Ask and Receive....

The Love of God is poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5)

We cannot know the Father unless the Son reveals Him to us.  But we cannot know Jesus unless He is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit.  So "the Gift of the Father" is the Spirit, Who teaches us all things and Who gives us all that belongs to Jesus, including His knowledge of and relationship to the Father. 

Jesus died in the flesh so that the "natural man," (Adam), who lives in enmity to God, would also die, and in his place, a new man, of one spirit with God, able to hear and see the things of God, would arise.  If we do not receive the things of God, if we do not walk in the Spirit of Truth, Jesus then has died in vain.  In that case, we can only know about God, but we cannot "know" God. 

This is the pearl of great price, for which a man gives all that he has: the intimate knowledge of God, given to us in the heart and mind of Jesus, through the Spirit He breathes into us.  And how do we receive that Spirit?  Jesus told us to simply ask the Father for His Gift---see Matthew 7 and Luke 11.