July 13, 1904

The Love of God

EGW

The love of God is a golden chain, binding finite human beings to Himself. This love passes our knowledge. Human science can not explain it. Human wisdom can not fathom it. Parents love their children, but the love of God is larger, broader, deeper, than human love can possibly be. All the paternal love that has come down from generation to generation, through the channel of human hearts, all the springs of tenderness that have opened in the sons of men, are but as a tiny rill to the boundless ocean, when compared with the infinite, exhaustless love of God. Tongue can not utter it; pen can not portray it. You may meditate upon it every day of your life; you may search the Scriptures diligently in an effort to understand it; you may summon every power and capability that God has given you; and yet there is an infinity beyond. You may study that love for ages, and yet you can never fully comprehend the length and breadth and depth and height, of the love of God.ST July 13, 1904, par. 1

To God, the dearest object on earth is His church. “The Lord's portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; He led him about, He instructed him, He kept him as the apple of His eye.” “For thus saith the Lord of hosts: After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you; for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of His eye.”ST July 13, 1904, par. 2

Disappointment will come to us; tribulation we may expect; but we are to commit everything, great and small, to God. He does not become perplexed by the multiplicity of our grievances, nor overpowered by the weight of our burdens. His watch-care extends to every household, and encircles every individual. He marks every tear. He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. The trials and afflictions that befall us here below are permitted to work out His purposes of love toward us, “that we might be partakers of His holiness,” and thus become participants in that fulness of joy which is found in His presence.ST July 13, 1904, par. 3

The Lord's children are never absent from His mind. He knows the house in which they live. He has at times given directions to His servants to go to a certain street in a certain city, to such a house, to find one of His children.ST July 13, 1904, par. 4

Only as we contemplate the great plan of redemption can we have a just appreciation of the character of God. The work of creation was a manifestation of His love; but the gift of God to save a guilty and ruined race alone reveals the infinite depths of divine tenderness and compassion. “God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” While the law of God is upheld, and its justice vindicated, the sinner can be pardoned. The dearest gift that Heaven itself had to bestow has been poured out, that God “might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.”ST July 13, 1904, par. 5

“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.” What love, what matchless love, that, sinners and aliens tho we are, we may be brought back to God, and adopted into His family! We may address Him by the endearing name, “Our Father,” which is a sign of our affection for Him, and a pledge of His tender regard for us. And the Son of God, beholding the heirs of grace, is not ashamed to call them brethren. They have even a more sacred relationship to God than have the angels who have never fallen.ST July 13, 1904, par. 6

Human love may change, but God's love knows no change. “The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but My kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.” Circumstances may separate friends; the broad waters of the ocean may roll between them; but no circumstance, no distance, can separate us from the love of God. “I am persuaded,” Paul declares, “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”ST July 13, 1904, par. 7