The love of the Lord transcends all human love. There is no comparison. To describe the love of the Lord would be an impossible task if it were not for the revelation of God's word. Even then, such a description of the love of the Lord as man can give is inadequate. Maybe in a small way we can say some things about the magnitude of this love that will help us to get a vague understanding of its dimensions.

1. The love of God is broad. "God so loved the world." Not just the white man, but the black, the yellow, the red, and the brown man. Not just the English speaking people, but the people of all nationalities. " Go ye therefore and teach all nations." Our Lord loved all and died for all. "And who would have all men to be saved, and to come to a knowledge of the truth." This within itself surpasses human love. But this is just a beginning of the wonders of such a love.

2. The love of the Lord is as long as time and eternity. "Love never faileth." God's love for his creature, man, never faileth, and man's love for God should not fail. Yes, the love of the Lord is surviving, and excelling. "Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity (love) " (1 Cor. 13: 13).

3. The love of our Savior reaches down to the "chief" of sinners.It is deep. It accepted poverty. "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." (2 Cor8: 9). This love sacrificed personal enjoyment. "For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, "The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me" (Rom. 15:3).

4. The height of the love of the Lord is astounding. It leads men out of the depth of sin and exalts them to heaven. It makes possible that man might inherit with him in that land that is fairer than day. "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne" (Rev. 3: 21). The Lord's love is a providing love. It prepares and shares a place for mankind. "I go to prepare a place for you." What a love this is! "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."

The First love

The Lord loved us first. "We love him because he first loved us." Even as a small child will return the parents love, as long as we remain humble as a little child, we will return the Father's love. True love on the part of man binds him to God. When man truly loves God, he will obey him. "If a man loves me he will keep my word." Without obedience on the part of man the love of the Lord will profit one absolutely nothing. "He is the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him."

And when man truly loves the Lord, that tie that binds is so strong that Satan cannot untie it. Did not Paul say, "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 Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 8:37-39). The only way we can account for the many numbers of back-sliders in the church is that the professed love was only talk. God clings to man as long as man clings to him.

Love Transforms

Where husband and wife live together for years, and the love is mutual, and the interests are mutual, it seems that each grow into the likeness of the other. And this is the way it should be. This is the way it is spiritually. Loving the Lord, serving the Lord, having mutual interests with the Lord, our very beings seem to lighten and brighten like unto the Lord's. We grow into his likeness. Those we love enough become a model for us. We imitate them. We act like them.

And no where is such a transformation noticed more than when one really is a genuine Christian. When every word and deed of a person's life is spoken and done as one who loves the Lord, then, indeed, "Old things are passed away, all things become new." Then, indeed, is this transformation complete. And this growing into the likeness of the Lord will continue to the very end of the way. We shall be like him when he comes again. "Beloved now are we the sons of God, and it cloth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is" (1 John. 3:2). And take note of this: "And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure" (1 John. 3:3). So, let us keep being transformed like unto the Lord, so the transfiguration at his coming may be ours also.

Truth Magazine VII: 8, pp. 6, 24
May 1963