The Love of God Part 4

THE LOVE OF GOD IS INSEPARABLE AND IMMEASURABLE:-- As a victorious Christian, St. Paul wrote: "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" (Romans 8:36-39). The reason why no one or no thing can separate God's love from those who presently love and serve Him is because "GOD IS LOVE" (1 John 4:8, 16). In order to be powerful enough to separate the love of God from a genuine Christian, that force would have to be powerful enough to separate God Himself from that soul! Obviously, no such force exists.

However, the Bible does not teach that it is impossible for one to separate himself or herself from the love of God. In order to honor the free will that He Himself created in mankind, God does allow a person to choose not to love Him and to finally divorce himself, or herself, form the love of God in eternity. None who inhabit the regions of the damned will be the objects of the love of God.

Still, many humans have been too ready in their minds to preclude from the love of God those whom they deem to be reprobates, and -- the magnitude of God's love is too often dwarfed by false limitations placed upon it by mistaken, human perceptions. In the song, "There's A Wideness," F. W. Faber wrote:

There's a wideness in God's mercy

Like the wideness of the sea;

There's a kindness in His justice

Which is more than liberty.

There's a welcome for the sinner,

And more graces for the good.

There is mercy with the Saviour;

There is healing in His blood.

For the love of God is broader

Than the measure of man's mind;

And the heart of the Eternal

Is most wonderfully kind...

The love of God "is more wonderfully kind" than some Christians may think, and no doubt many sinners who have been "long since written off" by men as hopelessly lost have continued to be the objects of Christ's immeasurable love -- some of whom have been marvelously and gloriously saved at late ages and late stages of life. After repeatedly reading in Jeremiah 31:3, "I have loved thee with an everlasting love," Frederick M. Lehman was also moved by the magnitude of the love of God, and wrote:

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. 

O love of God, how rich and pure! 

How measureless and strong! 

It shall for evermore endure 

The saints and angels song! 

The story about the third verse of this song is even more remarkable -- and seems to expand even further the concept of just how immeasurable the love of God is. It was not written by Frederick M. Lehman, but was written some time later by Ben Isaac Nahorai. For years, Nahorai had suffered from mental depression and was at last committed to an asylum. Nevertheless, it seems that the radiance and magnitude of the love of God penetrated the dark clouds of his mind, for after his death these words were found written on Nahorai's asylum wall:

Could we with ink the ocean fill 

And were the skies of parchment made, 

Were ever 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, 

Tho' stretched from sky to sky.