I am looking at this theme today because in the love of God we have one of the Lord’s superlatives. There is no more powerful love than God’s love. Nearly all love originates in God’s love. And those for whom the Lord has a special love, He cannot fail to bless for eternity. Whatever are the duties or capabilities of God’s love, it cannot fail to reach them, because it is omnipotent.
I once read an old illustration of two strangers who were traveling together on a train. One was a Christian, but the other was not. In order to pass the time they began to talk. Eventually the Christian asked: “Do you go to church or read the Bible?” The other replied, “Absolutely not; I have no love for God.”
If you stop and think about it, that is an interesting choice of words – “I have no love for God.” The non-believer assumed that people who attended church and read the Word of God loved the Lord. That is certainly the way things ought to be, but that isn’t the way things always are. There are millions of people who attend church week after week, who have no real love for the Lord. And many of those people attend Independent, Sovereign Grace Baptist Churches. If asked, they will say, “Of course, I love God,” but that couldn’t be proved outside of the church service. There isn’t enough evidence to confirm that they are Christians.
Anyway, this unbeliever said that he didn’t go to church or read the Bible, because he had no love for God. The Christian man replied, “Until two years ago, I didn’t love the Lord either, but when I began to learn that He loved me, and THAT changed everything.”
Different people serve the Lord for different reasons. And different people initially come to the Lord for different reasons, and through different means. There are some who come out of terror, but others are drawn by grace. That man was one of those people.
There are a good many reasons to meditate on the love of God. I think that it wouldn’t hurt to be intoxicated on the love of God, but it has to be the genuine article. Just because there are many pseudo-Christians who can speak of nothing else but “love, love, love,” and just because some “experts” on the subject are as ignorant as preschoolers, the true child of God, needs to keep all of the attributes of the Lord in constant perspective. For example, as he learns about the judgments of Jehovah, he needs to balance that with sovereign grace. And while he learns about the Lord’s omnipotence, he needs to remember the Lord’s infinite love. It should be one of the chief spiritual employments of the saint to learn and grow spiritually in these things. And part of learning is rehearsing, remembering and rebuilding on things already learned. I have had hundreds of scriptures perfectly memorized, but which today I usually misquote. The reason is that I neglected ro rehearse those verses when I still knew them properly, and when I still had a mind sufficiently sharpened to retain them.
If you want to look at the message this afternoon as refresher course 101 in divine love, be my guest. Because I believe that not only is the subject Scriptural, but so is the practice of repetition. Jesus said, “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.” “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us.” “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins hath quickened us together with him (by grace are ye saved).” “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.” “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be propitiation for our sins.” Christians ought to be so filled with God’s love that their lives are swept into worship and service by it.
If the world was looking from a cleft of a rock and caught a glimpse of the back of God, it would probably be God’s love that would be seen. Because it could only be by grace that he’d see God at all – and grace is rooted in love. And that sight of God should turn every observer into a servant of God, as it did Moses. All the world should become preachers, worshipers, and people of prayer in the light of God’s love – like Noah Webster when he began to see the Lord. Walls between nations would be torn down, and there wouldn’t be an enemy upon the face of the earth. Every heart would be broken and every sin would be confessed and forsaken. We’d be forgiving ourselves and those around us whether we knew of their sins against us or not. If we knew the love of God properly, we would be different people and this would be a different world. I think we’ll see that in God’s Millennial Kingdom, when the Lord of love will rule and reign.
But of course, it is impossible for any child of Adam to know and completely understand God’s love. And yet it was Paul’s prayer the saints should at least begin to comprehend the dimensions of that love, even though those dimensions are beyond our sin-corrupted minds and hearts. The love of God passeth all knowledge. But at least we should grasp the fact that the limits of God’s love are unfathomable.
What is the BREADTH of the love of God? It is WIDE – really, really WIDE.
From time to time, we have to remind ourselves that Paul had been raised a Jew. I realize that the Jews have been screaming the words “persecution” and “bigotry” for centuries. But there never has been a more bigoted, prejudiced people in all the world than the Jews. I can’t say that there haven’t been others just as bad, but the Jewish nation has always been towards the top – or the bottom – of that list. And I don’t have to turn to historians and sociologists to verify that statement. All that’s necessary is a basic familiarity with the Word of God. For example, we see that Paul had been as guilty as anyone else in his nation. Before the days of their captivity, when they were still the nation of Israel, they rightly knew that their God, Jehovah, was and is the only true and living God. And the Lord told them that they were a very special people to Him. But instead of humbling them, it filled them with pride. They failed to realize that every good gift, and every perfect gift, ever received by anyone in the world came from the same father of lights. They failed to realize that the Lord was blessing the fields of heathen just as He was their own. They forgot that the Lord graciously saved and blessed people from other nations as well as their own. Was Nebuchadnezzar a child of God? From what country was Ruth? And Abraham? Some of David’s closest friends were won to the Lord from other countries. Didn’t the Queen of Sheba and Naaman become worshipers of Jehovah?
The breadth of God’s love reaches into every corner of creation. It doesn’t take the testimony of a bunch of missionaries to prove that. Because we Christians of North America are actually living in the uttermost part of the world. We aren’t the center of spiritual universe, but more like an outer edge of it.
And I personally think that the breadth of the love of God touches more than just the salvation of souls. Every so often my computer receives a picture of some exotic bird. Some are so colorful one might think that the pictures were altered with Photoshop. Some of those birds have beautiful tails or head pieces three and four times the length of their bodies. Their variety is so vast that they make our native birds look like pebbles on a rocky beach. And yet, for the most part, the beauty of those birds is enjoyed by no-one but the Lord Himself. When the Saviour said that a common sparrow can’t fall to the ground without the Lord’s interest, how much interest must He have in the most beautiful birds in the world seen by noone but God? I think that it can be said that God loves beauty. Then there the Northern lights and distant galaxies of stars – billions of them. There are people who love the heavens; the stars, the galaxies, the universe. But the Lord has a love for a universe beyond what man is even aware.
The breadth of God, and His love, knows no bounds.
Well then what is the LENGTH of that love? One answer is: ETERNITY.
God’s special love for his children, began before they were ever born. I’m not thinking about His Son Christ Jesus – the only begotten of the Father – I’m thinking about the saints. God’s love began before that child’s grandfather was born and before the sons of Adam were born. God’s love for today’s Christian began before the creation of Adam or the creation of the world. I know that this sounds simplistic, but out of love, God started making plans for His elect in eternity past. I tend to think that in the infinitude of God, He has always LOVED His saints, and even that doesn’t adequately express the truth.
It has been nearly two decades since there were thoughts of a new baby in the Oldfield household. And to be honest, if I even knew, I had forgotten all the planning that women put into those babies. I can’t say that is a good parallel or illustration, but the love of God has been making plans for His children infinitely longer and more deeply intense than any human mother has ever made for her child.
That Christian on the train with which we began this afternoon, said that he loved God. As he suggested – he began to love the Lord as a result of the Lord’s first loving him. “We love him, because He first loved us.” Jeremiah once testified, “The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” And if he had been directed to go on, he would have said, that the Lord’s everlasting love, has neither beginning nor end.
Towards the end of Romans 8 we read: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, 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.” This means that God loves me despite all the sin and circumstances in or around me. If I became as insane as Nebuchadnezzar, I have the assurance that the Lord would love me through it. If I lost my tongue or larynx and couldn’t speak a word of praise to God, the Lord would still love me. If I had a stroke and became a vegetable, I have the promise that the Lord would still love me. Just because an iceberg sinks our “Titanic,” that doesn’t mean the Lord doesn’t love us. Though a river runs through our house during the night, that doesn’t mean the Lord doesn’t love us. If you are a child of God, born again by the grace of God, redeemed and justified by God, then there isn’t a single thing in the world that can sever God’s love from you. He loved you before your birth – before creation – and He will love you throughout eternity.
And we need to remember the reason: it is because that love is rooted in Him and not in us. It is God’s nature to love, and He has chosen to love us. And He is eternal. I can’t explain it, but if He ceased to love us, He would actually cease to be. Come on you heretics and try to tell me again that, despite God’s love, the Christian can be lost and cast into hell. O give thanks unto the Lord for His love endureth for ever.
But this love is no reason to sin, testing His love. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid. But praise the Lord, when we do stumble and sin, “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
The length of God’s love is forever and ever.
What about its DEPTHS? Well, it extends from HEAVEN to EARTH.
The only way to begin to comprehend God’s love is to understand Romans 5:6-10 – if we but could. “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.”
Suppose that you were laying in prison under a sentence of death. You had declared your innocence, but you knew, the judge knew, and the King knew that you were guilty. As the day of your execution approached, about all that you could do was prepare yourself to die. But then five days before the execution, a messenger from the King arrived, telling you that in a couple of days you would be released. I would imagine that you’d be overjoyed at such a thought – “freedom; freedom; despite my crime.” There is just one thing that had to take place before you could be freed: The king’s son would have to be executed in your place. Hearing that, of course, all your hopes would be dashed and destroyed – that is never going to happen. But then the visiting messenger tells you that HE is the king’s son, and it IS going to happen. Perhaps the illustration is old and faulty, backwards and contrived, but it is also basically true to the point. The depths of God’s love can be seen in how far He had to reach down to touch us and save us..
The depths of God’s love can be seen in Philippians 2. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”
The depths of God’s love is seen in Isaiah 53. “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
I have seen drunkards, and wife-beaters, and adulterers loved and saved by God. I have read of murderers, whores, and traitors of nations loved by God. The depth of God’s love can be measured by people in this room. But it goes beyond that. Remove your mind from the earth for a moment. Place your mind on the vastness of the universe. Out of all the hundreds of millions of galaxies, the Lord selected one of them – the Milky way. And then out of all the millions and millions of stars in that galaxy, the Lord selected just one of them. And then He reached down to one planet, and one nation, and one city and one block and one house on that block, and He touched your eternal soul. That doesn’t BEGIN to illustrate the depth of the Lord’s love.
Finally, Paul referred to the HEIGHT of God’s love.
For that we simply reverse out last point.
Every once in a while we hear about some famous actor pleading for the support of some cause. Have you ever wondered how much of their own money they give to that cause? Let’s assume that they actually did give a $100,000 to hurricane relief efforts Florida. I have read that Dolly Parton gave a million dollars to help people in North Carolina. But did she liquidate everything? Did any of those mega-wealthy people sell their mansions, their toys, their vacation villa’s and their antiques in order to support their cause, returning to live like the rest of us?
Paul had been arguing that the Corinthians should give of their wealth to bless the suffering saints in Judea. And in the process, he uttered a verse which highlights both the height and the depths of Christ’s love. “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.” There is a sense in which the height and the depth of God’s love are like two elevators operating side by side. It is just that one is headed up and the other down. The heights of God’s love is what it accomplishes in us And the depths of that love refers to where the Lord had to reach to find us. “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”
Paul prayed that the Ephesian Christians might come to understand the dimensions of God’s love. Why? Isn’t it because we get so caught up in the things of the world that we tend to forget? Assuming that the Lord’s emotions are similar to ours, but infinitely higher, how our forgetfulness must break His heart.
The Lord’s love for His saint – for you – knows no bounds whatsoever.