Some thoughts developed with a little help from Peter Leithart. By “a little help” I mean things like “forming my understanding and belief in the possibility of everything mentioned here”…
The Father gives the Spirit to the Son; the Son receives the Spirit and then gives the Spirit back to the Father, who receives the Spirit and then gives, etc… this inter-trinitarian giving is the basis of human relationships, and the relationship between God and man.
God gives (he initiates), and we receive. When we receive, then we may give. When we give, we give expecting to receive back something glorified.
God’s initial gift to us enables us to enter into this Trinitarian dance of gift. That initial gift is the Spirit. When He gives His Spirit to us, we produce the fruit of the Spirit and thus we offer the Spirit back to God. Giving the Spirit back to God, we expect him to return to us glorified, a fresh outpouring of the Spirit that proves even more fruitful than before.
Likewise, God gives people to us (wife, children, friends, even enemies); we receive them and we then give those people back to God. When a husband gives his wife, he expects her to return to him more lovely, for instance. When parents give their children, they receive them back. This is most dramatically illustrated in baptism: the parents hand the child to the minister. The minister baptizes the little one. Then the parents receive their child back, a new creation over which the Spirit now hovers.
More intriguing, when one gives his enemy, he may receive that enemy back as a defeated enemy—or even as a friend. “Vengeance is mine…” and so forth. We give up enemies by forswearing vengeance, bitterness, wrath, and so on, and commit them to God by praying the words of the psalms of complaint.