The Love of God

Have you pondered the love of God? Not a mere passing thought but a deep contemplation on God’s love? God does not HAVE love, so says the book of 1 John, God IS love. It is not something He has but Who He is. It is the foundation of His nature and the compulsion of His character. We cannot begin to understand Who our indescribable God is until we clearly see Him as a God of love.

It is from this same nature of love, which woos sinners to turn and repent, that sends them to hell if they don’t. This fiery Love full of righteous holiness cannot allow even a speck of uncleanness to enter near. We must be purified. We must be made new.

So I ask again, when was the last time you mused about Love . . . God? Perhaps one of my favorite hymns will help:

Verse One

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.

Chorus

O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure
The saints’ and angels’ song.

Verse Three

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

A quick search reveals that the last stanza, written nearly 1000 years ago in a Jewish poem: Haddamut, by Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai, a cantor in Germany, was compiled and included with two other stanzas by Fred­er­ick Leh­man into the hymn The Love of God in 1917.

Read the last stanza (number 3) again – but read it slowly and with great consideration.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

The love of our God is utterly indescribable. But in a 30 second reflection, we find ourselves gaping about the majestic grandeur of Who He is: even if the entire ocean was changed from water to ink, and the expanse of the sky became paper; every tree limb and branch writing instruments, with every human prepared to write pithy prose – even then, the ocean would be drained of its ink, the sky bursting at its seems, the human hand exhausted, and in ten thousand generations, the discourse on the love of God merely started.

Oh the love of God! How rich and pure; measureless and strong. It shall forevermore endure. It will be my song.