God Is Love
We have already seen that in the Bible, even in its earliest books, books written nearly thirty-four hundred years ago, we have set before us a conception of God that is more profound, more exalted, more awe-inspiring, more gladdening, and heart-thrill¬ ing and ennobling, than is to be found in any or in all of the profoundest philosophies of the past or even of the present day, except in so far as the philosophies of the present day have borrowed their conception of God from this old, old Book, the Bible. And we have also seen that there is not to be found outside of the Bible, in all the literature of all nations and of all ages, anything that even approaches the Bible statements in beauty, simplicity, force, grandeur, splendor, and sublimity of expression. And we have seen that the only explanation that has even the slightest semblance of reasonableness of these two unquestionable facts is that the Bible, even in its earliest portions, is a direct and supernatural revelation from God, and that these earliest Bible writers wrote the very words found in the Holy Scriptures as the Holy Spirit moved them and impelled them and empowered them to write, and that these earliest portions of the Bloly Scriptures, beyond the possibility of any intelligent and honest question, were, as Paul more than eighteen hundred and fifty years ago declared them to be, (H Tim. 3: 16).
But it is only when we come to the consideration of the moral character of the God of the Bible that we see to the full extent the immeasurable superiority of that conception of God that the Bible presents to all representations of God found elsewhere.
In the last chapter we began the study of the moral character of God, beginning with the foundation fact regarding the moral character of God, the fact that God is Holy, infinitely and absolutely holy, that “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”
But the same book in the Bible which contains that wondrous statement that “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all,” one of the most illuminating and awe-inspiring sentences that was ever written, contains another sentence which is perhaps the greatest sentence that was ever written, “God is love,” and this sentence determines the particular subject of this chapter, which is. The God of the Bible: God is Love.
I have tried to reduce my texts to as small a number as possible but, even so, I am compelled to include twelve texts, and some of those included consist of several verses, and even so I shall be compelled, as we go on, to introduce numerous other passages of Scripture, if we are to treat this great subject with anything like fullness and fairness. Please note carefully my texts, for the whole message of the chapter is in my texts. It is the God of the Bible that we are studying, not the God of my thoughts, nor of my philosophy nor of my theology any more than the God of Modern Philosophy or the God of the New Theology. All we know about God that is really worth while is what this one Book teaches. It would be amusing, if it were not righteously exasperating, to hear our meager-minded but very self-sufficient modern philosophers and theologians say, ‘’I think so and so about God.” Who cares what you think? Who cares what I think? The only thing of any real moment is, What does God Himself reveal about Himself in the one Book which is the only “God-breathed” revelation of God. What does this Book say? That is the only thing that really matters. So the entire chapter contains only an ex¬ position of what God Himself clearly and plainly says in His own Book.
You will find the first text in I Jno. 4:8:
“He that loveth not knoweth not God: for
God is love.’’
You will find our second text in I Jno. 4:16:
“And we know and have believed the love which God hath in us. God is love; he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him.”
You will find our third text in I Jno. 4:7:
“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is begot¬ ten of God, and knoweth God.”
You will find our fourth text in I Jno. 3:16, 17:
Hereby know we love, because He laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath the world’s goods, and beholdeth his brother in need, and shutteth up his compassion from him, how doth the love of God abide in him?”
You will find our fifth text in Matt. 5: 44, 45:
“But I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; that ye may he sons of your Father who is in heaven: for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the un¬ just.”
You will find our sixth text in Jno. 17:24:
“Father, I desire that they also whom thou
hast given me be with me where I am, that
they may behold my glory, which thou hast
given me: for thou lovedst Me before the
foundation of the world/^
You will find our seventh text in John 3:16:
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
You will find our eighth text in Rom. 5:6-8:
“For while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth His ozvn love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us/^
You will find our ninth text in Eph. 2:4, 5:
“But God, being rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace have ye been saved).”
You will find our tenth text in I Jno. 4:9, 10:
‘’Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
You will find our eleventh text in Zeph. 3: 17:
“Jehovah thy God is in the midst of thee, a mighty one who will save; He will rejoice over thee with joy; He will rest in His love; He will joy over thee with singing.”
You will find our twelfth text in Gen. i: 1-3, 26-28,
‘‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.... And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. And God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. And God blessed them: and God said unto them. Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of
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the heavens, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.... And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good.”
In the first two texts we are told in so many words that ‘’God is love.” The other texts imply the same great truth. While more of the texts are taken from John’s writings, either his Gospel or his First Epistle, than from any other writer, some of the most notable texts are taken from Paul’s writings, and one is from the words of our Lord Jesus Himself, and one is from one of the least studied old Testament prophets, and one consists of several verses from the very first chapter in the Bible, written about thirty-four hundred years ago. These verses all set forth the tremendous and stupendous truth that, God is love. Not merely that God loves, hut God is love, i. e.. Love is the very essence of His moral nature. He is also the source of all love.
The whole Bible is a love story, the story of the infinite love of an infinitely Holy God for a fallen and morally worthless race of sinners, of which you and I are members. If any one should ask me for a sentence to be printed on the covers of his Bible in letters of gold that would set forth the*entire contents of the Book, it would be that most marvelous sentence ever written, consisting of only three monosyllables, one of four letters and one of three letters and one of only two letters, only nine letters in all, “God is love.”
I said in my last chapter, “The whole Bible, both the Old Testament and the New Testament, is dominated by one thought, the thought of the Infinite Holiness of God. Let me say to-day what is equally true: The whole Bible, both the Old Testament and the New Testament, is dominated by one thought, the thought that God is Love, that love is the very essence of God’s moral nature.
II. What Does”Love’’ Mean?
This brings us to the important question. What does the Word ‘’Love” Mean; or. What is Love?
We must go to the Bible itself for a satisfying and entirely dependable answer to that all-important question. This is the point at which a multitude of preach¬ ers and theologians and poets and romancers and founders of various cults have gone astray; they have taken from the Bible the great truth that God is love, and then have not been wise enough and fair-minded enough to search the Bible to find out exactlv how God Himself defines or describes love, and they have consequently drawn all sorts of unwarranted conclusions from the statement that “God is love,” and have fallen into all sorts of entirely unbiblical and utterly untrue and monstrous theological and philosophical aberrations and vagaries.
That glorious word “love” is one of the most abused words in our English language. From being one of the most glorious words and divinest words in our language, it has become in the usage of the great mass of men one of the most weakly and sickly sentimental and really immoral words, and not infrequently a fine looking cloak for the basest selfishness and vilest lust.
Let us turn, then, to the Bible for our definition of what love really means, i. e.^ what God Himself means by love.
Read I Jno. 3: 16, 17:
“‘Hereby know we love, because He laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath the world’s goods, and beholdeth his brother in need, and shutteth up his compassion from him, how doth the love of God abide in him?”
Here is God’s definition of love, or description of love, “Hereby know we love, because He laid down His life for us,” We see, then, that. Love is no mere sentimental tenderness, no mere selfish fondness or affection for another, or a mere attraction to another; but love is a self-sacrificing desire for, and delight in, the welfare of the one loved. You get practically the same definition of love, though phrased in other words, in our Lord’s own description of the Father God’s love in Matt. 5: 44, 45:
^‘But I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; that ye may be sons of your Father who is in heaven: for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the un¬ just.”
III. Whom Does God Love?
Now another question of fundamental importance confronts us, Whom does God the Father love? Here again we are not left to dream and imagine and speculate for ourselves. God in His own Word tells us in the plainest and most unmistakable language exactly who it is whom He loves.
I. In the first place, God loves “His own” and”only Son,” Jesus Christ, our Lord. This truth is set forth again and again in the Bible in the plainest and at the same time the most expressive language. Read, for example, Matt. 3: 17:
“And lo, a voice out of the heavens, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
Let me give you a little more literal translation of the Greek, a translation that puts more emphasis upon the thought that Jesus Christ is the one original and eternal object of God the Father’s eternal love, “And behold, a voice out of the heavens saying. This is the Son of me, the beloved one, in whom I am well pleased.”
We find God saying again the same thing audibly “out of the (luminous) cloud” in which He came down at the transfiguration of our Lord, described in Matt. 17:5:
“While he was yet speaking, behold, a bright [rather, luminous] cloud overshadowed them: and behold, a voice out of the cloud, saying. This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him.”
Here, again, the Greek literally translated would be the same as in Matt. 3: 17, i. e., “This is the Son of me, the beloved one, in whom I am well pleased.”
Again, we read in Luke 20: 13:
“And the lord of the vineyard said, What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; it may be they will reverence him.’^
Here, again, “my beloved Son’^ in the Greek reads literally, “the Son of me, the beloved one/^
Read just one more verse on this particular point, Jno. 17:24:
“Father, I desire that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst ME before the foundation of the world”
These passages all set forth definitely and clearly the profoundly suggestive and meaningful fact that God’s own Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, was the original and eternal object of God the Father’s love. If God is eternal, and we have already seen that He certainly is, then His love must have an eternal object. There must, therefore, because of a necessity in the Divine Being Himself, be a multiplicity of persons in the Godhead. The eternal object of the Divine love of the Eternal Father is the Eternal Son,
2, In the second place, God loves those who love His Son (Who is the original and eternal object of His love) and who believe that He, Jesus Christ, came forth from the Father, This fundamentally important truth is set forth in our Lord’s own words as recorded in John 14: 21, 23:
“He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him.... (23.) Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father mill love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”
We find our Lord Jesus teaching the same thing again in Jno. 16:27:
“For the Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came forth from the Father.”
God loves those who love His Son and believe that He came forth from the Father, because of their relationship to His Son, because they are united to Him by love and faith.
God loves, as we shall in a few moments see, all men; but He has an altogether peculiar love for those who are in Christ. God has precisely the same love to those zvho are in Christ Jesus that He has for Christ Jesus Himself. This our Lord Himself tells us in one of the most astounding statements to be found in the Bible; you will find it in JnO’. 17:23:
“I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that thou didst send me, and lovedst them even as thou lovedst me.”
Of course, there is a love of God to those who are now in Christ which is antecedent to their love to Christ. This we are distinctly told in I Jno. 4: 19, “We love, because he first loved us.”
3. In the third place, God loves the world, the whole human race, and each individual member of it. We find this truth taught in what is perhaps the most familiar verse in the Bible, John 3:16:
Tor God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life.’’
The same truth is found in I Tim. 2:3, 4, ‘This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; who would have all men to he saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth.” This same truth is put in still another way in II Pet. 3: 9, “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some count slackness; but is longsuffering to you-ward, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”
4. In the fourth place, God loves the sinner, the un¬ godly, those dead in sins. This amazing truth is declared again and again in a variety of ways in the Bible. For example, we read in Rom. 5: 6-8:
“For while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one* die: for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth His own love to¬ ward us, in that, zvhile we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Turn now to Eph. 2:4, 5:
“But God, being rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace have ye been saved).”
We find this truth in the Old Testament as well as in the New Testament. We find it even in that stern old prophet of the exile, Ezekiel, in Ez. 33:11:
“Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; hut that the wicked turn from his zvay and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?”
Please note the tender pleading in the “turn ye, turn ye.” Of course, it is involved in God loving “the world” that He loved sinners, the ungodly, the dead in sins, but the Bible lays especial emphasis upon this fact.
IV. How the Love of God Manifests Itself.
We come now to the very important question, Hozv does the love of God manifest itself f Here we must walk very carefully and be sure we are going exactly by the Book every step of the way; for it is at just this point that many go astray into all kinds of vagaries and theological aberrations.
I. In the first place, Gods love manifests itself in God’s ministering to the need and joy of those whom He loves; and protecting them from all evil. Read Isa. 48: 14, 20, 21:
“Assemble yourselves, all ye, and hear; who among them hath declared these things? He whom Jehovah loveth shall perform His pleasure on Babylon, and His arm shall be on the Chaldeans. ... (20.) Go ye forth from
Babylon, flee ye from the Chaldeans; with a voice of singing declare ye, tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth: say ye, Jehovah hath redeemed His servant Jacob. (21.) And they thirsted not when He led them through the deserts; He caused the waters to How out of the rock for them; He clave the rock also, and the water gushed out.”
These are exceedingly beautiful and marvelously comforting words, written before Modern Philosophy or even ancient Greek Philosophy was dreamed of; written more than twenty-five hundred years ago. Who taught Isaiah so to write and enabled him so to write, so many, many centuries ago, in those exceedingly “dark ages”? There is but one reasonable answer, God. Isaiah “spoke as he was borne along by
i
the Holy Spirit” (II Pet. 1:21); his very words were “God-breathed.” To deny this is to be unscientific and irrational, mentally befogged and blinded by the narrow-minded and stubborn bigotry of the New The¬ ology. Ponder deeply these divinely-inspired words of Isaiah.
But let us go nine centuries further back still, thirty-four hundred years ago. Read Deut. 32:9-12:
“For Jehovah’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 compassed him about, He cared for him,
He kept him as the apple of His eye.
As an eagle that stirreth up her nest.
That fluttereth over her young.
He spread abroad His wings, He took them.
He bare them on His pinions.
Jehovah alone did lead him.
And there was no foreign god with him.”
Even as mere literature, where could that be matched for sublime imagery and expressive diction and masterly figure? But it is far more than mere literature, superlatively fine as it is as literature, it is the heart-comforting and soul-enthralling truth of God, truth for those long, long ago ages, and truth for to-day, truth which we have not outgrown even yet, for all our boasted intellectual evolution and progress through these long, long centuries, yes, truth to which we have not even yet grown up. And yet these peerless words are entirely omitted in Professor Kent’s “Shorter Bible,” though he unblushingly states in the Preface to that book, that contemptibly inadequate book, that it “singles out and sets in logical order those parts of the Bible which are of vital interest and practical value in the present age.’’ I leave you to judge for yourself whether this claim of Professor Kent’s is true, or an unblushing and abominable and ridiculous lie.
Turn to the very next chapter of this same wondrous book, in the Book of books, Deut. 33: 3, 12:
“Yea, He loveth the people;
All His saints are in Thy hand:
And they sat down at Thy feet;
Every one shall receive of Thy words.
(12) Of Benjamin he said.
The beloved of Jehovah shall dwell in safety by Him;
He covereth him all the day long,
And he dwelleth between His shoulders.”
All this, also. Professor Kent omits in his book that claims to set forth all “those parts of the Bible which are of vital interest and practical value to the present age.” Poor, blind man, posing as a thorough Bible scholar, and yet so densely ignorant of the full contents of that wondrous book.
2. In the second place, God’s love manifests itself in God’s chastening and scourging His loved ones for their profit, that out of this chastening the peaceable fruit of righteousness may come. This we find taught for example in Heb. 12: 6-1 1:
“For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, And scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. It is for chastening that ye endure; God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father chasteneth not? But if ye are without chastening, whereof all have been made partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed good to them; but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yieldeth peace¬ able fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness.”
The fact that God is love, and that God loves us, is no guarantee that we shall never suffer; rather is it a guarantee that we shall suffer, for suffering is just what we sometimes most need. The parent who shelters his child from all suffering, under all circumstances, is not the parent who most truly or most wisely loves his child. No, he loves himself, and sacrifices his child’s highest good to spare his own feelings. But not so our infinitely wise and infinitely loving Heavenly Father. He so truly loves us that though it wounds His own heart, He “chastens” and even ^’scourges” us. Do not lay the flattering unction to your soul that because “God is love” and because God loves you with infinite love, you will never suffer. No, just because He loves you, you surely will suffer. And do not think because you are now undergoing suffering and almost unsupportable pain or sorrow that God does not love you. No, it is because He does love you that you so suffer.
3. In the third place, Gods love manifests itself in His being Himself afflicted when His loved ones are afflicted, ezpen though their afflictions come from His own hand and are the result of their own sin. This great and comforting fact is set forth in Isa. 63:9:
“lu all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in His pity He redeemed them; and He bare them, and carried them all the days of old.”
God is here speaking particularly of the awful afflictions that overtook the Jewish people. These afflictions were the direct consequence and punishment of their own wrong-doing, and came directly or indirectly from God’s own hand. They were the result of their own unfaithfulness to God, and yet God tells us that in all these appalling sorrows and calamities, that rei8o suited from their own outrageous sin, the Holy God / against whom they had sinned, and who sent the suffering upon them, suffered with them. And these pro¬ found and matchless words were written over twenty-five centuries ago. Who is their real author? Surely not Isaiah, but God. No really intelligent and fair-minded man will attempt to deny it.
Such a Being is the God of the Bible, not the cold, abstract, impersonal, emotionless “Absolute” of Modern Philosophy, but a Being with a mother’s heart, who, though she may see the need that she severely punish her child for its own highest good, nevertheless suffers herself in all that the child suffers, suffers far more than the child, making all the child’s agonies her own, and is pierced to the very heart by them.
Listen! there is not an agony nor pain nor sorrow that any of us suffer, even the keenest anguish that comes from our own most unpardonable wrong-doing, but our Father in heaven suffers with us. I would that we had time to linger here and take in all the wonder and all the comfort of this thought of God that He has set forth in this wonderful Book, this peerless Book, this Book that stands absolutely alone among all the books ever written, clearly proven by the indisputable facts in the case to be the one and only book that is “God-breathed.”
4. In the fourth place, God’s love is manifested in His never forgetting those whom He loves. This is what we are told in those amazing words found in Isa. 49:15, 16:
“Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of 18i
her womb? yea, these may forget, yet will not I forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands.”
It often seems to us, in our blindness, when God, for His own wise reasons, allows sorrows and losses and woes of various kinds to accumulate, that God has forgotten us, but He never has; a mother may for¬ get her nursing child, but God never forgets, no, not for one smallest moment, those persons who are the objects of His ceaseless and never slumbering love.
5. We have not even yet scaled the highest heights or fathomed the deepest depths of the love of the God of the Bible. In the fifth place, God’s love has manifested itself by His making the greatest sacrifice in His power for those whom He loves, even the sacrifice of His own and only Son to die as the propitiation for our sins. Two of the most meaningful statements of this truth are found in I Jno. 4:9, 10, and in John 3:16. Let me read you first I Jno. 4: 9, 10:
“‘Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him, Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
Now turn to John 3:16, which we have all heard so often and know so well, and yet do not know as we ought to know even yet, and all whose depths we shall never fathom till eternity dawn:
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
We have seen that love is a self-sacrificing desire for and a delight in the welfare of the one loved; therefore, the true test and measure of love is sacrifice. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ is the measure of Gods love to us. If we ever desire to see as far as finite eye can see into the unfathomable depths of the infinite love of God, there is one place to look, and that is to the Cross and at the One Who hangs thereon. We should recall the depth and intensity of the in¬ finite and eternal love of the Father to “His only son,” and then see Him hanging there enduring all the immeasurable agonies of the Cross to purchase redemption and eternal life for us, and with all this vividly in our minds think of the agonized heart of the Father, Who loved His Son with a love immeasurably beyond our comprehension, and yet gave him up, and gave Him up not only to die but to die on the Cross in our stead. This is a matter for us to ponder, to meditate upon, and not for us to try to put into words, for no words can express all the meaning of it, and all possible illustrations fall infinitely short of describing the reality.
6. In the sixth place, God’s love manifests itself in His forgiving sins. The Bible, from Genesis Three (where sin first entered human history) to Revelation Twenty- two, is full of this thought. Take one passage among the many that might be cited. Turn to Isa. 38:17:
“Behold, it was for my peace that I had great bitterness:
But thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption;
For thou hast cast all my sins behind thy
hack’’
God, because of His love for us, will forgive the sins of any sinner, no matter how many and how great his sins may be, if he on his part will turn from his sins and unto God. Listen to the way in which it is put in Isa. 55:7:
“Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him re¬ turn unto Jehovah, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.”
Of course, God will not forgive our sins if we will not forsake them. It would not be love to do that, but God will forgive them one and all, utterly blot them out, no matter how many and how black they may be, if we turn from them.
7. In the seventh place, God’s love manifests itself in His imparting life to those dead in trespasses and sins, in His raising them up together with Christ, and making them sit together with Christ in the heavenly places, and in showing to us in the ages to come the exceeding riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Here I have put together four manifestations of God’s love, because God Himself groups them in Eph. 2: 4-7:
‘‘God, being rich in mercy, for His great love 7Juherewith He loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive to¬ gether with Christ (by grace have ye .been saved), and raised tis up with Him, and made us to sit with Him in the Heavenly places, in Christ Jesus: that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in kind¬ ness toward us in Christ Jesus,”
We cannot stop now to dwell on these four things, though any one of them is worthy of prolonged contemplation and meditation, but do stop long enough to consider that even now, notwithstanding all the wonders God’s love has wrought, God has only begun to do for us. The fullness of God’s love is not yet manifested. It has just begun to unfold itself. As John puts it in I Jno. 3: 2, “Beloved now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be,” and it is “m the ages to come’ that God “will show the exceeding riches of His grace in kindness to¬ ward us in Christ Jesus.”
8. In the eighth place, God’s love manifests itself in His granting us that we should he called the children of God. This we find declared in God’s Word in I Jno. 3:1:
“Behold what manner of love the Father
hath bestowed upon us, that we should be
called children of God; and such we are.”
This is one of the most amazing manifestations of the love of God when we stop to think of what sort of a being God himself is even as we have so imperfectly seen Him in our eight preceding studies of The God of the Bible, and when we also stop to think of what sort of beings we ourselves are. Would it not be amazing if the wisest and noblest and richest and most potent monarch of earth should ride down to the slums of some city of his realm and seeing a filthy, ragged, dirty, ignorant, miserable and degenerate child stand¬ ing by the side of the road, should stop and say to this disreputable outcast lad, ^‘Come, get in here with me, and I will take you to the royal palace, and I will adopt you into my family, and you shall bear my name and be my heir?’’ Yes, that would be marvelous, in¬ credibly marvelous; but it would not be one millionth part so amazing as that the great eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, infinitely Holy God should come down to ‘the vile slums of this fallen and corrupt earth of ours and pick you and me out in our ignorance and folly and weakness and poverty and moral vileness and turpitude and say, “I will adopt you into my family and give you the right to be called my children.” Lis¬ ten to it again as I read it from God’s own Word, ^‘Behold what manner of love the Father hath be¬ stowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are” Why? Because of God’s love, because God is love.
9. Just once more. In the ninth place, God’s love manifests itself in His rejoicing over His saved people with joy and singing, and resting in His love for them. Here, again, we turn to an utterance of the long, long ago, about twenty-five hundred and fifty years ago, six hundred and twenty-five to six hundred and thirty years before our Lord Jesus was born in Bethlehem. You will find it in Zeph. 3: 17:
‘‘Jehovah thy God is in the midst of thee, a mighty one who will save; He will rejoice over thee with joy; He zvill rest in His love; He will joy over thee with singing.”
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What a marvelous and heart-stirring picture we have here! The infinite God, the creator and upholder not only of the whole earth, but of the sun and moon and stars, those vast worlds of light in all their countless numbers and inconceivably vast magnitude, taking such a tender interest in beings so insignificant as we are, and such morally worthless beings as you and I are, that when we are saved he rejoices over us as a mother crooning over the child who nestles to her bosom, singing a sweet lullaby as He draws us to His heart and rests in His love. The Hebrew word here translated ‘Test” is a deeply significant word. Literally translated it would read, “He will be silent in His love,” i. e.. His love is perfectly satisfied, and He rests in a rapturous silence that is deeper than all possibility of utterance. Oh, such is God, such is the God of the Bible! Not the god of “Christian Science,” nor the god of “New Thought,” nor the god of “Theosophy,” nor the god of Spiritualism, nor the god of “Modern Philosophy,” nor the God of “The New Theology,” but the God of this one and only really wonderful Book, unmistakably God’s own Book, the Bible.