ shielding us, let us look to the eternal covenant (Heb. 13:20,21) and see that before the foundation of the earth, the Trinity decided to love and save sinners.

"The LORD your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing." - Zephaniah 3:17