“These things have I written unto you,” says the best loved of the disciples of Jesus, “that ye may know that ye have eternal life; even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God”;[649] “that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that, believing, ye may have life in his name.”[650] For “God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us [while we were separated from God by sin, God yielded his only Son, to give his blood, at the cost of his death, as a means of our inter-union with God]. Much more then, being now justified by [or, in] his blood [being brought into inter-union with God by that blood], shall we be saved from the wrath of God [against sin] through him [in whom we have life]. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God [restored to union with God] through the [blood-giving] death of his Son, much more, being [thus] reconciled, shall we be saved by [or, in] his life.”[651] All who will, may, now, “be partakers of the divine nature,”[652] through becoming one with Christ, by sharing his blood, and by being nourished with his body. Entering into the divine-human covenant of blood-friendship, which Christ’s death has made possible, the believer can be so incorporated with Christ, by faith, as to identify himself with the experience and the hopes of the world’s Redeemer; and even to say, in all confidence: “I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me; and that life which I now live in the flesh, I live in faith, the faith which is in [which centres in] the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.”[653] “For as the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself.”[654] And “it was the good pleasure of the Father that in him [the Son] should all the fulness dwell; and through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace [having completed union] through the blood of his cross”[655]--in the bonds of an everlasting covenant--between those who before were separated by sin.